#torah analysis

The thing about Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery is that it’s not an isolated incident. It’s part of a much larger pattern of younger brothers gaining supremacy over the older ones, and the older ones retaliating (at times incredibly viciously), which we see over and over throughout the book of Genesis. We see it with literally the first brothers ever to come into existence, Cain and Abel. We see it with Ishmael’s banishment because Sarah wanted the inheritance to be solely Isaac’s (“the son of this slavewoman will not inherit with my son, with Isaac”). We see it with Jacob tricking Esau into selling his birthright and then having to flee the inevitable fallout. We see it with Joseph and his brothers. And then even when Jacob is on his deathbed, we still see him try to bless Joseph’s younger son over the older one. And that’s when Joseph speaks up and says “That is not correct, my father, because this one is the oldest,” and you get a sense of the pattern starting to be broken.

But you don’t really see that pattern break once and for all until the book of Exodus, when Moses is chosen to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, to basically become the supreme leader above all other leaders in Jewish history... and his older brother, Aaron, is nothing but wholeheartedly loyal and unconditionally supportive of him. There isn’t so much as a flicker of jealousy. He never suggests that maybe this should have been his place instead (even though he’d have a pretty fair case for it, since not only is he the older brother, he’s the one who was living with the other Hebrew slaves while Moses was off living in a palace and then far away in Midian). He goes to find Moses in Midian, embraces and kisses him, and then stands by his side throughout everything that happens afterwards. In light of all the stories of brotherly rivalry we see in the Bible beforehand, that’s incredibly striking.

... Which is one of many reasons why, although I absolutely love The Prince of Egypt, I will never forgive that movie for this: 

I mean I wasn’t gonna go that deep into it, but I actually have a lot of Thoughts about this, so here we go.

On the most basic level, I’d say: Joseph himself clearly has very mixed feelings about it when they show up, and he definitely doesn’t give them a free pass. He really tests them to see if they’ve learned their lesson, and it isn’t until he sees that they’ve really changed that he confesses who he is and invites them to stay with him in Egypt. (He does give them food beforehand, but I mean... forgiveness or no, it would take some incredible vindictiveness to let his own family starve. And even if he had no problem getting back at them that way, denying them food would have meant letting his father and the rest of the family starve too, and they were innocent.) 

And we see what a dramatic turnaround the brothers have done: Judah offers to stay as a slave himself rather than let that happen to Benjamin. He acknowledges that Benjamin is their father’s favorite, to the point that Jacob literally refers to Joseph and Benjamin as his only children (“My father said to us, 'You know that my wife bore me two [children]’”), and yet rather than seeing Benjamin as a threat to be gotten rid of, Judah fights to protect him at the cost of his own freedom, if necessary. That’s a man who’s changed deeply in the twenty-odd years since they last saw Joseph. And it’s only after Judah makes that impassioned plea that Joseph breaks down in tears and reveals himself.

But I also think, to properly understand the story, you have to look at why the brothers chose to do what they did in the first place. Because it’s not as simple as them being petty over Joseph being Daddy’s Favorite. IMO (and there are several Biblical commentaries that agree with me on this, but I think you can also glean it just from the Biblical text), the brothers took Joseph telling them about his dreams as a statement of his intent to claim supremacy over them. Specifically, as him trying to usurp Reuben’s rightful place as firstborn and future head of the family. 

Bear in mind that’s exactly what had happened in the last generation with Jacob and Esau, and Jacob literally had to flee for his life because he thought Esau might kill him over it. These things were taken extremely seriously back then. All the more so because we’re talking about people who had prophecy and were very aware of themselves as being in the process of founding a nation. So Joseph’s seeming intent on declaring himself king over his brothers was potentially an act with not just political but also religious significance. In the eyes of the brothers, he was threatening to completely destroy the legacy of their family, and the future Hebrew nation, through his arrogance. They may well have actually thought they’d save a lot of future bloodshed by selling him into slavery now and avoiding a full-fledged war over the inheritance after Jacob’s death.

All right jumblr, help us out here.

So my weekly Torah study meets on Thursdays at lunch, and we went through the second half of Genesis 49 today, and I got hung up on a translation difference. We’re using the URJ Women’s Commentary version, which is great, and I’ve been bringing along my JPS Tanakh (all in English, pocket edition, about 20 years older).

So in Genesis 49:21, our synagogue translation said “Naphtali is a mountain-ewe”.

My pocket edition says “Naphtali is a hind let loose". (This is supported by several other translations, including Sefaria.)

Look it up via Chabad and it says “Naphtali is a swift gazelle".

That doesn’t sound like a huge difference-- deer vs sheep vs gazelle, right, both kosher animals, both prey animals, etc-- but I brought it up to one of the ladies after the study group dismissed and she agreed that they’ve got rather different temperaments and it codes the line a bit differently. As I pointed out (and have done in a different context before,) deer at least have antlers (and fight with them!), whereas sheep are very complacent.

We just want to know which one is closer (or if it’s ambiguous, where it came from). None of us can reliably and fluently read biblical Hebrew and I realised the difference after the rabbi left for a meeting.

I copied the Hebrew below from Sefaria:

נַפְתָּלִ֖י אַיָּלָ֣ה שְׁלֻחָ֑ה הַנֹּתֵ֖ן אִמְרֵי־שָֽׁפֶר