The tzadik is the foundation of the world.
Proverbs 10:25
Though Joseph was granted naĥalot through his children, Manasseh and Ephraim (who are treated separately in these pages), a discussion of the shevatim would be woefully incomplete without including the yesod (foundation) of the nation of Israel: Yosef ha-Tzadik.1This chapter has been strongly influenced by the teachings of my rebbe, Rabbi Matis Weinberg, and the further expansion on the subject in private conversation with Batnadiv HaKarmi-Weinberg. For further exploration of the concepts presented here, see Rabbi Weinberg’s Patterns in Time: Chanukah and Frameworks: Genesis (Boston: Foundation for Jewish Publications, 1999), 233–303, as well as the dozens of audio files on www.thelivingtree.org, Parshiot VaYeshev, Miketz, Vayigash, and VaYeĥi.
After years of painful infertility, Rachel finally bore a child of her own. Her relationship with Jacob bore fruit outside of their own passionate love for each other. For Rachel, it was the beginning of a journey: “May God add another son for me,” she named him, speaking of both hope and incompleteness. For Jacob, by contrast, it was a culmination. He felt that he had completed his family, or at least ended a definite stage in his life: “After Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me leave to go back to my own homeland’” (Genesis 30:25).
A weight was lifted; things were right in Jacob’s world, perhaps for the first time. Joseph’s arrival secured for him a yearned-for perpetuity with Rachel, something that had been in doubt until this point.
The text tells us of Jacob’s love for only two people: Rachel and Joseph.2That he loved others is clear. Jacob’s “soul” was bound with Benjamin’s “soul”; Jacob “loves Rachel more than Leah,” indicating that he loved Leah as well. But there was a different level of relationship to Rachel and Joseph: it was explicit, immediate. Joseph was naturally cherished by Jacob, as Rachel was naturally cherished by Jacob. It was an immediate, instinctive, overwhelming reaction:
Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”…So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.
Genesis 29:18–20
We are told of one essential trait in regard to Rachel: “and Rachel was beautiful in form and beautiful in appearance” (Genesis 29:17). This trait was shared by Joseph, who was “beautiful in form and beautiful in appearance” (Genesis 39:6). Rachel and Joseph were defined by this great beauty. More than a physical attribute, this beauty seemed the embodiment of passion, longing, instinct, response. It demanded utter engagement, complete sincerity. Jacob, the Midianites,3Sefer Ha-Yashar, Genesis 68a–68b. Potiphar, Potiphar’s wife, fellow prisoners, Pharaoh himself: all were drawn to the charismatic Joseph, who “found favor” without even trying. A beauty so intense that it was other-worldy, holy, giving a glimpse of a world beyond. “And Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find another man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?’” (Genesis 41:37).
Jacob arrived in Haran in the wake of a manipulative internecine family struggle. After a lifetime of stepping carefully in battle with Esau, he was entranced by the vision of Rachel, a maiden “lovely of form and appearance,” approaching the well. At that moment, Jacob awakened to a passion: he cried, he kissed; possessed of an almost preternatural strength, he lifted the stone off the well. It was the promise of a relationship with Rachel that sustained him through the exhausting business of navigating affairs in the home of crafty Laban. The drudgery of seven years’ labor for her hand seemed as nothing, “in his love for her.”
Joseph’s beauty embodied the same promise. If his brothers saw only the dangers inherent in charismatic beauty, Jacob understood its amazing promise, “guarding the dream.”
Joseph is a charming one,
A graceful one to the eye,
Daughters parade on the wall to see him.
Genesis 49:224Translation based on Rashi.
This ĥen (an untranslatable word containing elements of beauty, grace, charm, charisma, innocence, and openness combined in a single concept) was the hallmark of Joseph.5So much so, in fact, that Joseph’s stone on the priestly breastplate, the shoham (onyx), had the considerable quality of awakening others to the ĥen of its wearer (Rabbenu Baĥya, Exodus 28:17). Ĥen is an openness to relationship, the channel for interaction with and appreciation of the broader world. The ĥen of Joseph drew the world to him.
And Joseph found ĥen in [Potiphar’s] sight, and he made him his personal attendant. He appointed him overseer over his house, placing in his hands all that he owned…(Genesis 39:4)
But God was with Joseph, and showed him kindness, and gave him ĥen in the sight of the chief jailer. (39:21)
And they [the Egyptians] said: “You have saved our lives! Let us find ĥen in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s bondmen.” (47:25)
Joseph awakened love, an instinctive openness to trust and connection. And he reciprocated. Utterly trustworthy, he was loyal to those who believed in him. To him, the reality of relationship defined good and evil, and was the basis for understanding God:
After a time, his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph and said: “Lie with me.” But he refused. He said to his master’s wife: “Look, with me here, my master gives no thought to anything in this house, and all that he owns he has placed in my hands. No one in this house has more authority than I, and he has kept nothing from me but you, because you are his wife. How tĥen can I do this great wickedness? It would be a sin against God!”
Genesis 39:7–9
The existential question that permeated Jewish history was rooted in the brothers’ primal conflict: Do we remain a nation dwelling apart, aloof, isolated, and cocooned so as to maintain our uniqueness (as per the children of Leah), or do we interact with the world, drawing them into relationship while maintaining our integrity (as per the children of Rachel)? We are a nation torn by universalist and separatist elements, and the concerns of both sides have proven legitimate, time and again. The example of Joseph counters those who fear the dangers of interacting with the broader world. Joseph demonstrated that it was possible to provide for the world,6הוא המשביר לכל עם הארץ״” (Genesis 42:6). to give them vision and meaning, without becoming caught up in veneration. Yosef ha-Tzadik withstood temptation and maintained personal integrity.
The sale of Joseph – perhaps the central trauma of Jacob’s family – made the differences of approach starkly clear. Joseph traveled great lengths to seek his brothers (“It is my brothers I seek!”). They, on the other hand, retreated from the possibility of any relationship with him:
The man said, “They’ve moved on from here, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan’” (Genesis 37:17). Rashi: They’ve moved away from brotherhood. Their journey to Dothan indicates that they seek against you legal pretexts (nikhlei datot) to kill you.
Seeing him approach from the distance – as Jacob once saw Rachel – they planned to kill him. The next move was in some ways more chilling – a cynical and dehumanizing reduction of brotherhood to commerce.7Batnadiv HaKarmi-Weinberg’s website, bibliodraw.blogspot.com, offers a sustained exploration of the centrality of money to the Joseph story. They did not kill Joseph, but sold him for personal gain: “Judah said to his brothers: ‘What do we profit by killing our brother and covering up his blood? Let us sell him instead’” (Genesis 37:26–27).
The brothers preferred a businesslike transaction to having to confront Joseph personally. The coldness of their dismissal, their utter indifference to the warmth that Joseph was trying to nurture among them,8Seforno on Genesis 37:14, 17. was underscored by the midrash that the brothers agreed to sell him for a token pittance – the price of a pair of shoes for each of them.9Tan. VaYeshev, 2. Rabbi Ari Kahn comments on the curiosity of this detail in the context of Judah’s central role in mekhirat Yosef. He points out that immediately after this episode, Judah engaged in relationships with abandon, investing none of them with special meaning or care. The nadir of this descent is when he refused his yibum responsibility with Tamar. An almost inexplicable halakhah of ĥalitzah, the ceremony of divesting oneself of yibum obligation, was to have the scorned widow remove the shoe of her late husband’s kin who would not fulfill his levirate duties. This act demonstrated that the yabam showed a lack of care, a lack of sense of familial responsibility – he callously left his dead brother bereft of a future. Echoes, Bereishit, 258–69.
It would seem, though, that the Torah intimated Joseph’s influence on interpersonal relationships, even in his absence. In the very next episode, Judah underwent a transformation from callous and indifferent to owning up to the importance of familial responsibility.10See chapter 5 on Judah, especially, “Judah’s Descent” and “Judah’s Triumph.” He had married a foreigner for business expediency, sired sons who died for their own lack of care toward their wife, Tamar, and then slept with a woman he thought was a prostitute. Upon learning that the erstwhile prostitute was really Tamar, who was correct in asserting her position in the family, he admitted “tzadkah mi-meni” (she is correct!), and then the verse adds: “and he did not stop from being intimate with her from thereon in [ve-lo yasaf od le-da’atah]” (Genesis 38:26).11Translation follows Sotah 10b, as quoted by Rashi on this verse (״ויש אומרים״).
This particular word choice, yasaf, reminds us of the one who always remained open to relationship. Once Judah came into himself, and was modeh (admitted) to his flawed approach, then he could integrate the beautiful openness of Joseph: “and from then on, he did not cease from intimacy with her.”
Joseph, in contrast to Judah, was defined by a noncommercial approach to relationship. Everything was given to his hands, yet he took nothing for himself. The money collected from the Egyptians went straight to Pharaoh’s coffers. When the desperate Egyptians sold their livestock, their land, and finally themselves to Joseph in exchange for food, he kept nothing and gave every last commodity to Pharaoh. Even when his brothers arrived with money to purchase food, Joseph repeatedly returned it to them. What this man sought, Jacob intuitively understood (though he did not yet know that the Egyptian viceroy was Joseph) was not a business relationship, but a personal relationship – so he instructed his sons to offer not money, but a thoughtful homemade care package: “Take him a bit of balsam, some honey, wax, lotus, pistachios, and almonds” (Genesis 43:11).
It is this ĥen that we all innately cherish and seek. We crave the grammatically poor personal correspondence over the impeccable form letter, the carefully designed yet childishly executed Mother’s Day card over the clever Hallmark sentiment, the homemade cookies over the commercialized and cellophaned gift basket. Joseph brought the personal to the nation of Israel.
“These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph.” Something was indeed complete in Jacob’s life with the birth of Joseph. Joseph played a key role in the family. It was he who provided for Israel to become a nation in Egypt, he who gave over the code for the ultimate redemption. It was only in his presence that the rift that tore apart the family of Jacob – the split between Rachel and Leah – began to heal. To the very end, he remained “the pinnacle, set aside from his brothers” (Genesis 49:26).
In his focus on ĥen, on relationship and connection, Joseph played a unique role within Am Yisrael. He was the liminal figure, connecting the age of the Patriarchs to the birth of Israel as a nation. Joseph was the only one of the sons of Jacob who was also considered an av, or patriarch-prototype. This leitmotif was repeated throughout Joseph’s story. Jacob blessed him as the even Yisrael (rock of Israel), and Onkelos parsed the phrase to imply qualities of both “av” and “ben.” Although he was followed years later by a younger brother, Benjamin, Joseph was considered Jacob’s ben zekunim – not “son of old age,” but “repository of accumulated wisdom,”12BR 84:8; Onkelos, Genesis 37:3. Jacob’s extension to the next generation. Joseph was called “avrekh” by the Egyptians, understood by Rashi to be a composite word meaning “av” (father) in wisdom, despite being “rakh” (young).13Rashi, Genesis 41:43. Joseph indeed referred to himself as a “father” to Pharaoh14Genesis 45:8. – this in contrast to the numerous references to his na’arut (youth). Joseph, the child of ĥen, was the connecting point: he was both an av and a ben, spanning both eras, closing the book of Fathers (Genesis) and opening the book of the Sons (Exodus). Joseph alone was entrusted with passing on the secret formula “pakod yifkod etkhem,” the signal for movement away from the past and toward the future redemption.15ShR 3:11; Ramban, Exodus 3:18.
In his focus on relationship, Joseph was never fully present in and of himself. Though everything was “given into his hands,” Joseph held nothing. His very name meant “increase,” “let God give me another son.” He was the potential of dreams and relationships, rather than the concrete possession of the here and now. It is not surprising, then, that he did not even truly have his own naĥalah. Rather, he was ultimately represented by his two sons (an “increase”), each of whom expressed a different element of his personality.
Manasseh and Ephraim would together enjoy the generous blessing bestowed on Jacob’s favorite son, whom he showered with
blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that crouches below,
blessings of the breast and womb.
May the blessings of your father surpass the blessings of my ancestors!
Genesis 49:25–56
Moses reinforces this vision for Joseph in his magnanimous blessing:
Blessed by God is his land
with the bounty of dews from heaven,
and of the deep that crouches below;
With the bounteous yield of the sun,
And the bounteous crop of the moons;
With the best from the ancient mountains,
and the bounty of hills immemorial;
With the bounty of earth and its fullness.
Deuteronomy 33:13–36
This blessing rooted the gifts bequeathed unto Joseph, the nation’s dreamer, a personal destiny that was very much material, earthly and present – a dream ultimately realized in his sons’ ancestral inheritances.