Vayeshev

Here we get introduced to four sidrot which focus on Joseph (though in today's sidra we have an interlude referring to Judah). Joseph has a wonderful coat (the word "Technicolor" does not appear - it is clearly post-Biblical). Jealousy means that Joseph's style annoys his brothers so much that they chuck him in a pit leaving him for dead. Some Ishmaelites sell him into slavery in Egypt where he encounters Potiphar and his femme fatale wife. Refusing her attempts at seduction, he is denounced and put in prison.

Another Voice

Vayeshev - Rivi Poupko Kletenik

Rivy Poupko Kletenik is currently the Head of School of the Seattle Hebrew Academy, the first female to serve in this position in its 60 year history. She also writes a Jewish advice column for the JTNews called What's Your JQ?

Our ancestors pay us visits in our prayers. As their names are evoked, their presence is drawn into our consciousness. We turn to them to advocate on our behalf, or to elicit in ourselves inspiration and in the case of Joseph to mediate our dreams before the Almighty. During the priestly benediction we plead with God: "Sovereign of the Universe, I am Yours and my dreams are Yours. I have dreamed a dream and I do not know what it is. Whether I have dreamed about myself or my companions have dreamed about me, or I have dreamed about others, if they are good dreams, strengthen them, fortify them, make them endure in me them like the dreams of Joseph..."

As the ultimate exemplar of dreams coming true, Joseph is summoned by the Amoraic authors of this prayer. If you want your dreams to come true then you need to be like Joseph; his dreams endured.

As we brace ourselves for the four parshiyot of Joseph's saga, it is a smidgen discomfiting and premature to think of Joseph's dreams in this kind of an optimistic light. In our Parsha those dreams are diabolical. They lead to hatred and breed discontent. The dreams embellish and exacerbate patriarchal favoritism. They precipitate a heinous act of fraternal betrayal. Joseph's night-time dreams are of mastery; his day-time reality is of debasement. Stripped of the splendid coat of many colors, he is cast into a pit, and then sold as a slave. His brothers had aptly pronounced with contempt, "we shall see what will become of his dreams".

I wonder about these dreams of Joseph. Are they a prophetic message from God? Or are they Freudian in nature; a wish fulfillment, manifestations of the desires harbored deep in Joseph's being, reflections of delusions of grandeur? What is the nature of the endurance of Joseph's dreams? Did his dreams come true because he was determined to have them become real? Or did his dreams come true because God maneuvered their fulfillment? Or is it that Joseph and God are partners in this dream realization - each doing his own part.

These dreams of earthly sheaves of wheat and heavenly luminaries all bowing to one, these dreams so tersely reported in but two verses - these dreams are the impetus that shapes the Jewish character. History is waiting for us; a dreadful saga of eons of slavery culminating in a triumphant endgame. Joseph's life foreshadows that of the People Israel. We too, will be plummeted into the depths of enslaved degradation only to rise to glorious liberation and to the transcendence of being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These dreams of Joseph are essential to our nationhood; they at once embody our fate while at the same time speed us back to the future towards our destiny. It is no accident, according Nachmanides, that Joseph is given over wholly to his dreams - for this reason Joseph torments his brothers upon their arrival in Egypt. For this reason he never communicates with his father even after his position of Second to the King allows for freedom. He is desperately dedicated to his dreams. He is determined to see his brothers and father bow to his leadership. This desire draws the seventy souls down to Egypt where they become ensnared into years of slavery.

God too conspires. Unable to find his brothers, Joseph is directed to them by a mysterious man. He is no mere mortal but rather the angel Gabriel sent by God to ensure that Joseph meets up with his hostile brothers, who lay in wait for him. Nothing in this tale is left to chance. Not where Joseph serves as slave and not with whom he does jail time. A humbled Joseph begins to recognize the hand of God. His ambition alone cannot catapult him to majesty.

By the time our haughty young man is ready to interpret the dreams of others, he is a modest servant of the Lord. When asked to by his fellow inmates to interpret their dreams he says simply, 'Do not interpretations belong to God?'

The people Israel are also humbled and humiliated. The persecution and enslavement is the groundwork for nationhood. As Nehama Leibowitz puts it, "exile and suffering are here invested with a refining and purification character." She quotes the prophet Isaiah, 'Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.'

That suffering leads to growth is somewhat disquieting, the Nietzsche axiom "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" notwithstanding. Nonetheless, our hero might have remained that dreamy favored boy living the life of entitlement in the house of Jacob, had he not been thrown into that pit; then what would have been of his dreams?

A spectacular sequence of dream explications and theory begins on page 54a in Talmud Berachot. There we are told that a dream not interpreted is like a letter not opened. The endurance of a dream begins with the opening the envelope but must be followed by a Joseph-like drive to fulfillment coupled with a partnership with a Heavenly Mover. Hence as the kohanim bestow their blessing we quietly pray that our dreams endure in us like the dreams of Joseph. Now those are dreams with endurance.

Another Voice - Adam Overlander-Kaye

"...Judah saw her...and assumed that she was a prostitute..." (Gen 38:15)
Tamar gave birth to twins, one of whom was the ancestor of the House of David and, hence, the Messiah. The rabbis praise Tamar. Genesis Rabbah says that she acted with ruach hakodesh, holy spirit.

Even the fact that she was committing incest and adultery under Jewish law did not earn the Rabbis' condemnation ... Tamar committed adultery and gave birth to kings and prophets... (Nazir 23b). 'A transgression with good intent is more meritorious than the performance of a commandment with no intent.' (Horayot 10b).
(Judith Antonelli, In the image of G-d)

The Book of Ruth ends listing the ten generations from Perez to King David. The beginning of David's family tree is the son, Perez, born to Judah and Tamar. The seventh generation is the son, Obed, born to Ruth and Boaz. The family tree of Israel's great and future king includes Tamar and Ruth.

The Bible casts in these heroic roles two figures at the extreme margins of Israelite society: women, childless widows, outsiders. Tamar and Ruth, powerless except for their moral courage, wrote their names into Jewish history as role models who gave birth to royalty - to remind us, in case we ever forget, that true royalty lies in love and faithfulness, and that greatness often exists where we expect it least.