Parsha Vayeshev (The Weekly Torah Portion): Genesis 37:1-40:23

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Parsha Vayeshev: Genesis 37:1 - 40:23


November 29, 2010


By Talia Davis



The parsha (weekly Torah portion) for this week is Vayeshev. Vayeshev means ‘and he lived,' and is the first distinctive word in the portion. Be sure to check out the video at the end of this article!



Here we have our good friend Yaakov, Jacob, with his grown family. His favorite son, Yosef (Joseph), is 17 years old. He was a good old-fashioned tattletale who ran to his father with bad stories about his brothers all the time. Here we have some solid sibling rivalry brewing, especially when dad made a very special coat for his very favorite son. The brothers saw this clear bias toward Joseph and hated Joseph for it. But Joseph didn't help matters. He would tell his brothers of his dreams, dreams in which their subservience to him figured prominently. In the first dream, there were twelve sheaves of wheat. His sheaf stood upright and the other eleven bowed down to his. This fueled the brother's anger, "Will you reign over us or will you govern us?" they asked him.



Joseph then shared another dream with them. In this one the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to his star. But whom could this sun and moon represent? Jacob heard this dream and asked, "What? Will we come I, your mother, and your brothers to bow down to you?" His father scolded him. He was only bringing his brother's hatred upon himself. The brothers hated him but his father held off on judgment because he knew there was some truth to this story.



The brothers go off to graze their sheep in the land of Shechem, and Jacob sends Joseph off to check on them. In his wandering to find his brothers, a man approaches him and directs him to Dotan, where his brothers and the sheep were grazing. This was no ordinary man; our sages tell us it was an angel out to help Joseph. The sages say that this angel was hinting to Jacob that his brothers were going to kill him. Joseph knew his life was in danger at this point, but Rashi intimates that he really didn't understand the depth of this. Additionally, sometimes, when a mitzvah is being so disrespected, it is recommended to even give up your life for this mitzvah. Joseph had to risk his life to honor his father because the brothers were so disrespectful.



Well, as he approaches his brothers, they decide it will be a dandy idea to kill him. The brothers plot this murder but Reuven suggests that they just toss him in a pit. Reuven's intention was to come back and get Joseph once the brothers cooled off a bit, and maybe Joe would be a bit humbled by the experience too. So the brothers grab Joe and take his shirt and coat off of him; then they throw him in a pit that the Torah specifically says has no water in it. What does that mean? Rashi tells us that it means that it had, instead, snakes and scorpions. The brothers sit down for a nice meal while Joseph sits in the nasty pit. Reuven heads off for a little bit and the other brothers see several caravans passing. Judah voices a great idea. Instead of killing the kid, why don't we make a profit and sell him?



The brothers negotiate with the Ishmaelites and sell Joseph for twenty silver pieces. What is unusual here is that the Torah tells us the Ishmaelites were carrying spices in their caravan. Why is this odd? Because they usually transported gasoline and tar but G-d didn't want him to have to suffer the whole trip so this group was carrying something different than usual. It wasn't until Reuven comes back that the brothers realize they might have made a mistake. Not seeing him in the pit, Reuven thinks that the brothers actually killed him. He tears his clothes in a sign of mourning and then they have to think fast. How will they break the news to their dad? So they kill a kid (a baby goat) and put the blood on Joseph's prized coat. When they went home, they gave the coat to their father and without saying he was dead, they tell him that they found Joseph's coat like this.



Jacob assumed, by the state of the coat, that a beast had eaten his son. He mourned deeply for his favorite son. All the children tried to console him but he could not be comforted. Why could he not be comforted? It is easy to say that it was because Joseph was his favorite but Rashi tells us there is a special blessing G-d gives when someone dies, so that his relatives may find comfort. The pain grows less and less as time passes. Since Joseph was still alive, Jacob never got that bracha (blessing) and couldn't be consoled. Meanwhile, Joseph had been sold to the Midianites who then sold him to a successful merchant in Egypt named Potiphar.


Here we start chapter 38, which is a very odd interlude in this story. It is all about Judah's life. Judah marries a woman names Shua and they have three children names Er, Onan, and Shelah. He finds a wife for Er, named Tamar. But G-d saw that Er was evil so he dies. Now we have a widow with no children and the usual thing at the time was for the brother to marry her and their children would be considered the brother's children. But Onan doesn't want to marry her because he doesn't want his children to be considered Er's. So during intercourse, he ‘wastes his seed upon the ground.' Well, then Onan dies.




Judah is not deterred but rather determined. He tells her to wait until Shelah is old enough to marry. In the mean time, Judah's wife, Shua, dies. Tamar notices that Shelah is old enough to marry but she has not been married to him yet so one night, she dresses up as a prostitute and offers herself to Judah. She demands collateral for payment and he gives her his staff and ring . . . at which point she "disappears." Judah quickly finds out that his daughter-in-law has become pregnant and demands that she be killed. She doesn't turn around and accuse him but she pulls out his items and tells the town that these items belong to the baby's father. Judah relents and accepts that they are his. She eventually gives birth to twins. During birth, one baby sticks his hand out. The midwife ties a red thread around its wrist and then the baby pulls it back into his mother. Then the second child is born first. So the first-born is actually born second. Perez, the child who was born first but is actually the second child, and Zerah, who emerged first but retreated and was born second.



Why do we have this interlude here? It is here to give us some perspective. Judah was very well esteemed by his brothers. He stopped Joseph from being killed but instead he suggested slavery. When the other brothers saw how much grief their actions caused their father, they lost respect for Judah. At the same time, when he is so low, these are our first steps into the messianic dynasty. David is descended from Perez and so, our tradition tells us, with be the messiah (moshiach).



Back to Joseph. If you remember, before our Judah interlude, Joseph has just been sold to Potiphar. Well, Potiphar was very happy with Joseph's work in his household. This definitely had to do with the fact that G-d was protecting him and his work. Not only was Joseph protected and blessed by G-d but he had also been blessed with his mother's internal and external beauty, which leads to his downfall in Potiphar's house. Potiphar's wife, Zuleikha, took a liking to him. She dropped some not-so-subtle hints but he managed to avoid her until one day when he couldn't. She grabs him one day when everyone was out of the house but he slipped out of his shirt and ran. Not wanting to be left holding the shirt, as it were, she created a story blaming him, which landed Joseph in the Pharaoh's jail.



Yet again, G-d protected Joseph and in the jail he quickly rose to a trusted position. In total, he spends about twelve years in prison but instead of wallowing in his anger or sorrow, he handles the situation with grace. After several years, Pharaoh's wine steward and baker were thrown in jail. In line with his graceful attitude, he reaches out to other prisoners and is kind to them. He noticed one day that they were unusually down. They were more upset than the day before. If we look toward the future and the situation in Egypt, the entire world is saved from famine because of Joseph's sensitivity toward these two people.



The wine steward tells Joseph his dream. There were three grape vines and he was squeezing them into Pharaoh's cup. Joseph tells him that this means in three days time, he will be restored to Pharaoh's good graces and be released. He asks the steward to remember him to Pharaoh. The baker sees that Joseph got it right (how? Rashi says that each man was given his own dream and the correct interpretation of the other man's dream) and asks for help with his dream. He has three baskets of bread. Joseph tells him that in three days, he will be killed for his crimes.



Three days later, it was Pharaoh's birthday. He reevaluated all the cases and released the wine steward and executed the baker. But the steward did not remember Joseph, purposefully. On the surface, he did this because he didn't want to remind Pharaoh that he had been in jail but Rashi tells us it was because G-d was punishing Joseph for relying on a man and not G-d to get him out of jail.



This parsha begins and ends with dreams. Joseph sees that there is more to his future than being a shepherd like his brothers but the process of how he got to his future path, that is what makes this story interesting.