Genesis - Cycle One - 3701-4023 - VaYeshev

As we move through life, there always seems to be a back and forth. An up and down. In and out. Here and there. Sun and moon. Light and dark. Inhale and exhale. Man and woman. Life and death. Please, God, we want to say, enough already! Give us a moment! How do we handle all of these dichotomies? How do we not get tangled in their teeth?

In VaYeshev we are given a hint. We are shown how to touch the Joseph inside of us, how to be alchemists, in touch with divine intention. We are shown how to turn conflict into balance into love and wrap it around us as protection. Then, conflict stops being painful. Then, we become stronger; we can now bring love to all sides of God’s creations.

But to understand Joseph we may want to see how Torah handles him. Let’s look at both Jacob and Joseph and at the coat. Finally, let’s look at dreams, lies and sexuality.

These are the chronicles of Jacob. This is how VaYeshev begins. But we’ve done Jacob’s chronicles. We’re moving to Joseph. So this is what I think. Jacob’s sons are all aspects of him. There are twelve tribes of Israel, of Jacob, and no doubt Joseph is the divine. It says in the Zohar…Joseph is the secret of the Covenant through which Jacob entered Egypt. It is also written that the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame (Obadiah 1‐18). Look at Joseph’s radiance. He doesn’t fight despite the conflicts. If he is thinking of the injustice, it is not given weight in the lines. No doubt Joseph is so pristine he seems beyond human. I’m glad he does a few questionable things. But that’s what he is. He is the sacred. He is both Joseph and Jacob. He is both him and us.

We see how to deal with this dichotomy given the Hebrew in line 37‐3. This is when Jacob makes a coat for Joseph. Hu lo v’asah lo ketanat passim. He (Jacob) created for him a royal garment. The word lo means both for him and to him…for Jacob and to Joseph. But wait. We know it’s from Jacob already! Therefore, the first lo is unnecessary. It’s only there to bring meaning to form, to wrap around the act of creating. So the two lo’s, like sculpture, like poetry, make the balance physical. Let’s take this farther (and hopefully not out of the ball park). Vowels in Torah are commentary. In some cases, consonants can easily be misread. Let’s say, for a quick moment, that lo is really a lamed vov. This root isn’t in the dictionary. But it sounds like lev. Heart. What does the line mean now? Not much. But the word create is now cushioned by two hearts. How beautiful. Here is the mystery of the parasha in six words…the act of framing creation with balance…of turning conflict into balance and balance into love… of wrapping the love around ourselves as protection…of therefore grasping the intention. Now let’s look at dichotomy and dreams. Joseph has two. He meets two men who each have one. In this parasha there are also lies. Dreams and lies. But how does Joseph handle the conflicts, the accusations from his brothers, for example? His father protects him through his scolding but if he does anything at all, it’s in the white space. Once again, the white space holds balance gleaned from each conflict. Balance turns into love. And love, first symbolized by the coat, becomes so strong that it stands alone. I’m not going to analyze the dreams. His ability however (and he even says it) to recognize God’s intention in those before him…the cook and the steward…reveals our human ability to overcome conflict with love and grasp that same intention in all we see and do.

Now let’s look at the sex. There’s a lot in this parasha. Not once though is the sex or the yearning for sex a result of love. Sex without love is like religion without faith. Therefore while there is good sex and bad sex, here there is only bad sex; that and divine connection. Now there’s a duality if I ever saw one. The sex therefore brings balance by showing how not to find balance. It also brings divine connection down to earth. The people involved, Judah and the master’s wife, are stuck in their own emptiness. They are in conflict with the fullness of Joseph. And because we can juxtapose that emptiness with that fullness, the fullness of divine intention becomes physical and real.

Dualities, therefore, make God real, and the more dualities the better, no matter how painful they may seem. If we really see Joseph, we see that he rises above that pain. If we really see ourselves, we see we have the potential to do so.

So, what Joseph does, we can do. How Joseph acts, we can act. May we all wrap the light that reflects true love making around us like a royal garment. May we accept conflict and see it as a way to heal and protect. May we glean from conflict the light that will keep us safe. May we embrace our divine selves. May the light born from balance spiral around us, and even when we’re gone, may it shine outward and inward, embracing us all and glowing in the warmth of God’s outstretched hand. May we learn how to be love.