Parashat Va-yeshev (Genesis 37:1 - 40:23)

by Rabbi Alexandra Wright

Summary

Jacob’s dream of a stairway to heaven and his night time encounter with a mysterious being lead us into the stories associated with the dreamer ‘par excellence’, Joseph.  Dreams are to punctuate Joseph’s life – his dreams of grandeur and power as a young teenager, his skilful interpretation of the dreams of fellow prisoners, the cupbearer and chief baker and later on in a future parashah the dreams of Pharaoh predicting the famine that is to sweep through Egypt and Canaan.  Into this beautifully crafted novella of Joseph’s early life, the story of Judah and Tamar is introduced.   Although it appears to stand on its own, unconnected with the story of Joseph, it is replete with repetitions indicating the close connection between the two tales.  It is Judah who suggests the sale of Joseph and later on, it is Judah who becomes the spokesman for his brothers in Egypt facing a man they don’t recognise.  Much later Judah became the name of the Southern Kingdom, while Joseph was the name given to the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  The roles of Judah and Joseph in this parashah already hint at the polarity in the subsequent history of the people of Israel.

Commentary

When Joseph’s brothers return to their father with his ‘ornamented tunic’, they say to Jacob: “We found this.  Please examine it; is it your son’s tunic or not?”  And Jacob recognises (va-yakirah) and cries out: “My son’s tunic!   A savage beast devoured him!  Joseph was torn by a beast!”  (Genesis 37:32-33).  It is a moment of terrible callousness by the brothers and unbearable grief expressed by their father.  Note their artful guile, they do not even have to suggest to Jacob that Joseph was attacked.  The assumption comes to him slowly – he sees the garment, he cries out and then comes the terrible realisation of loss and the violence of that loss.

A chapter later and Joseph is somewhere between Canaan and Egypt, his story momentarily suspended while we enter another world of deception and loss.  Judah has withheld his third son from marrying his daughter-in-law after the death of his first two sons.  Tamar returns to her father’s house and a long time afterwards hears that her father-in-law has come up to Timnah near where she lives.  Removing her widow’s garments, she disguises herself as a prostitute and entraps her father-in-law into sleeping with her and leaving her with three pledges until he pays her what he owes her.  Then she disappears with the pledges, having found herself to be pregnant.  Three months later, Judah is told: “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot…”  Judah demands that she be burned, but as she brings forth the pledges, she says to Judah: “Examine these: whose seal and cord and staff are these?” (Hakker-na).  

The midrash links these two stories of recognition.  Judah’s shame is seen as the measure of his punishment: “Because I took the coat of Joseph and coloured it with the blood of a kid, and then laid it at the feet of my father, saying, Know now whether it is your son’s coat or not, therefore must I now confess, before the court, to whom belongs these pledges.”

The Hebrew word for ‘recognition’ which is found in both these stories is connected to the Hebrew word for “strange” in the sense of unrecognisable as in “put away the strange gods”.  In both cases, despite their outcomes, there is a terrible transgression that is done to a younger brother and to a vulnerable young widow.

Wrong takes place when there is a lack of discernment and judgement in our actions or when we fail to acknowledge the other.  The crime of our own generation lies in being unable to deliver our sense of outrage about injustice and cruelty in the world.  Jacob in his terrible grief and Tamar, out of her sense of injustice remind us to examine the world in which we live and to recognise the pledges we make with our lips and put them into action.

Rabbi Alexandra Wright

Liberal Jewish Synagogue