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Sons, Suns, Subs, and Sums: Commentary on Parashat Vayyeshev 5784
By Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary
Joseph’s mother, she was quite my favorite wife.
I never really loved another all my life.
And Joseph was my joy because
He reminded me of her.
—Jacob in “Joseph’s Coat,” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, words by Tim Rice)
Just as Genesis 39:3 confirms, Yosef (יוסף, “Joseph”) was subject to special loving attention from his father Ya’akov (יעקב, “Jacob”), who “אָהַ֤ב אֶת־יוֹסֵף֙ מִכׇּל־בָּנָ֔יו” (“loved Yosef more than all of his children”). Knowing that Ya’akov so dearly loved this son intensifies the sting that Yosef must have felt when the first words that we read Ya’akov ever having directed to Yosef came in the form of censure. Jews read every year from Parashat Vayyeshev the narrative of Yosef’s dream-sharing that so deeply nauseates his relatives (including eventually his father), but the Torah does not clarify what ultimately upset Ya’akov. A lesser-read revision of this story appears in Bereshit Rabbah, an ancient collection of midrashim (מדרשים, rabbinic “interpretations” of Jewish texts), and Bereshit Rabbah 84:11 seeks to answer—with a few rabbinic interruptions—what it was that so deeply angered Ya’akov:
וַיַּחֲלֹם עוֹד חֲלוֹם אַחֵר וגו’ (בראשית לז, ט), בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁאָמַר יוֹסֵף (בראשית לז, ט): וְהִנֵּה הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהַיָּרֵחַ, אָמַר יַעֲקֹב, מִי גִּלָּה לוֹ שֶׁשְּׁמִי שָׁמֶשׁ.
אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק, אָמַר יְהוֹשֻׁעַ לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, עַבְדָא בִישָׁא לָאו זְבִינַת יָתֵךְ בְּכַסְפֵּיהּ דְּאַבָּא אַתְּ, לֹא כָךְ רָאָה אַבָּא אוֹתְךָ בַּחֲלוֹם וְהִנֵּה הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהַיָּרֵחַ וגו’ מִשְׁתַּחֲוִים לִי, אַף אַתְּ דֹּם מִלְּפָנַי, מִיָּד (יהושע י, יג): וַיִּדֹּם הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהַיָּרֵחַ עָמָד. (בראשית לז, י):
וַיְסַפֵּר אֶל אָבִיו וְאֶל אֶחָיו וַיִּגְעַר בּוֹ אָבִיו… וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מָה הַחֲלוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר חָלָמְתָּ, רַבִּי לֵוִי בְּשֵׁם רַבִּי חָמָא בַּר חֲנִינָא כָּךְ הָיָה אָבִינוּ יַעֲקֹב סָבוּר שֶׁתְּחִיַּת הַמֵּתִים מַגַּעַת בְּיָמָיו, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: הֲבוֹא נָבוֹא, הֲבוֹא נָבוֹא אֲנִי וְאַחֶיךָ, נִיחָא, שֶׁמָּא אֲנִי וְאִמְּךָ, וַהֲלוֹא אִמְּךָ כְּבָר מֵתָה וְאַתְּ אוֹמֵר: אֲנִי וְאִמְּךָ וְאַחֶיךָ, וְלֹא הָיָה יַעֲקֹב אָבִינוּ יוֹדֵעַ שֶׁהַדְּבָרִים מַגִּיעִים לְבִלְהָה שִׁפְחַת רָחֵל שֶׁגִּדְּלַתּוּ כְּאִמּוֹ.
“[Yosef] dreamed another dream” (Genesis 37:9). In the moment when Yosef said, “Behold, the Shemesh (שמש, “sun”) and the moon—,” Ya’akov said [while interrupting Yosef], “Who revealed to him that my name is Shemesh?”
Rabbi Yitzchak said, “Yehoshu’a [יהושע, ‘Joshua’] had said to the sun, ‘Bad servant! You sold your very self with money [belonging] to my [fore]father [Yosef]!’ My [fore]father did not see you like this in the dream. [My ancestor Yosef had said in Genesis 37:9,] ‘Behold, the sun and the moon [and eleven stars] bow to me.’ So too, you [must] stop before me [now]!” Immediately, “the sun went still and the moon stood” (Joshua 10:13).
“[Yosef] told [of this dream to] his father and his siblings, and his father rebuked him” (Genesis 37:9)…. “[Ya’akov] said to that [son, Yosef], ‘What is this dream that you have dreamt?’” (Genesis 37:10). Rabbi Levi in the name of Rabbi Chama bar Chanina said, “This is how [we know] our patriarch Ya’akov thought that the resurrection of the dead would approach [him] in his days—for it is said [in Genesis 37:10], ‘Shall we certainly come?’ ‘Shall we certainly come—I and your siblings’ would have been comfortable [for the reader to understand, but the text at Genesis 37:10 instead reads,] ‘Shall we certainly come—I, your mother, and your siblings?’ But Ya’akov our patriarch did not know that these matters [that Yosef had dreamt] pertained to Bilhah, the servant of [Yosef’s deceased mother] Rachel, who had raised him as if [she had been] his mother.
This particular midrash (מדרש, singular of midrashim) skips around, without much rhyme or reason, between Yosef’s present, future, and past. The midrash opens with Ya’akov’s anger in Yosef (allegedly) finding out that Ya’akov used to be called Shemesh—a nickname attested hardly anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible or rabbinic literature. Given how poorly publicized Ya’akov’s sunny alter ego had been and how deeply frustrated Ya’akov felt upon assuming that Yosef had discovered this name, the reader might wonder if Shemesh had been some private name that only Rachel had called Ya’akov. The rabbinic editors of Bereshit Rabbah read Yosef’s dream and remembered that one of Yosef’s later descendants, Yehoshu’a, unto whom the leadership of the Israelites was transferred upon the death of Mosheh (משה, “Moses”), would eventually develop his own special relationship to the sun and the moon.
When Joshua chapter 10 retells the battle between a five-tribe alliance (based in Jerusalem, Hebron, Yarmut, Lakhish, and Eglon) and the Israelites’ allies, the Giv’onites—God partners with the Israelites and thrusts upon the quintet of evil troops several supernatural disasters. Boulders and stones of hail fall from the heavens, (Joshua 10:11) and Yehoshu’a effects some stoppage of the sun and the moon (Joshua 10:12–13), which some scholars now chalk up to an annular solar eclipse. As the rabbis read it, Yehoshu’a—a descendant of an Israelite who witnessed the sun, the stars, and the moon all bowing to him—figured that celestial rule ran in the family. After all, Joshua 10:14 attributes to Yehoshu’a unparalleled influence over the Divine’s relationship to nature:
וְלֹ֨א הָיָ֜ה כַּיּ֤וֹם הַהוּא֙ לְפָנָ֣יו וְאַחֲרָ֔יו לִשְׁמֹ֥עַ יְהֹוָ֖ה בְּק֣וֹל אִ֑ישׁ כִּ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה נִלְחָ֖ם לְיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
There was never before it or after it a day like that one, when Adonai heard the voice of a human. Indeed, Adonai had fought for Yisra’el.
In the eyes of Yosef and Yehoshu’a, the universe revolved around them and for them—and God would not intervene.
It is nearly impossible to read Yosef’s dream as exuding any sense of humbleness. Whether the sun in his dream embodied his father, his father’s nickname, or the actual sun, Yosef—by the biblical account of it—displayed no anxiety in proclaiming his fascination with a cosmos designed to bend according to his will. Ya’akov, however, knew that, if Yosef would dare to govern the sun, his son would be playing with psychological fire. What other divine responsibilities would Yosef soon assume? Reviving the dead?
The widower Ya’akov still felt raw after the death of the woman he had most loved (as per Genesis 29:18) while he remained in a complicated relationship with three living women with whom he fathered children, though he never adored these women with the same passion he reserved for Rachel. Yosef’s dream of the celestial beings prostrating towards him never mentioned Ya’akov or Rachel (or any of his brothers by name), but Ya’akov was unable to connect the dots of the dream other than to equate the 11 stars with his other 11 sons, and the sun and moon as himself and Rachel. Rachel may have passed away, but Ya’akov’s moon never left him; no servant, maidservant, midwife or concubine (like Bilhah or Zilpah), or accidental wife (like Le’ah) could ever fill the hole that Rachel left in Ya’akov’s heart. Ya’akov could not help himself but to scold Yosef for Yosef’s warped sense of reality. Whether or not his son was the center of the universe, Ya’akov and his lunar love could never reunite in this earthly existence. Yosef’s dream was not only wrong; it was hurtful.
The imagination is one of human beings’ greatest faculties, and our ability to think and to act creatively separates our species from so many other animals. Though whales sing songs, chimpanzees and gorillas can communicate in sign languages, and elephants know how to mourn together—no other species has developed a tapestry of cultures quite as rich and diverse as that which humans have created. Our innate knack for dreaming should not be suppressed; indeed, imagining the unrealistic has enabled us to look beyond the limits of our reality and to show that what was once impossible may one day become possible.
Although Yosef would eventually mature and make more ethically laudable decisions in his lifetime, the young Yosef whom Ya’akov scolded faced a very simple problem in his dream of conquering the universe: Yosef’s dreams were too small—not in aspiration, but in empathy. Yosef did not yet know that, beloved as he was, his siblings still deserved love; close as Yosef was with his father, his father needed time to mourn; and as much as his dreams inspired him, the rest of his family had dreams, dreams which Yosef made no space to hear. Yosef would finally earn renown in his lifetime not by forcing his own dreams on others but by beginning to hear and to interpret the dreams of those around him (Genesis 40:1–41:46).
Beneath the words of Parashat Vayyeshev lies a cautionary tale about one of humanity’s worst nightmares: the inability to dream of a future that improves the lives of those around us. Although Yosef’s genes may have passed onto his descendants the chutzpah to imagine a universe bowing to the whim of men of great power, the life and times of Yosef would eventually nurture Yosef into someone who can conquer his nature, zoom out, and discover a world far larger than himself. Yosef’s greatness came in discovering the question the sage Hillel asked some 2,000 years ago: “וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני” (ukhshe’ani le’atzmi, mah ani, “when I am for myself [only], what am I?”). The greatest dreams do not elevate us above others; the greatest dreams reveal to us how we can elevate those around us.
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