Embracing Our Divided Selves
Reflections on the Artist's Journey
They served [Joseph] by himself [l’vado], and them by themselves [l’vadam], and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves [l’vadam]; for the Egyptians could not dine with the Hebrews, since that would be abhorrent to the Egyptians. (Genesis 43:32)
I can’t talk to those I daven [pray] with, and I can’t daven [pray] with those I talk to. (David Weiss Halivni)
“Insanity—a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” (R.D. Laing)
In this week’s Torah reading, Miketz (Gen. 41:1-44:17), Joseph is transformed from slave and prisoner into Egyptian viceroy. His brothers hated him in his youth for being a dreamer and a diviner. But those very same qualities are what help him ascend to power. Now his brothers are at his mercy, in need of his help. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” The iconoclasts and contrarians the consensus drivers have ostracized have become validated. The start-up that once was laughed out of town has just IPO’ed. God has finally heard the psalmist’s cry, “How long will you let my enemies mock me?”
For the world, famine is awful. For the few for whom “normal” is awful, famine is a boon. In a time of darkness, the nocturnal thrive. At least those who can play the game and impress the powers that be. The graveyards are littered with dreamers who never made it to Pharaoh’s palace. Most waiters and waitresses who come to the Big Apple don’t make it to Broadway. Not all dreams are right—most are both crazy and wrong, which is one reason why we dismissively lump all moonshot ideas together. It’s too difficult to sort genius from crackpot (often, they’re one and the same—a broken clock is only right twice a day).
Pharaoh dreams that seven fat cows are eaten by seven lean ones—a horrifying image Joseph interprets to mean that a famine is coming. But it’s also a positive self-description of Joseph, whose ascendancy can only occur in a time of desperation, in a state of emergency. In normal times, the dreamers are not appreciated—even punished. In extreme times, when nothing else works, they are all anybody has left. The dreamer, the diviner, the spiritual person—these figures see what others cannot, they are undervalued because they value what society undervalues. But in times of crisis, when society rethinks its values, they prove wise. Joseph can’t be Pharaoh because such a promotion would lack decorum, would render him a tyrant, but he is a de facto Pharaoh. The enterprise realizes it’s going bust unless it puts the crazy disrupter in charge.
Joseph’s anticipation of the future lean years reminds us of the moment Jacob buys Esav’s birthright for a bowl of lentils—both Joseph and Jacob get a great deal because they see value where others don’t. In Joseph’s case, it’s not just that he goes “long” an undervalued asset, but that he goes “short” an overvalued one. Joseph realizes the optimism around him is a bubble. Like Cassandra, in Greek mythology, he knows disaster is close at hand. But unlike Cassandra, who is simply ignored, he cashes in on his prediction and is able to use his position to move the levers of government.
In the long-long run, Joseph remains oblivious, though. His time horizon is 14 years. He consolidates wealth for Egypt, and saves his family, but he also creates the very conditions—both cultural and institutional—for his people’s eventual enslavement in the Book of Exodus. We can’t hold him responsible for this—and the Torah has overdetermined the Israelites will be enslaved since God’s inaugural promise to Abraham—but it’s worth noting that even Joseph’s foresight is bounded, because at a certain point, the quantum nature of time makes any talk of “long” and “short” nonsensical. On a grand scale, good can come from bad and bad from good. Joseph benefits from these dialectical dynamics, but is not above them. Eventually his statue will come down.
Is policy X good? The answer depends on whether your time-frame for measuring its outcomes is 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years or 10,000 years. Usually, societies think in term limits, which, for monarchs and dictators is their adult life-span (as opposed to a 4 year presidential term). A Pharaoh will come in Exodus “who knows not Joseph”—which is another way of saying that every age casts judgment on its predecessors; there is no final draft to memory or history. When I grew up, Abraham Lincoln was a hero, considered one of the greatest U.S. presidents. Now, a San Francisco High School bearing his name wants to remove his name and take a new one, because of his poor treatment of Native Americans and insufficient concern for African Americans. (If you are truly, philosophically progressive in the sense that the future can and will be better than the past, the best people are living in a future eternally far away. All statues should be of people we have never met, the last generation before the Messiah comes.)
Joseph is like his father in another regard—he is described as l’vado, alone (see here for my fuller discussion of the term.) It’s lonely seeing and saying what others can’t and won’t; it’s also a gift that is cultivated precisely by those who are outcast, bullied, scorned.
In Miketz, Joseph is described as l’vado while his brothers and the Egyptian palace are described as l’vadam—this highlights Joseph’s double aloneness; he is neither wholly Israelite nor wholly Egyptian, or he is both. (He can’t pray, as it were, with the Egyptians and he can’t talk to his brothers.) But though he finds a synthesis in himself, in practice he is literally without community. He can’t eat with his brothers, because they consider him an Egyptian (or an overlord). He can’t eat with the Egyptians, because he’s inwardly a Jew. The Torah points to some fascinating and weird cafeteria seating dynamics: the Egyptians consider it an abomination to eat with Israelites, so where should Joseph sit—is he an Egyptian, an Israelite, or a category unto himself? Is he, in a strange way, an abomination to himself, a hybrid of civilizations that normally “clash”?
Joseph’s long term legacy will not be as enduring as his brother, Yehuda’s. But in this moment of lean years, in our time of Chanukka, Joseph keeps the light and the faith by being a Jew in an Egyptian world. In Exodus, the Jews leave Egypt. In the model of Joseph, they find ways to maintain themselves, and even elevate Egypt and the wider world—by becoming Egyptian in some way. Joseph gets an Egyptian name and marries an Egyptian woman. Moses marries a Midianite. Esther “marries” Achashverosh, becomes Persian. The leaders who save the Jews in times of emergency do so not as zealots who rail against assimilation, but as modernizers who live as “divided selves.” Their madness, their l’vado status, relative to th boundaries around them enable them to be a bridge between center and periphery, a peacemaker or “connector” in a world of polarization and hostility.
Joseph is, at a personality level, a boundary crosser in yet another profound way: he combines the qualities of both his father, Jacob, and his uncle, Esav. Joseph literally fulfills his father’s line, spoken initially in deception, “I am Esav.” How so? We already noted that Joseph’s qualities as a planner, as a dreamer, and as a person who is pivotally and quintessentially l’vado (alone) resemble his father. Further “proof” that Joseph is Jacob-like comes from the fact that the Midrash says he saw his father’s face in the reflection of Potifar’s house (which could mean that he saw his own face, and it resembled his dad’s). Then there’s the fact that Genesis 37:2 introduces Joseph in the following way: “These are the generations of Jacob, Joseph being 17…” The juxtaposition of Jacob’s and Joseph’s name (Eleh toldot yakov yosef) implies that Joseph’s story is Jacob’s and vice versa. Joseph is effete, like his dad; he’s hardly the warrior-hunter archetype that his brothers, Shimon and Levi, assume.
But how is Joseph like Esav? The biggest give away is that Joseph cries a lot. In Miketz, Joseph excuses himself to weep in private: “With that, Joseph hurried out, for he was overcome with feeling toward his brother and was on the verge of tears; he went into a room and wept there.” (43:30) While Esav is not described as a frequent weeper, his tears are notable for their intensity: “Have you only one blessing? Bless me, even, also, my father. Esau lifted up his voice and wept” (27:38). As with Esav, the tears come involuntarily and are all the more powerful because they come from someone who presents as “tough.” Joseph is not a hunter, but the sight of a ruler in royal garb excusing himself to cry—which we, as readers, are cinematically afforded —is moving. Just as Jacob pretends to become Esav, Joseph pretends to be an Egyptian. Just as Jacob says, “I am Esav,” Joseph actually becomes Egyptian, taking the name Tzafnat Paneeah (which Onkelos translates to mean, “the man to whom many mysteries are revealed”). And just as Esau cries when he discovers he’s been impersonated, Joseph cries at the sight of his brother, Benjamin, at the life he could have lived had he not been cast away.
Consider the consequences of the literary parallel created between Joseph’s and Esav’s tears—the exclusion of Esav from the blessing is akin to being sold into slavery; conversely, to be sold into slavery by one’s brothers is akin to having one’s blessing stolen. The parallel tears suggest two acts of parallel betrayal in need of healing and reconciliation.
But isn’t Jacob justified in deceiving his father and outwitting his brother? On one level, yes. Which may also mean that on some level, Joseph’s brothers, too, are justified in their actions. From a divine perspective, though not necessarily from a moral or ethical one, Jacob’s deception of Isaac, and his children’s deception of him, move the plot to where it needs to go. We can’t recommend deceit as a virtue, but its prominence in Genesis points to a lesson we need to learn—not that we need to be tricked, but that what we value and what’s valuable are not the same thing. “Man is the measure of all things,” say Protagoras. And in one way this is true, reality bends to our models. Life is what we make of it. Truth is whatever story we want to believe. Even the Talmud bears out this subjectivist principle: the declaration of the new month goes not according to the heavens, exactly, but according to the proclamations of the sages. A radical Midrash even goes so far as to say that God only exists insofar as we “testify” to God’s existence. But in another way, Protagoras’s existentialist sentiment is totally off. The measure of all things is beyond us.
Isaac is deceived (by Jacob), Jacob is deceived (by his sons), and Jacob’s sons are deceived (by Joseph). How can all these supposedly wise people be deceived? Isaac and Jacob, in particular, are avot, founding fathers of Judaism. Should they really be so vulnerable to mistakenness? One possible answer is that they must be deceived to show us that the spiritual life is not about attaining total knowledge (which is an impossibility), but of acknowledging the limits of human knowledge. Joseph is a talented dream interpreter, but even he makes sure to emphasize that his gift is not of his own making, but of God’s generosity.
In the Amidah prayer, we recognize that God is chonen hadaat—one who grants knowledge. In the Jewish tradition, knowledge is not primarily the result of hard work and persistence, but of grace and revelation. When we think we are the owners of our knowledge we are most prone to make mistakes. When we recognize God as the true source of knowledge, we become humble about where wisdom can come from and open ourselves to the possibility that it can come from those without the requisite credentials accrued in the capitol. Disciplinary knowledge can be taught in school; but there is no school for wisdom other than life.
If we are too humble about what we can know, we end up welcoming pseudo-science (and God knows that for every Joseph there are ten thousand charlatans). But if we are evangelically rationalist we’ll end up treating as fully authoritative theories that are only “less wrong” than other existent theories. The point of the Joseph story isn’t that God showed him how to sidestep the scientific method (represented by the Egyptian court advisors), but that social networks produce both social proof and speculative bubbles, evolutionary know-how and irrational exuberance, accountable conversations and corrupt hegemonies.
Joseph was, at his core l’vado, alone, separated from both the Jewish consensus and the Egyptian one. But to become the leader who could save both Egypt and the Jewish people, he couldn’t remain l’vado. His tears can only be private for so long. Eventually, as we will see in next week’s parasha, Vayigash, Joseph has to reveal himself and make peace with his divided self. Having played the game of family politics (and lost) and the game of Egyptian politics (and won), he will need to integrate his learning from both experiences. Win at all costs, and we lose our integrity. Keep our solitary integrity and refuse to compromise and we diminish our chances of survival and social contribution. To win both spiritually and practically, we must change the game entirely. But to do that we must invent a new language. Joseph does this. His journey from innocent boy unconcerned for and unaware of his audience—to shrewd, Machiavellian statesman—to vulnerable brother, aware of his audience, but not held hostage by it—is the journey of every great artist and dreamer. We owe Joseph—Tzafnat Paaneah—Joe—Joey—Josephus—Yossele—Yosef—thanks for showing us the way.
Shabbat Shalom and Zot Chanukkah Sameach,
Zohar Atkins @Etz Hasadeh
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Etz Hasadeh is a Center for Existential Torah Study based in NYC.
About the name: Deuteronomy 20:19 teaches that when one conquers territory, one should not cut down the trees, because trees, unlike people, cannot run way. Read spiritually, the image-concept of the “tree of the field” represents that which we must preserve in the face of great cultural, political, and technological upheaval and transformation. As the world becomes more and more modernized, it becomes even more necessary to secure our connection to the wisdom of the ancient past and to ways of being that give our lives irreducible meaning.
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