Happy Hanukah everyone,
This shabbat, we read the parsha (Torah portion) called Vayishev which means, “And he sat,” as in, “And Yaakov (Jacob) sat in the land of the journeys of his father, in the land of Cnaan,” which is the first verse of the parsha.
I tend to look at the usage of the word sitting, in the way English uses the word squatting. Squatting means more than just sitting. It also means to sit in a place in order to make it your home. How appropriate it is to have the week before Hanukah centered on sitting in a place to make it your home, because Hanukah is about rededicating home: the home of god as was done by the Maccabees after they defeated the Greeks, and also about each of our homes. After all, you need a home to light the candles. So, when you light the candles, you are essentially saying, “This is my home. The home of a child of Yisrael, and a believer in miracles.”
Enough talk of Hanukah, for we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s catch up on the parsha we just read. After the opening line, which we have above, the Torah tells us that these are the generations of Yaakov and then tells us about Yoseph and his relationship to his brothers. The Torah then talks about the coat that Yaakov gives Yoseph and Yoseph’s dreams, and then how his brothers took Yaakov’s sheep to pasture and how Yaakov sent Yoseph to check in on them.
The brothers see him coming and take him and sell him to some Yishmaelites and tell their father that Yoseph is dead. We are then told that Yoseph gets sold to the chief butcher of the pharaoh of Egypt.
Suddenly, the Torah swerves and shares with us the story of Yehuda (Judah) and his family. He has three sons and the oldest of the sons marries a woman named Tamar and dies before she gets pregnant by him. Yehuda tells his next oldest to marry her and be with her to provide a child in his brother’s name. This brother is with Tamar, but spills his seed on the ground, and for that he, Onan, is killed by haShem (god). Yehuda, at this point is afraid to give his youngest to Tamar, so she pretends to be a prostitute and Yehuda has relations with her (without knowing who she is) and she gets pregnant. Just before she is to be killed for being a harlot, she reveals herself to Yehuda who tells the world to let her be because, “She is more righteous than me.” (Breisheit/Genesis 38:26) Soon after, she has twin sons by Yehuda: Zarach and Paretz.
And now back to our story. Yoseph is put in charge of his master’s house and the house prospers. Unfortunately, Yoseph is good looking and the wife of his master wants him. He refuses, and she tells her husband that he tried to seduce her, and Yoseph is put in jail.
Soon after, the cup-bearer and head baker of the Pharaoh are thrown into the same jail and Yoseph is to look after them. They eventually have some dreams and Yoseph correctly interprets that the cup-bearer will be returned to his station while the baker will be hung.
Yoseph had asked the cup-bearer to remember him and help him get out of the jail, but the cup-bearer forgets Yoseph, and that is where the parsha ends.
What really got me thinking was the very beginning of the parsha. Normally, when the Torah uses the Hebrew word toldot, or generations, it is to give us a listing of the descendants of a person. Here, we don’t really get a listing, we get Yoseph – literally. The verse (37:2) reads, “These are the generations of Yaakov, Yoseph was 17 years old and was shepherding his brothers with sheep…” The parsha continues, except for one small segue, to be all about Yoseph.
What is going on here? Are the brothers not important? What about their children? Are they not important?
At this point, the answer is… no. For just like Moshe is, in the last four books of the Torah, the central character, so here, Yoseph is the central character. I realize I am making a huge statement, raising Yoseph to such a high level. Before I explain why I make this claim, let me just make some observations.
There is a story in our oral tradition that Moshe was out tending the sheep of his father-in-law and he noticed one of them was missing. He looked high and low for it and finally found it down in a ravine. He went down and carried it out. He carried it because he thought it was too tired to climb out by itself.
It is at this point that god revealed himself to Moshe with the burning bush because god saw that if Moshe was so concerned for a single, small, lamb, he would certainly be just as concerned for every last child of god’s chosen people.
King David, before he became king was a shepherd, as was Shaul before he became king.
We seem to have a theme running thru all the leaders of the children of Yisrael.
Now, you could say this is all coincidence, and that there have been leaders who were not shepherds. However, you still have the story of Moshe. Where does that come from? Perhaps it is just a nice story used to give us an impression of how our leaders are to take care of us.
Verse 37:2 however, tells us that this isn’t the case. It helps us to understand that the story of Moshe is what happened, and that the good shepherds do make the best leaders.
To understand, you have to read the Hebrew. Most English translations say that Yoseph was shepherding the sheep with his brothers. The literal reading is that Yoseph was shepherding his brothers WITH the sheep.
In other words, Yoseph was already the leader of his people, of his brothers. It was too early for this to be revealed, so he did it using the sheep, much like a shepherd uses a sheep dog to help him take care of his sheep.
The obvious question is if this was so, why does Yoseph’s leadership need to be hidden?
The answer is twofold. The first is because Yaakov was still alive and was the head of the family and so it was to honor him. The second is that Yoseph had to go to Egypt to prepare for the rest of the family’s arrival. I f he was the leader, it would have been hard for him to go. Besides, he wasn’t ready to be the out and out leader, he still needed refinement; he still needed to be better connected to haShem.
Nevertheless, he was the hidden shepherd/leader of the family, and this is why when it talks about the generations of Yaakov, it only talks about Yoseph; when generations are mentioned, it only mentions the leaders.
And this also explains why we have the story of Yehuda and Tamar dropped into the middle of this parsha. Their son Paretz, will marry Ruth and produce the line of King David. As I said, when the Torah mentions the generations, it mentions the leaders, and Yoseph is the current leader, and King David is the future leader. Hence the parsha of the generations of Yaakov only focus on these two.
What about Moshe, I hear you ask? What about the Shaul, and the other kings?
The answer to that, is in the blessing that Yehuda is given by Yaakov, on Yaakov’s deathbed. Yaakov blessed Yehuda with the kingship. So, even though Moshe comes from Levi, the true leaders are Yoseph, and then the tribe of Yehuda.
There is so much that one can learn from this. I hesitate to reveal more; perhaps it is better to just sit with it, and let your, “Yoseph,” “Shepherd,” all the disparate parts of you with his, “Sheep.”
If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.