Vayigash 2015/5776: What do you do?

As I learned several years ago, the story of Superman is really a Jewish story, not to mention the fact that Superman’s name Kallel, is a type of Hebrew/Aramaic sounding word. 

With Krypton about to be destroyed, Kallel’s parents save him by placing him in a vehicle, sending him away to a planet where kind people will have compassion and love for him, raise him.  He will see injustice in the world and will build confidence toward helping people. 

Superman is Moses, Moses doesn’t exactly fly, but he is the model for the superhero, a character created by two Jewish artists.

A significant moment in the story for Superman, as the same moment is for Moses, is the time Superman goes to his fortress of solitude and asks the image of his father, “Who am I?”

Superman must take time to learn from his father’s collected knowledge.  Moses must take time to grow into his new role.

The question of who am I? The question of, “What do you do?” is one that we take for granted and tend to answer with as simple an answer as possible.

For Joseph, when his brothers come down to Egypt, Joseph knows Pharaoh will want to know more about them, what do they do, and he instructs his brothers to emphasize they are anshey mikneh, breeders of livestock.  Joseph is concerned since Egyptians hold shepherds in low esteem, and the brothers are in fact shepherds. 

When the brothers present themselves to Pharaoh, what do they say? “We are shepherds!”   And in that moment, they choose to define themselves as they see fit, and the answer from Pharaoh is a positive one, in fact, Pharaoh appoints them sarei mikneh, chief of his livestock herds in Goshen.  As our commentary explains, these positions are direct servants of Pharaoh, and so carry significant legal protection that outsiders would normally not receive.

Why does Joseph tell his brothers to emphasize they are something that does not correspond completely to who they really are?

How do the brothers decide to follow their own will and introduce themselves in a way that disregards Joseph’s educated warning?

Isaac Arama (15^th cent. Spain) teaches Joseph’s advice is practical – Nechama Leibowitz, a great modern teacher of Torah, explains Arama, a refugee from the Spanish Expulsion, knew well the intrigues and tensions of court life and its corruptions.  As a result, Arama explains in his own commentary Joseph warned the brothers, the whole family, to be in Goshen, to be away from the court.  Joseph could have set them up in court positions, but then they would be in danger of becoming like the Egyptians, potentially losing their identity.

We might say, that’s no worry, after all, Joseph maintains his identity despite literally marrying into the Egyptian aristocracy, and Moses grows up in the Egyptian court and remembers who he is, even defies Pharaoh and the Egyptian leadership by killing the taskmaster who is torturing one of his own.

But there is something more happening here, as Nechama Leibowitz points out in the commentary of the Netziv, R. Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (19^th century Poland), “Everything was worth sacrificing in order to ensure the preservation of Israel’s sanctity.”

The brothers represent the future tribes of Israel, the people of Israel, and they will establish settlements, grow their families, and seek to keep the fire of God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob burning. 

And why do the brothers themselves choose to defy Joseph’s advice?  What experience do they have in the Egyptian court?  On what basis do they make this decision?

They choose to speak up to describe themselves in their own words, not in their brother’s words – They do not appear to harbor Joseph’s fear of assimilation or loss of identity.  They are confident in who they are.  When Pharaoh asks them what do you do, ma ma’a’seychem, they say ‘we are shepherds as were also our fathers.’ 

Interesting that Pharaoh is only curious about their occupations, not about their faith or their personal lives.  Pharaoh is concerned about a specific agenda, can these people fit into our society in a useful way?  That is the question behind the question – appropriately, a question that is under discussion both abroad and at home, with respect to welcoming in refugees from Syria and elsewhere where there is oppression. 

Joseph’s suggested answer, the question itself, and the brother’s response all point to the complexities of explaining who we are.  I’ve struggled for most of my 37 years to figure out what it means to be a Conservative Jews.  What it means to be a Rabbi is equally difficult to define.  We don’t often enough scratch below the surface to really get to know someone past our own assumptions of who they are and what they do, to find out what motivates us to do the work we do, what are some of the challenges we face, how did we get to the work we do, and by the way, who we are and what we do are not equivalent to what job we do or may have done in the past.  Joseph’s suggestion is to define ourselves by how we measure up to the expectations of others.  The brothers answer suggests we tell the story of our family history, at least in part, the part that’s significant and meaningful for the moment.

The story of Joseph and his brothers here compels us to rethink the way we define ourselves.  What are our priorities?  What’s most important to us? Shouldn’t these things also be part of our self-definition if not how we describe ourselves to others.  And our strivings are important as well, what is it that we aspire to do, hope to accomplish, wish to achieve?  If we don’t know each other’s dreams, how can we help each other to reach them?

Kol yisra’el arevin ze bazeh, the great Rabbis teach us everyone in the people of Israel is responsible for the other.

We don’t have to be Superman to figure out who we are, or to establish a thoughtful relationship with others such that we recognize, celebrate and support others in becoming who they hope they can be.

We do need to remember Joseph and his brothers, who even after 22 years of separation enter into a challenging, but meaningful, dialogue about who they are, who they want to be, and how they will share the identity and aspirations with the world.