Vayeshev: Yosef and His Brothers

We now come to the problem of the rivalry between Yosef and his brothers. Yes, the history of humanity began with the story of enemy brothers — Hevel and Kayin, Yitzchak and Yishmael, Esav and Yaakov — each time to a different degree. And when we reach the rivalry within the family of Yaakov, between Yosef and his brothers, I believe we have arrived at the highest stage of that rivalry. Now, everything rests, everything is founded, on the notion of brotherhood — paradoxically, not on that of love. For in love there is, after all, a mutual enjoyment, which is not the case in brotherhood, where I efface myself completely for the pleasure of the other, for the success of the other, for the fulfillment of the other. And that is why, as long as this brotherhood has not been realized, the history of humanity cannot begin.

The very notion of freedom is held, as it were, in captivity by the absence of this lived experience of brotherhood. We have already said that beyond the recognition of Ephraim’s precedence over Menashe, what set in motion the story of the Exodus from Egypt was rather the fact that Aharon stepped aside before his brother Moshe — a brother who rejoices in the other’s achievement, in his success, even in his manhigut, his leadership. Now the story can begin on sound foundations; the Jewish people can be born. As long as brotherhood has not been acquired, nothing can yet be done; everything remains dependent on the profit one can draw, each time, from one situation or another. And this brotherhood lies at the heart of the dream of Yosef and his brothers, because the dream, too, is a form of the revelation of a being to itself. Man’s fulfillment is a dream of G-d.

If man does not answer his calling, the whole universe of creation has no meaning. What is the life of man a response to? Yet we see very clearly that this life of man is overrun by many wild plants — desires, rivalries, a spirit of competition — which make a man see the other as hell, as a rival, a tool, an instrument. Even when he perceives him as an equal, he nonetheless remains somewhat indifferent to his fate, to his destiny. To perceive the other as a messenger of life, […] as the inspirer of the soul, as truly my own project of creation — that is something a person reaches only after a very deep work on himself. It is not easy. We know all too well the problems that arise within a single family — all the more so when the mothers are different, when the environment is different, when the culture is different. It is difficult.

We have said that havayah, existence itself in the immediate present, proceeds from four essences, four elements; they are found almost everywhere, and there is no need to review them all right now. To the four constituents of the universe correspond the four constituents of human life: the nefesh, the being in its basic, instinctive makeup; the ruach, man in his attributes; the neshamah, his soul, in his spirit; and the chayah, in what lies beyond his spirit — his imagination, his intuition, his deep aspiration, the one that drives him, that will to unify things, not to let them be fragmented, scattered, dispersed, but to make of them a unity of life. And this always moves from below upward, for that is what is particular to man. Everything else is inspired from above downward; everything receives its powers from the Creator, but what it receives it can do nothing else with. That is not the case with man.

Man, limited as he is, nevertheless has the power to change his destiny, to fulfill himself differently. And that is why, even when we bless a new couple, we say: ahavah ve-achvah, ve-shalom ve-re’ut — “love and brotherhood, peace and companionship.” Ahavah, love — love within brotherhood. In brotherhood I do not seek to exploit anyone whatsoever. Shalom: if there are compromises to be made, of course. But the goal is re’ut: that we be companions in one and the same project, one and the same work, no matter where each one stands — for both of us are indispensable to the functioning of our life, of our universe. This introduction is necessary in order to understand properly the trials that Yosef’s family is going to live through: a brotherhood that at first tears a family apart and in the end gives the story of the Patriarchs a new dimension — no longer at the level of children, but at the level of brothers. As though a brother were a higher rank than even a child. In Shir ha-Shirim, the Song of Songs: mi yitencha ke-ach li — “who will make you as a brother to me?” What I wish is that you be that brother, that you be that companion.

“We have a little sister,” says the Song of Songs (Shir ha-Shirim 8:8). It is, let us say, the highest level of love. And what I love most, what my soul loves, belongs to the realm of the dream. But careful — this dream exists at every level. There is the dream at the level of the nefesh, of my desires; there is the dream at the level of the ruach, of inspiration; there is the desire at the level of my neshamah, of my spirituality; there is the desire at the level of the chayah, beyond that spirituality — that radiance, that will, let us say, to surpass myself. And finally the yechidah […] to the divine in the other. Nor is it said that a man is to abandon his father and mother in order to cleave to his wife.

To begin with, one does not abandon father and mother in order to cleave to one’s wife — that would be an aberration. Why? Why is the love of parents not the same love one can bear toward a wife, or that a woman can bear toward her husband? Unless an open crisis means that one side or the other does not make itself worthy of that indispensable coexistence. Well — without opening a parenthesis, since that is not today’s subject — al ken ya’azov (Bereshit 2:24): ya’azov here means that a man must help his father and his mother, who formed him, who invested themselves in him to such a degree that afterward he must take over from them in dignity, in respect, in love, and with the concern to bring every project to completion. That is the task — the task of each stage of life, the task proper to one’s age.

And you […] — you who today give proof of this work, in dignity, in love, in the love of the brother who steps aside before the other to allow him to achieve what he himself cannot. Unfortunately, this is not the first approach in the perception of the other. And that is what happens here. Yosef dreams, just as his father dreamed. His father’s dream was Yaakov’s ladder, in which he himself was involved: namely, that a man, in his aspirations, must learn to go up and come down. In every aspiration, I am only serving those who remain below; therefore I must also learn to come down, in order to share with them what I have managed to achieve. That is Yaakov’s dream; he himself is that ladder, that ladder of values. He will have another dream: in the house of Lavan, one dreams only of the flock, only of the way to make what one has yield still more.

The dream always takes up the problems we wrestle with during the day, which are bound up with my desires, my cravings, my preoccupations, my worries, and so on. But there are also dreams that are empty vanities, that lie outside my possibilities, that are out of my reach — and it is a pity to lose oneself in the imaginary, sometimes for no reason. So in the dream this kind of — let us say — refuse is mingled. But there is something in the dream that goes beyond my consciousness. The dream is not simply the residue of my preoccupations, of my subconscious. There is an illumination there, a ray of the divine — but one that is also covered with a husk.

Let us recall this verse from Iyov; I would like to read it to you, because it is very significant. In chapter 33, Iyov says the following — let me find it: “For G-d speaks in one way, and in two, yet one does not perceive it. In a dream, a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumber upon the bed — then He opens the ears of men and seals their instruction, to turn man aside from his deed and to hide pride from a man; He keeps back his soul from the pit and his life from perishing by the sword” (Iyov 33:14–18). As our Sages summed it up: the dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy. So let us come back now to Yosef. Besides the fact that he is truly Yaakov’s favorite child, and that he wears the coat of many colors that grants precedence — that gives him precedence over all his [brothers] — now comes a dream, which he does not hide but reveals to his brothers.

The first is a dream of a material order: he is with his brothers, at one with his brothers, and they are working in a field. They are binding sheaves of wheat, and suddenly his own sheaf succeeds: it rises up by itself, and the other sheaves find themselves — I will not say obliged, but led — to bow down before his sheaf — before, in the face of, his success. Yes, Yosef is telling his brothers: “The choice my father makes of me is not gratuitous, it is not in vain; it is grounded in a future that awaits me, a success that awaits me, and you will benefit from it in one way or another — but on condition that you…

“…agree to submit, that you acknowledge my authority.” Who would accept such a dream? Of course, his brothers hate him. But then the second dream — which he likewise does not hide, but this time reveals even before his father — in which he sees himself, not merely with the sun and the moon, representing father and mother, and the eleven stars, the brothers: he is above all of that. He is like a divine messenger, he is like the Mashiach: mother and brothers are called upon to bow down before him. Whereas in the first dream, the brothers rise up in protest: ha-malokh timlokh aleinu, im mashol timshol banu — excuse me, that is the first one — “Do you mean to reign over us as king? Do you mean to rule over us?” (Bereshit 37:8).

We established something of the difference between a king and a ruler last week. But in the second dream it is: ha-vo navo, ani ve-imcha ve-achecha — “Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, to bow down to the ground before you?” (Bereshit 37:10). Yaakov says nothing more to his son. Perhaps he is waiting for an opportunity to reproach him in some other way — and that is also why he seizes the occasion when the brothers are slow to return, to tell him: “Go and see where your brothers are, go and see how they are faring.” You must learn to serve them. But for his brothers, he is the ba’al ha-chalomot, the master of dreams — the one who truly takes himself for the master of the family. And that is why Yosef will learn at his own expense, will have to suffer before he attains that title of leader, before he sees his dreams come true.

He is the eved, the servant; he is thrown into Pharaoh’s prison. He will be no more than the mishneh la-melekh, the second to the king; even when he reaches the highest post, he is the deputy. He will never be the melekh; he will never have that function of king. He will have the function of moshel, the function of the governor, the one who is imposed. Yes, it is true, he has become not only a dreamer — he is a poter chalomot, he solves dreams. We have already said that Yosef gave Egypt three things. Faith in Elokim, in a Creator of the world — for does not Pharaoh say to him: ha-nimtza kha-zeh ish asher ruach Elokim bo — “Can there be found such a man, in whom is the spirit of Elokim?” (Bereshit 41:38) — a man inspired by G-d? So the existence of Elokim is acknowledged. He is the poter chalomot — he is the Freud of the era. And then he manages to nationalize all the land and place it under Pharaoh’s sway, under Pharaoh’s control — he is the Marx of the era.

There are three things he gave, namely: faith in a Creator of the universe; a mode of functioning such that there is equality in the distribution of society’s goods; and also a way of interpreting events. Everything we live through in life belongs somewhat to the realm of image, of parable, of garment. But one must try to step out of these garments in which we drape ourselves in order to see what the true essence is — to find the true language of each thing, because things speak to us, the world speaks to us. But in order truly to listen, we would have to reduce to silence, somewhat, all the noise we keep up around us. And that is why the dream, in sleep, when the body is at rest, is the moment when the soul can sometimes receive messages that lie beyond its immediate perception.

As the Holy One, blessed be He, put it well: im yihyeh nevi’akhem Hashem … ba-chalom adaber bo — “If there be a prophet among you, I, Hashem, … will speak to him in a dream” (Bamidbar 12:6). The Holy One, blessed be He, addressed man in the dream, and the prophet could thus convey the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, to the people. Now, it is true that at first Yosef does not know what the consequences of his dreams are; he himself does not explain them to himself. He manages to explain the dreams of the sar ha-mashkim and the sar ha-ofim, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker — of the baker and of the one who served the king water or liquor — and he manages to explain Pharaoh’s dreams as well. But his own dreams he does not explain to himself. It is only later: va-yizkor Yosef et ha-chalomot — “Yosef remembered the dreams” (Bereshit 42:9).

Yosef comes to realize all the dreams he had dreamed. These were not the dreams of an adolescent, not the dreams of a thoughtless man dreaming of domination. No — there was substance in his dreams. But Yosef had to realize what he would say later on: that it is G-d who is poter chalomot, G-d who is able to resolve the problem of dreams. Why? Because with a dream, everything depends on how one interprets it. If one reduces it to its minimal expression, it is bad. But if one carries it, so to speak — if one projects it in such a way that it moves us to act toward the other — then the dream can be a form of revelation.

Yosef will recognize this later on, namely: “When G-d blessed my sheaf, and in a sense launched me on the path of success and achievement, it was the better to serve you, to allow you to live.” That is the purpose of Yosef’s dream. But unfortunately Yosef reaches this conclusion himself only after passing through difficult trials; we will have occasion to look at them later. For now, though, Yosef is cast out of the way. Kayin reduced his brother Hevel to silence — because Hevel had walled himself up in silence and would not answer, would not respond to Kayin’s calling. Here too — what did Kayin do? He killed his brother; he reduced him [to silence].

Here, rather than kill him, they preferred to show him that his dreams were worth absolutely nothing. He is the one who will be the slave, not they; they will not be the ones there to serve. Yet what happens afterward will give meaning to Yosef the tzaddik, whom Yaakov will recognize as nezir echav (Bereshit 49:26) — the one set apart from his brothers, that is, the one who is at the head of his brothers, the kodkod, the crown, of his brothers. But he will never be king. We explained this last week: a tzaddik who is wholly righteous at heart cannot be placed at the head of a people. If he has nothing to reproach himself for, if he has no remorse, if he has not, in some way, lived through an unhappy event, a painful experience from which he will learn to repent by himself,

then he is not a model for the people. The people needs to see itself on an equal level with its would-be leader. And Yehudah — this is what we will see next week […] — namely, what destined the brother Yehudah for melukhah, for kingship, while Yosef’s lot remained solely at the level of the kedushah, the holiness, of the nazir. There — if you have questions, with pleasure. — Yes, kevod ha-Rav, I wanted to ask you about Yosef: what is the difference between a person who is resigned, who accepts his fate — and who, at the very moment he “rebels,” so to speak, and asks the minister to remember him, is in fact practically punished for it […] — and someone who actually fights, so to speak, to improve himself, to improve his lot, to improve his life, to improve those around him? Because he seems very resigned, in fact — very passive. In a sense, after Yosef was thrown into the pit, it is as though he does not rebel, and even when he begins to rebel, he is punished for it.

So it is a little strange to see him as an ideal of perfection, when in fact we see someone who, in a sense, accepts his fate rather passively. — Good. You are asking the question, let us say, as follows. The family of Yosef — the family of Yaakov — the twelve children of Yosef — the twelve children of Yaakov, I don’t know what’s happening to me! — the twelve children of Yaakov are me; they are each one of us. At times we are Yosef, at times we are Binyamin, at times we are Yehudah. There are, let us say, flashes in our life that identify us with one of Yaakov’s children rather than another. And we live in our life, in our twelve dimensions, ad me’ah ve-esrim — until a hundred and twenty years — each slice being ten years.

We are living a portion of the life of the children of Yaakov, a portion of the destiny of the Jewish people. If we are aware of this, then you must know that Yosef’s dreams are not foreign to our nature. We undergo their consequences, we draw their lessons from them. And so, if we are warned at the outset — and that is what the Torah does in giving us the example of Yosef — it is to tell us: “Beware! You are living through this trial right now; expect such consequences, let us say, if you do not correct your course, if you do not take a direction other than the one indicated.” That is it — that is Yosef.

And Yosef is in Egypt. It is Yosef who brings his brothers to Egypt; it is Yosef who brings his family to Egypt. There are brothers who have indeed broken up their families. There are brothers who have played the role of Yosef within families; there are those who have played the role of Yehudah, and so on. So do not ask the question as though it concerned an element separate from the whole, but within the whole. All right? There. Thank you very much. — Is everything all right? Then I will leave you. Thank you very, very much. […] Thank you very much. — Is there a class next week?

— I think so; I will check. […] — No, I am asking you the question. — It’s because the holidays are starting where you are. — Not yet, not yet. I’m checking; give me just a second. — We are not talking about spiritual holidays, are we? — We are talking about physical holidays. — Yes, next week we do have a class. We are still in the Three Weeks, so we are not really on vacation. Come — shavua tov to you. Shavua tov to you.