Mikeitz
Genesis 41:1-44:17
One of my favorite verses in the whole of Torah is in this week’s parashah. Joseph has just been brought up from jail to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, which the court diviners could not explain. “Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘… I have heard this about you: you have but to hear a dream to interpret it.’ Joseph answered Pharaoh by saying, ‘Biladai—Elohim ya’aneh et sh’lom par’oh,’” which is usually translated as: “Not I—God will give an answer [that will bring] wholeness to Pharaoh” (Gen. 41:15-16).
Rashi, however, offers a more nuanced translation: “The wisdom is not mine, but God will answer. He will put an answer into my mouth that will bring wholeness to Pharaoh.” Here, Rashi indicates that the Hebrew word “biladai” conveys a deeper significance than the overly simplistic literal English translation of “Not I.” A better translation would then be, “without an I” or, alternatively, “without a me.” Joseph has attained a level of awareness such that he no longer believes himself to be a separate “I.” Instead, he understands himself to be but a self-less channel through which the Divine expresses. How did Joseph awaken to such deep knowing? Unlike the instantaneous transformative spiritual awakening experienced by his father, Jacob, through a one-night wrestling bout with God, Joseph’s self-transcending journey was long, lonely, and excruciating.
Until he was 17, Joseph’s identity was wrapped-up in the narcissistic projection of his father’s love for him; wrapped, as it were, in Jacob’s fatherly gift of a coat of many colors. He was the favored one among his brothers, and immaturely boasted that he was at the center of the clan’s universe, telling one and all that the dreams he dreamt meant that soon they will all would be bowing down to him. The first major crack in his egocentric identity comes that pivotal year when his brothers plot to kill him but, instead, sell him into slavery. In a scene that speaks of the dismantling of Joseph’s early identity, he is stripped by his brothers of the fateful coat, which they then tear and dip in animal blood as “proof” that Joseph is dead. Who Joseph thought he was, died there and then.
Years of slavery further eroded his sense of individuated self. Sold to the affluent Potiphar in Egypt, the handsome young man draws the unwanted attention of his master’s wife, who sets about to seduce him. Once more, Joseph’s symbolic garment is stripped from him as he tries to extricate himself from her grasp. Another layer of identity—even that of a slave, represented by the torn clothing—comes undone. But Joseph’s denuding isn’t over. Accused of trying to rape her instead, he is sent to Pharaoh’s jail. There, he reaches the bottom of the proverbial pit. In the bareness of Pharaoh’s prisons, Joseph is just another inmate with no name, no identity. His cellmates know him only as “the lad.” Freed from self-definitions, he begins interpreting dreams again. Now, however, he does so from a different place—selflessly, in the service of others.
We don’t know how long Joseph was a slave or how long he was in jail before Pharaoh brought him out to interpret his dreams, but all together it took a period of 13 years as a slave and a prisoner for Joseph to shed all ego-bound identity. “No more ‘I’” he says to Pharaoh, “God will give an answer.”
Rare are the cases of grace-induced enlightenment such as that experienced by Jacob. For most of us, the path looks more like Joseph’s, where his sense of identity was fundamentally altered over time by the vicissitudes of life. What are the coats of many colors—what the Kabbalists call klippot/husks—that we need to shed? What are the mistaken truths we hold onto, that we never dare question? What keeps us entangled in the delusive web of personal identity? As long as we keep ourselves convinced that the reality we live in makes sense, our mind lets it go on. We have to push ourselves past the point where our mind can no longer be tricked, where the delusion can’t live comfortably anymore, for it to unravel. Life, if we pay attention, is continuously presenting us with such opportunities. These seem—as in Joseph’s story—to show up mostly as painful experiences. But that’s only because suffering is an attention-grabber. Don’t wait for the next crisis to rend the garment of your ego self; question your truths and your beliefs instead, practice self-deconstruction; unstitch your self into awakening.