Liat Granot – Year 9

Ruby Hurwitz – Year 9

VaYeishev

L: I’m Liat

R: I’m Ruby

Both: And you’re watching Disney channel – Bible edition

R: Previously on IBible we saw Ya’akov meeting Eisav for the first time in 20 years.

L: This episode is called… Broseph, where we meet Yoseph an egotistical, self-righteous boy who has been favorited by his father Ya’akov.

L: You may think that your parents favour your sibling but we can assure you, this was nothing remotely close to what Ya’akov did for Yoseph. And here he is now! Hi Yoseph.

R: Hi I’m Yospeh. But because we’re friends you can call me BROSEPH because I’m such a bro and definitely better than you!

L: As you can see, Yoseph had flaws in his character. The Midrash says: “He was vain about his appearance,” and the Bible tell us he brought his father evil reports about his brothers; his narcissism, the Midrash says: “Led directly to the advances of Potiphar’s wife”. But then why is he the one that our Jewish tradition calls HaTzaddik – the Tzaddik – the righteous one? Well, this is the issue we want to focus on today. How can one apparently so awful change so drastically as to be called for generations hence “the Tzaddik”?

R: Yeah, I was my father’s favourite until my brothers plotted to kill me. But my other brother Re’uven suggested that they throw me into a pit instead. While I was in the pit, Yehudah had me sold to a band of passing Ishmaelites. My brothers dipped the special coat my father made for me in the blood of a goat and showed it to our father, leading him to believe that his most beloved son was devoured by a wild beast.

L: But the story of which Yoseph was a part was not a Greek tragedy. By its end, he had become a different human being entirely, one who forgave his brothers the crime they committed against him, the man who saved an entire region from famine and starvation, the one that Jewish tradition calls the Tzaddik.

R: Don’t think you understand the story of your life at half-time. That is the lesson of Yoseph. At the age of 29 he would have been justified in thinking his life was an abject failure: Hated by his brothers, criticised by his father, sold as a slave, imprisoned on a false charge and with his one chance of freedom gone.

R&L: When you hit rock bottom, the only place you can go is up, unless you are a drill.

L: The second half of the story shows us that Yoseph’s life was not like that at all. His became a tale of unprecedented success, not only politically and materially, but also morally and spiritually. He was among the first in the Torah to forgive. The turning-point in his life was a highly improbable event that could not have been predicted but which changed all else, not just for him but for large numbers of people and for the eventual course of Jewish history (as related by the Bible). HaShem/God was at work, even when Yoseph felt abandoned by every human being he had encountered.

R: There is a fine line between being righteous and being self-righteous. In Hebrew, the distinction is between being a tzaddik, righteous, and being tzadik b’einav, righteous in one’s own eyes. Yoseph, it seems, struggled with his own charm, which was both the source of his brothers’ hatred and jealousy and of his effectiveness as a member of Pharaoh’s court.

L: Yoseph is only accepted as HaTzaddik because it is a righteous person who resists destructive temptations in human relationships. Yoseph is crowned Tzaddik because he ultimately forgave his brothers for selling him into slavery and compassionately helps his family move to Egypt during a time of famine in Canaan. Yoseph succeeds in vanquishing his bitterness and that of his brothers and turns it into love. “What does all this mean?” Elie Wiesel asks. “That one is not born a Tzaddik; one must strive to become one. And having become a Tzaddik, one must strive to remain one.”