Efrat-Israel - “…Menashe, because the Lord has caused me to forget all of my toil and my father’s house” (Gen 41:51)
Despite his brothers’ callous behavior in casting him into a pit and then selling him into Egyptian enslavement, and despite Mrs. Potiphar’s failed seduction and her subsequent revenge leading to his further imprisonment, Joseph once again lands on his feet. He even emerges as Grand Vizier, or CEO, of Pharaoh's kingdom, specifically Minister of Agriculture and Provider of Emergency Food. We are left, however, with one agonizing question: why, at this high point in his career, does Joseph not contact his grieving father and inform him that he is not only still alive, but that he enjoys an exalted position? Joseph must understand that he could put the aged patriarch’s fears to rest and simultaneously give him a bit of nachat!
In order to answer our question, we must first analyze the peregrinations of our patriarchs and their lengthy absences from their parents. The Bible seems to be teaching us that the recipient of the birthright blessings must have a profound, personal relationship with the G-d of the Covenant. This is virtually impossible to achieve until he has attained true self-understanding and laid to rest any tensions in his relationship with his parents. One must be at peace with oneself and one’s earthly father before one can truly relate to one’s Father in Heaven. In order to find that peace, many of our patriarchs left their father’s house and spent a long time living in an alien environment.
We have already analyzed how after the trauma of the Akeda, Isaac did not return home with his father. Isaac's G-d is referred to as the “Fright of Isaac” - the God who seemed to command his earthly father, Abraham to lift the slaughterer’s knife to his throat resulting in awesome fear and trembling. (Genesis 31:53). Isaac wanders around B’eer LaHai Ro’i, the place where God promised greatness to Ishmael, fearing that his father really favored his elder brother and wanted him to be the recipient of the blessings. So Isaac is overcome with his jealousy of the elder and more dynamic brother, until eventually Isaac appreciates that his father fully accepted G-d’s command to banish Ishmael. Now Isaac sees that his father has bestowed everything of material and spiritual significance upon him, even though Abraham has fathered more children with Keturah (Hagar). (Gen 25:5) With this understanding, Isaac is able to move on and care for his aging father and eventually take his place as the next patriarch. G-d, however, and probably his father Abraham as well, always remain a source of “fright” for the more passive Isaac, who can only be the continuer par excellence of his more creative father’s pathways to G-d and to humanity.
Jacob deceives his father in order to acquire the blessings. As a result, he is forced to leave his home, and after his prophetic vision of the ladder ascending to the heavens, he stipulates that he will only establish a “House unto the Lord”, if he can “return in peace” to his father’s house and if the familial G-d of the Covenant will become his personal G-d. (Gen 28:21) Jacob has great difficulty relating to the fact that his father favored his brother Esau, because he fed him the venison and because he knew how to “entrap” his aged father with his mellifluous and wily tongue (Gen 25:28, Rashi ad loc).
Jacob desperately desires his father’s favored embrace, and gladly acquiesces to Rebecca’s plan to disguise himself as Esau in order to obtain it. Indeed, from that moment on, and especially during his long reside with the deceitful Laban, Jacob stills his inner voice of the “whole-hearted man, a studious dweller in tents” taking on some of the characteristics of Esau. While Jacob is trying to be someone else, G-d is never described as being his G-d; He is only described as the G-d of his fathers. (Genesis 27:20; 28:13; 31:53) Jacob needs to disgorge his inner Esau by leaving Laban and vanquishing Esau's spirit during a nocturnal wrestling match. Only then can he stand securely as his own man, independent of the approval of other people with the necessary self-confidence to build an altar to his own G-d in his own new name, “the Lord G-d of Israel” (Gen 33:20). At the end of this long journey, Jacob is finally able to forgive his father for his unwarranted favoritism of the older twin who sold and spurned the birthright as well as to feel his father’s forgiveness towards him for having deceived him. Jacob can finally come home to his father in peace and establish himself as the next patriarch.
Now we return to Joseph. The Bible has told us that he is the favorite son of Jacob. (Gen 37: 3). Joseph's existential self seems to be bound up in his father’s adoring love. From his early teens, Joseph is already given the birthright of familial leadership with the tunic of colored stripes. The accompanying traditions and responsibilities seem to be a perfect fit for this beautiful, intelligent, ambitious and charismatic elder son of this father’s most beloved wife. Joseph's bitterly jealous siblings cast him into a pit and I would suggest that it was in that pit, that the son who has always basked in his father’s love, suddenly recognizes not only the jealous hatred of his brothers, but also the mistaken favoritism of his father which fanned that jealousy. There, Joseph vows that if he ever gets out of the pit alive, he will never contact his father or his father’s house again.
Joseph works hard to forget his formative, early years. He marries Osnat, the daughter of a Priest of On, and names his eldest son Menashe, because the G-d of the universe (Elohim) “has enabled him to forget all of his toil and his father’s house” (Gen 41:51). In this alien environment, estranged from his father as well as from the familial, covenantal G-d of his father, Joseph speaks and acts like an Egyptian. He certainly harbors no thoughts of contacting his family, until he sees his siblings, remembers his blameless and beloved brother Benjamin, and hears from Judah how his father is grieving for him. With this news, Joseph realizes that, if his father was guilty, it was because he loved him too much, not too little. Now Joseph reveals himself, and reunites with his estranged family.
The lesson is clear. Our relationship to G-d will always be bound up with our relationship to our parents, our family, and the Sabbath and Festival table of our childhood home. If these memories are filled with love, we will always return, no matter how far we may have wandered. Meanwhile, until we return home, we cannot be true to ourselves, to our deepest DNA, to the essence of G-d within us. Only when we return in love because of loving memories towards our earthly parents will we be enabled to return in love to our Parent in Heaven as well.
Shabbat Shalom
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