CrashCourse3

Aish HaTorah:
Crash Course in Jewish History --

THE BIBLE AS HISTORY

Crash Course in Jewish History -- Part 7

JOSEPH

By Rabbi Ken Spiro

* * *

The story Joseph demonstrates a classic historic pattern of the Jew in
Diaspora. The Jew arrives impoverished, works hard despite depravation,
and rises to the top.

Had Jacob married Rachel as he had intended -- instead of being tricked
into marrying Leah -- Joseph would have likely been his first-born son.
Although he was Jacob’s 11th son, he dominates the narrative of the 12
brothers, and, in his story, we see a great many historical patterns.

To begin with, Joseph has a key position in the family as a result of his
being the long-awaited first child of Jacob’s favorite wife. His father
seems
to be showing him a considerable amount of favoritism -- he buys him a
special coat -- and this engenders jealousy from his brothers.

However, it would be a mistake to view their behavior simplistically, as
typical of a dysfunctional family. While these people without a doubt make
mistakes, spiritually they are on an incredibly high level. So we have to
look deeply at what is really going on here.

Joseph is having dreams and he interprets those dreams. As we learn, he
has a special gift for dream interpretation, and his dreams and
interpretations are accurate and prophetic. He tells his brothers, for
example, that one day they will bow to him (which does indeed happen
some years later).

But to his brothers his dreams appear to verge on megalomania. And since
they know that they are the team that’s supposed to change the world,
they think he is endangering the whole future of humanity. They know the
family history -- that in each generation there was one “bad apple” -- first
Ishmael, then Esau. So they conclude that Joseph must be the bad one in
this generation.

They contemplate killing him, but instead they sell him into slavery. They
take his fancy coat, smear it with goat’s blood and present it to Jacob as
if
Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

Meanwhile, Joseph is taken by a caravan of Ishmaelites to Egypt, where
he becomes a slave in the household of a nobleman named Potiphar.

EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

At this juncture, we have to consider what Egypt was like at this time in
history when it was the second of the two great civilizations in existence.
(The first was the Mesopotamian civilization which we described in Part 3
of this series.)

Egypt at that time was mostly desert except for the Nile River. The Nile is
the greatest river in the world, and if it didn’t flow through Egypt the
country
would be just sand. In ancient times only 3% of Egypt was inhabitable,
arable land.

Because of its natural defenses, Egypt was totally isolated and virtually
impossible to invade. (The Hyksos invaded it once, the Assyrians also,
then finally Alexander the Great. But that’s only three times in 3,000
years.) Egypt was the most static, longest-surviving civilization in human
history. And it virtually didn’t change. You should think about how little
Egypt changed in 3,000 years and how much the modern world has
changed in just a few hundred years. It’s mind-boggling how stable that
society was and to a large extent it’s due to its geography.

Although we don’t have exact dates for the beginning of the Egyptian
civilization, it is believed to have started in the Early Bronze period,
around
3300 BCE. It was a very sophisticated culture, considering the feats of
engineering that the pyramids represent. The Great Pyramid of Khufu,
known as “Cheops,” is the largest ever built, 13 acres in area, almost 500
feet high, of 5 million tons of stone; and it was built by people who did
not
have any iron tools. We have no idea how they did it. They obviously had
tremendously sophisticated stone cutting techniques and engineering
knowledge, enabling them to move large blocks of stone. They had pulleys,
they had levers, they had a lot of muscle power.

It’s estimated that Cheops took 100,000 men and thirty years to build.
Why spend so much effort on building a tomb? Because the Egyptians
were also spiritually sophisticated. It was a dark spirituality but not to
be
lightly dismissed. They were preoccupied with death, which is why they
perfected mummification, and their holy book was called the Book of the
Dead. How’s that for a lively read?

They believed that Pharaoh was a living god, he had absolute power, and
that Pharaoh’s position in the after-life would affect how the whole of
Egypt
would fare. So you had to make a really good tomb for him, and you had to
give him the right gifts, and you had to make sure that he got into the
after-
life correctly, otherwise things would go badly for everybody. Which is why
it was a national project of the entire Egyptian people to create such
extra-
ordinary tombs for the Pharaohs.

Of course, this very sophisticated culture was antithetical to Judaism as is
humanly possible, because it practiced idolatry. They worshipped 2,000
different gods in ancient Egypt. Gods with hippo heads, and falcon heads,
and crocodile heads. This was a civilization that was idolatrous to the
extreme -- very religious and spiritual in its own sense and yet very
idolatrous at the same time. They were not primitive or superstitious or
stupid; they understood spiritual power and were a very sophisticated
people who truly believed in the power of idolatry.

Egypt, besides being a place of idolatry, was also a place of immorality --
a very licentious place.

So to throw young Joseph into this environment is bad news. Very bad
news.

A SLAVE RISES TO THE TOP

Separated from the influence of his family at an early age, Joseph has a
major disadvantage for a licentious society -- he is very handsome. And
his master’s wife, Mrs. Potiphar, finds him very attractive.

Besides that, Joseph has a lot going for him -- he is very smart and
hardworking and he rises from his position as lowly teenage servant to
head of Potiphar’s household. This is the classic historic pattern of the
Jew
in the Diaspora -- he comes in impoverished, deals with a bad situation,
works hard, rises to the top.

Now Potiphar’s wife is not happy that Joseph refuses her advances.
Eventually, she picks a time when everyone is out of the house attending a
national celebration and she tries to rip his clothes off. He runs away. She
screams rape.

Mr. Potiphar comes home. It is obvious that he doesn’t believe his wife
because otherwise he would have Joseph killed on the spot. Instead, he
throws him into prison.

So here Joseph, who was the head servant, is on the bottom again. This is
the Jew in the Diaspora. We come into a country, we rise, then we’re
thrown out. We start at the bottom somewhere else. Joseph is now in
prison and he rises very quickly to be the head prisoner. He’s running the
whole place. This again is the Jew.

Into prison is thrown Pharaoh’s wine steward and Pharaoh’s baker. And
they have dreams. Now as we know Joseph is the master dream
interpreter, and therefore it’s not surprising that Joseph interprets these
dreams and he tells the wine steward that the Pharaoh is going to reinstate
him into his position, and he tells the baker that he’s going to lose his
head. And that’s exactly what happens.

PHARAOH’S DREAMS

Then the Pharaoh himself has a couple of disturbing dreams. He dreams
of seven fat cows coming out of the Nile and being devoured by seven thin
cows. And then he has another dream of seven fat sheaves of wheat being
devoured by seven thin sheaves of wheat. And he’s very disturbed. And
believe me, if living-god-on-earth-Pharaoh can’t sleep, no one in Egypt
sleeps.

The Pharaoh wakes up all his magicians and his soothsayers and his
astrologers and none of them can figure out what the dream was about,
and then the wine steward says, “I remember, there was this Jewish kid in
prison who interprets dreams.”

Now this, by the way, is the ultimate Jewish success story. They take
Joseph out of prison; they shower him, shave him and bring him before
Pharaoh. When he hears the dream, Joseph tells the Pharaoh: “There’s
going to be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.”

“What should I do?” asks the Pharaoh. And Joseph says, “You’d better
stockpile all the grain in Egypt so that when the famine hits you’ll have
what to eat.” Pharaoh says, “You thought of it, you do it.”

And this is how Joseph becomes Viceroy, for all practical purposes the
most powerful man in the whole land in terms of infrastructure, of Egypt,
the most powerful empire at the time. How’s that for promotion -- from
prisoner to viceroy. And he marries Osnat, the daughter of Potiphar.

Before the famine hits he has two children, Menashe and Ephraim. To this
day, observant Jews bless their children every Friday night to be like
Ephraim and Menashe. Why? First, unlike all the previous brothers in the
Bible -- Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau -- they love
each other and are not jealous of each other’s accomplishments. Second,
because these kids grew up as sons of the Viceroy, they could have been
totally assimilated, spoiled, Egyptian brats, yet it’s very clear that they
grow up completely loyal proto-Jews in an incredibly hostile environment.

Now that Joseph is Viceroy the stage is set for his early dreams to come
true, when he saw his brothers bowing before him. And this is indeed what
happens next.

NEXT: REUNION

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