Parashat HaShavua - Vayeshev/Hanukkah

My oldest child started college this fall.  Eleven and a half years ago, toward the last day of kindergarten, she came home from school and told us that her teachers had taught her class the word “bittersweet.”  One moment, I was marveling at her perception and sensitivity as a six year old.  The next moment, I left her in her dorm room.  And now, Hanukkah approaches and she is far from home.

This distance, of both time and space, saddens me.  And while I recognize both its inevitably and its necessity, I wonder, I have often wondered, what is the right amount of distance between us?  

As this week’s parasha begins, Jacob and Joseph are the type of father and son between whom there is no space.  Joseph is the son of Jacob’s old age, Joseph hardly knew his mother, who died when he was a young child.  Jacob loves him best, giving him special gifts.  Joseph responds in kind, comfortably tattling on his brothers, telling Jacob everything about them.  Indeed, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that Joseph does not have peers among his brothers - early in the parasha, his brothers are described as the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, emphasizing their different mothers, rather than their shared father.  All of the other brothers had grown up with siblings, but Benjamin was much younger, and not a companion to him.  Jacob, it seems, is Joseph’s best friend. 

Two moments in the text highlight the trust and closeness that Jacob and Joseph experienced in the first 17 years of Joseph’s life.  After Joseph dreams his second dream, the Torah tells us:

וַיְקַנְאוּ־ב֖וֹ אֶחָ֑יו, וְאָבִ֖יו שָׁמַ֥ר אֶת־הַדָּבָֽר.

His brothers envied him, and his father kept the matter in mind. (Gen 37:11)

What is the “d'var/matter” that Jacob kept in mind?  Many commentators believe that it was the matter of the dreams. For example, Sforno writes: 

He remembered it [kept it in mind] because he thought that the dream reflected what would in fact occur. In fact, his father was looking forward to the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream.

In this reading, Jacob is so closely tied up with Joseph, that he not only can’t imagine that Joseph’s dream will not be fulfilled, he wants it to be fulfilled.

But - perhaps the “d'var/matter” that Jacob is keeping in mind is the matter of the brothers’ jealousy of Joseph.  The father thinks to himself, “This is not good. I need to figure out the right way to address this.” And there that thought sits, until an opportunity presents itself to do something about it.  Perhaps this phrase is teaching us, not that Jacob’s and Joseph’s dreams are one and the same, but that this is this moment when Jacob realizes - my son and I have grown too close.

Soon, the problem of emotional overidentification is temporarily resolved.  The next verse reads…

The brothers went away to tend their father’s sheep at Shechem. (Gen 37:12)

Commentators note that Shechem is a dangerous place at this moment.  The brothers have just ransacked the whole city, and they are hated there.  So why have they chosen to take their fathers’ flocks a great distance to pasture there?  As the editor on Sefaria notes [on the translation of Chizkuni’s comment], perhaps 

...the reason they had chosen to do so was to show their father that they were less worried about the local population than about Joseph lording it over them.

By removing themselves from their father and their doted upon younger brother, the brothers have made use of the tool of distance.  Maybe Jacob thinks, here it is, here is the moment to address the “d'var,” I’ll send Joseph to his brothers, away from me, they will be forced to work it out, and Joseph will learn, even if for a short time, who he is without me.  The text reads:

Israel [Jacob] said to Joseph, “Your brothers are pasturing at Shechem. Come, I will send you to them.” He [Joseph] answered, “Hineni, I am ready.” (Gen 37:13)

 According to biblical scholar Yoram Hazony, the phrase hineni/ here I am, “...is used to indicate devotion and readiness to act in response to God’s call - often in the face of extraordinary hardship” (The Philosophy of the Hebrew Bible, page 78). Hinenis do not always come in response to a call that comes directly from God, but they do always come in response to a call from a loved one.  This particular hineni is unusual.  In other cases, the person responding hineni, does not know what is going to be asked of him; but Joseph already knows what Jacob wants him to do before he responds.  Given the danger of the situation, from both the people of Shechem and his own brothers, perhaps, in Joseph’s case, his willingness to heed the call is all the more remarkable for the fact that he knows what he is agreeing to do.  Joseph’s hineni reveals either extraordinary devotion to his father, or extraordinary naivete, or probably both. 

I imagine, when faced with this response from his beloved son, Jacob may have hesitated, or needed to take a moment to gather himself, before sending the child off:

And he said to him, “Go and see how your brothers are and how the flocks are faring, and bring me back word.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron…  (Gen 37:14)

It is in the space away from his father that Joseph suffers the most.  Perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided altogether if the brothers had not been so far from their father.  Did Jacob make a mistake?  In the spaces between the three verses in which Joseph's brothers went away and Jacob sent Joseph to them, should Jacob have made a different choice?  Could he have handled the davar, the jealousy that was partly of his own making, in a way that would not have caused his family so much pain?

It is impossible to know.  We do know that Joseph grew the most when he was distanced from his father.  It was during the time that they were apart that he  transformed himself from a selfish boy dreamer to a thoughtful interpreter of dreams.  Yet, we must not forget, it is also because of the time he spent close to his father, that he became the man who would say to Potiphar’s wife, “How then should I commit such a great wickedness, and sin against God?” and to the butler and cupbearer, “Why were your faces sad today?” and to his brothers, “I am Joseph; is my father still alive?”

Rabbi Miriam Greenblatt
High School Learning Specialist