At the end of the last episode of Downtown Abbey, Lady Grantham says, “It makes me smile, the way we drink to the future, whatever it may bring…”
There is nothing objectively different about the world when the clock strikes midnight. We don’t live in the Cinderella story when midnight means the coach becomes a pumpkin and our nice clothes become our house clothes.
What affects us is passing through the transitional time with the reflection on the past and all the unknowns for the future.
What do we do though when the future is not unknown, just hidden, when it’s standing right in front of us but we cannot see it.
If we knew the answers to our questions were within arm’s reach, would we act differently? Would we feel less uncertain?
For the past couple of weeks, Joseph’s brothers have crisscrossed the border between Canaan and Egypt. They’ve stood in front of their brother Joseph, and they’ve been unable to tell who he really is.
We’d like to think if our sibling were dressed in different clothes, living in a different place, and speaking a different language we’d still be able to recognize them. But, maybe not…maybe we see what we’re used to seeing from the perspective we have.
Rashbam explains Joseph has been holding back his true identity and keeping himself calm and poised when interacting with his brothers. When they only see the Egyptian official, Joseph is scrutinizing them and wondering about the same question we’re asking today – what is thre future in front of me? Who are these brothers of mine at this stage?
Rabbenu Bahya teaches us Joseph is unsure, and potentially afraid, of who these men are and how they will react when he reveals his identity to them. He brings a midrash that tells us the brothers might still want to kill him, possibly to maintain the story they told their father and to finish the job they started long ago. According to the midrash, he decides to open up to them and take the chance they’ll kill him rather than revealing to all the Egyptians in the room these men sold him into slavery. So he orders everyone out of the room…
I suspect, in the moments before he re-introduces himself, Joseph is wondering whether he can have a future with his siblings…if the story comes out will it change his status or will Pharaoh punish them?...will his father Jacob be able to recover from the shock of finding out his son is still alive and will Jacob himself want ot punish the brothers for their treachery and lies?
Joseph makes a clear choice. As he tells his brothers, God orchestrated everything that led up to this point in time. God placed him in just the right situation to be able to help and support the family during the famine.
In other words, he decides to show gratitude to God, to forgive the people who wronged him, and to use his power not for revenge but to support his family through the rest of the lean years ahead.
By the end of the Book of Genesis the entire family is reunited and all sons surround Jacob as his life winds down. And so the Book of Genesis, a book that began with defying God, with a murder, with a flood, and generations of family conflict, anger, scheming, and violence, finally comes to a point of unity around the last of the patriarchs. They’re all far from home, but they’re all together. The suffering that will come along when a new Pharaoh steps in will not be the suffering of one family, but of a whole nation.
Joseph is the one responsible for remaking the family. He overcomes doubt and fear to embrace his brothers and reunite with his father.
He teaches us the power of achdut, of unity, the power of gratitude, of forgiveness, and of the possibility we can evolve as people, avoid the pettiness that can come with grudges, and decide to set a new course through time…opening up new light into a place of darkness.
A long time ago when ships were dark below deck, and candles were dangerous on wooden ships, they’d place a deck prism, a cone shaped glass item that would draw the sun’s light and reflect it below the deck.
Joseph is the deck prism – the conduit of light into a fraught time, a time of exile, a time when the prophecy to Abraham of his descendants becoming slaves in a land not their own is about to be fulfilled.
We can be the deck prisms for 2023, sharing into the New Year everything we’ve thought about since our new year at Rosh Hashanah. We can take our teshuvah and pay it forward into the New Year, and fill the dark winter days ahead with light, blessing, and all the mitzvah energy we can summon up.
And so let’s do what Lady Grantham does, and toast to the New Year, whatever it may bring!
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