Miketz
Genesis 41:1–44:17
Zechariah 2:14–4:7
Some people just don’t know when to be quiet. You probably know them. The kind who keep on talking when it’s clear they should simply stop right now. Joseph comes across as such a person again and again. As a young man, he made the mistake of telling his brothers about his dreams, prompting enough anger for them to nearly kill him and ultimately sell him into slavery. If only he had kept quiet! If only he had known enough to just let it go, to not rub it in his brothers’ faces, to stop right then.
And we see it again in this week’s Torah portion. It opens with Joseph languishing in prison, a slave accused of making advances on his master’s wife. Then he is offered a chance to strike it big, a potential shot at freedom, in the opportunity to help Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
Pharaoh had two dreams for which he found no appropriate interpreter. In the first, plump cows emerge from the Nile only to be swallowed up by other bovines that appear to be emaciated. In the second and parallel dream, moist, full sheaves of grain are consumed by others that are withered. It’s a symbolic message that Egypt is headed for years of plenty, to be followed by years of famine so harsh that the good years will be forgotten.
There are many attempts to explain to Pharaoh his visions of the night, but none is found to be satisfying. Enter the wine steward. Two years earlier, Joseph had interpreted his dream correctly in prison. Now in Pharaoh’s service, he recalls his fellow prisoner’s acumen in dream interpretation, and recommends Joseph to the king.
Joseph arrives, and Pharaoh describes his dream. Joseph listens, and explains the dreams. And then, just when we are cheering for him and hoping he will stop and be amply rewarded for his explanation, Joseph keeps going. He brashly continues, recommending a plan of action to Pharaoh, describing what must be done, a complete system of taxation and rationing, and a description of the kind of person needed to run the system. Watching this take place makes me want to scream as if watching the television. Stop it! Joseph, you are a lowly slave standing in front of the king of the Egyptian empire. He didn’t ask for your opinion! He didn’t put you in charge of human resources, nor of the government financial structure! Pipe down and get back in place!
But that isn’t what he does. Hasn’t Joseph reflected and learned his lesson after all these years of slavery? And even more puzzling, Pharaoh does not reprimand him. On the contrary, Pharaoh promotes him. He makes this lowly slave the second most powerful man in the empire, answering only to Pharaoh himself. How did such an unexpected thing come to be?
Perhaps the underlying truth is that, in fact, Joseph had learned precisely the lesson he needed. It’s just that it wasn’t a lesson about keeping quiet. Rav Blau of my yeshiva once suggested that Joseph’s life story is built around the interpretation of three sets of dreams. The first set is his own dreams, which he shares and makes his brothers angry. This is the stage of having a talent and merely bragging about it. The second set is the dreams of the baker and the wine steward, in which he puts his talents to use for his own personal gain. This time he uses his reading of future clues to get himself out of prison, by helping the wine steward and asking to be remembered.
The third and final set is Pharaoh’s dreams, where Joseph has finally learned to put his talents to use for the good of society. Far from the young man who made his siblings so jealous by plainly dropping on them his vision and future prominence, Joseph now uses his gifts and insight for the practical purpose of helping others.
That is the development and maturation of Joseph. It is also the challenge that faces each one of us. We all have unique talents. But what do we do with them? Do we simply display them? Make use of them for our own gain? Or do we turn them to making the world a better place? It is up to us.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].