Joseph & The Cycles of Trauma

Parshat Vayigash 5779/2018

I must confess: I have never liked Joseph, our story’s protagonist.

I am not speaking of the arrogant Joseph of his youth: his flagrant wearing of the coat gifted only to him or his dreams that he had the hutzpah to share aloud likely knowing that this would hurt the feelings of his brothers and parents. No, not that Joseph. I can understand and excuse his earlier behavior based on his youth, his position and privilege as the spoiled child, the favoritism given to him by his father. As a boy, his flaws make him an interesting, complicated biblical figure, much like our other complicated biblical figures Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, and Rebekah.

The Joseph that has repelled me all these years is the later Joseph who is second in command in Egypt. My aversion to Joseph stems from a worldview and theology that he possesses and that I find so challenging and problematic — and surely in contrast to a Reconstructionist approach to fate or destiny. Joseph has been sold into slavery, separated from his beloved father and brother since the time of his youth, sexually harassed, thrown into jail in his short lifetime — and he says at several points in the torah, in essence, “it was all meant to be.”

His “all happens for a reason” perspective becomes clear during parshat Vayigash. After Judah’s courageous actions reproaching a person he believes is an Egyptian ruler (but is Joseph) and offering to be taken into slavery in place of Benjamin, Joseph can no longer control himself. After a private moment in tears, he reveals who he truly is while his brothers stand there, dumbfounded and frozen.

Joseph then beckons his brothers over (the same word used for Judah’s actions: “geshu”) and comforts his brothers (who we can only imagine how much they are freaking out and trying to figure out what is going on!) and says to them: “Do not be so distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me (to slavery); it was in order to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.” Joseph has come to believe that it was all God’s hand — and this gives him a sense of peace with the past.

This is the Joseph that I struggle with. His grandfather Isaac went through significant trauma — and we know he didn’t end up so healthy or adjusted. Joseph, who has gone through a tremendous amount of trauma, seems too righteous and well-adjusted to be part of our original biblical canon.

Was Joseph really that OK with his past? Had he really make peace with the awful things that were done to him?

After reading the closing part of the torah portion, which we read today, I am no longer so sure.

At the end of the torah portion (the third trienniel we read this year), we witness Joseph the viceroy and see the way he managed the famine in Egypt during those remaining years of scarcity. And for those who read along closely this morning, we can agree: It’s not pretty. It’s not kind. In fact, it seems down right callous.

Joseph creates a system where all the hungry people of Egypt have to come to him, and if they cannot pay, they must sell their livestock, which then gets added to the Pharaoh’s possessions. When they continue to languish, they must come to Joseph to sell their lands. The torah says that Joseph gained possession of all the farmlands of Egypt for every single Egyptian sold his field because of the famine. The torah says that Joseph “removed the population town by town, from one end of Egypt’s border to the other” — only stopping at the land from the priests. And it gets worse. Once the people are homeless and utterly dependent on Joseph and the Pharaoh, he gives them a seed and demands that one-fifth of the product of that seed go to the Pharaoh.

It may not appear so problematic in the torah because these desperate people say to him: “You have saved our lives!”

Yet, this seems to the response of a desperate people. Rabbi Shai Held doesn’t mince words when reflecting on Joseph’s behavior. He says, “[Joseph] saves the Egyptians, but…he also enslaves them.”

Joseph creates a system that disenfranchises entire populations by creating a dependency on the Pharoah. He disempowers the working class and consolidates power for the wealthy. It can even be argued that Joseph’s actions were a necessary precursor for what the new Pharaoh (Exodus 1) does when he comes into power and puts the Israelites into slavery. It is fair to consider that this new Pharaoh would have been able to accomplish what he did so quickly without Joseph’s actions. A weak and dependent people cannot stand up to nor stop a cruel dictator.

After reading this text closely and looking at it honestly (in a way I admittedly hadn’t before), I have come to think that Joseph is not as well-adjusted as he might say that he is. It seems to me that Joseph is doing exactly what had been done to him. It seems to me he is having a classic trauma response — repeating the cycle of violence and oppression that he has experienced and placing it onto another.

As he was literally stripped of his tunic- of his possessions, he strips the hungry Egyptians of their possessions. As he himself was sold into slavery, he sells others to slavery. As he was put at the mercy of a Pharaoh, he does the same for the people he “serves.”

Behind Joseph’s stated belief that “everything happened for a reason” and that God willed it this way, I believe, there is the residual pain and shame of a past that he has been unable and unwilling to deal with. Truthfully, we already know this in some way. Joseph had the opportunity to “come out” to his brothers as one of them the minute he met them — and several times after. Instead, he goes to great lengths he goes to torture them, making them go down to his father and bring up Benjamin even though this will put great strain on his father. When Benjamin is there, he plants the cup in Benjamin’s bag in order to keep Benjamin in Egypt, an act he must have known would have killed his own father.

Seeing the contrast of Joseph’s stated beliefs and his actions reminds us of how vitally important it is for us to hold, with honesty and compassion, the pain that we feel and have experienced. And how we avoid and cover up and make “ok” at our own peril.

What if Joseph had been reunited with his brothers and had said: You really hurt me. I am really angry with you. I have struggled with my anger for years. But I am also really happy to see you. I want my family back. Can we talk about it?

Perhaps then instead of millions of Jews believing the “God made it be ok” approach as truth- they would be interpreting “It’s OK to not be OK.”

Can we see the shadow side of Joseph in ourselves? The part of us that won’t let go of the past? The part of us that has not processed the harm done, preventing us to have freedom of choice? Will we also not correct past mistakes?

By looking at these connections and disconnections, by examining Joseph’s behavior with our own lens, we can go beyond the simplicity of the textual response and discover something very deep and powerful for our own lives. The decision to include information that might not have been necessary about Joseph’s behaviors as a cruel ruler (when it was not necessary to the torah and which many commentators dismiss as unimportant) gives us an opening to see a more complicated Joseph. A Joseph’s whose flawed humanity mirrors our own and can offer a warning for us not just in how to be but in how not to be. And that’s a Joseph I can embrace as another of our imperfect and flawed biblical heroes.