Joe

I took my daughter to a high school production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat when she was 4 years old. For the next year, Joe’s soundtrack was in heavy rotation. That’s what Eve called it back then. “Let’s listen to Joe.” She’d say it anytime we were in the car…. Or there was silence in the house… I think I heard her make the request a few times in her sleep when I checked in on her before I went to bed.

We’ve heard of the reconciliation between Joe and his brothers today, but the story of Joe is quite an amazing one. Today I want to recap Joe’s story and ponder what it might mean for us.

Jacob settles in the land of Canaan and has a slew of children. Joseph is the 11th and most loved son of Jacob and first son of his beloved second wife, Rachel. At the age of 17, Joe has a chip on his shoulder. He has these dreams of various things bowing down to him. Sheaves of wheat, the sun, moon, and eleven stars. Joe could not be labeled as humble. His brothers grumble and hate Joe.

To make matters worse, Jacob gives Joe a coat. Now we think of it as the coat of many colors but the Hebrew text leaves less to the imagination. The literal translation is “A coat with long sleeves.” While the 10 brothers walk around with vests and cold arms, Joe is warm and toasty. It is still a very special coat, but the translation fails to deliver in our context where everyone has coats with sleeves. So “coat of many colors” was given in other translations. This coat doesn’t help matters with the brothers. Add in his dreams of grandeur, and the brothers are looking for ways to get rid of this snot-nosed brat.

One day, as Joe is walking up to join his brothers, the brothers say, “Here comes this dreamer, let’s kill him and say it was a wild animal.” Reuben convinces the brothers not to kill him. Instead they sell Joe into slavery.

When the brothers lie to Jacob and tell him that Joe was eaten by wild animals while he was out shepherding, Jacob rends his clothes, sits in mourning and refuses to be comforted. Meanwhile Joe is sold to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard in Egypt. There Joe is hit on by Potiphar’s wife and when he doesn’t respond to her advances, she turns on him and has him thrown into prison.

It is interesting how much trickery is involved in Joe’s story. Not just his own, but his family system. His father Jacob tricked Esau out of his inheritance. Jacob is tricked by his uncle Laben into marrying the wrong sister and has to work double to marry Rachel. The brothers trick their father and sell Joe off. Mrs Potiphar tricks Potiphar and has Joe locked up. All the lies, all the family secrets, all the drama. It must have weighed heavily on Joe as he sat in that prison cell.

He didn’t ask for the dreams, and he thought his brothers loved him as his father did. Sometimes, it’s hard to be vulnerable to family. They remember so much about us. Don’t you have that one family member who always reminds you of how awkward you were when you were little? Or kids who are still mad you didn’t let them go to a certain concert in high school?

Joe had a lot to consider in that jail cell. A cell he ended up in for doing the right thing. He stuck to his ethics, and he still wound up in jail. Yet in that jail, he meets two men and helps interpret their dreams. Now back in Egypt, they put a lot of weight on dreams. There were professional dream interpreters in those times, there was even an Egyptian manual of dreams around 1300 BCE that had over 200 interpretations.[1] Joe is one of two who could interpret dreams in the Bible. Just Joe and Daniel engage in it, and both give credit to God. This work gets the attention of Pharaoh. And there Joe goes to interpret the strange dreams of the Pharaoh of 7 healthy cows being eaten by 7 sick cows.

Can you imagine Joe walking into the presence of Pharaoh? This jail bird walking into the throne room. Joe is grimy, unwashed, in simple clothes, walking among the golden splendor of Pharaoh. Ruth Brin writes this poem:

The nakedness of Joseph before Pharaoh was the nakedness of an elm tree in winter. Not like the pine, whose branches hold the snow and bend and break in the cold, but like the elm stood Joseph, stripped of his colored garments, the ornaments of his youthful summer, stripped of his pride as favorite son and his pretensions to rule his brothers; yet rooted in the teachings of his father, as the elm tree is rooted in the deep earth Joseph stood before the king of Egypt as his father, Jacob, had stood before the Wrestler.[2]

Joe interprets the dreams and the Pharaoh puts him in charge of getting ready for the coming famine. Joe is second in command! After 13 years as a slave. His time in jail. Then this sudden rise to prominence. Joe could have taken revenge on Mrs. Potiphar. He doesn’t, she isn’t even mentioned again. He could have reached out to his family, but he doesn’t. He loses himself in the work, yet then his brothers come before him again.

Joe can do whatever he wants to his brothers. He could kill them, sell them to slavery, take revenge. I was bullied in elementary school. From 4th grade to 7th, Chris and Larry bullied me. Chris was the shortest kid in the class and must have harbored some resentment against me who was one of the tallest. Whereas Larry was kept behind and was two years older than the rest of the class and had a profound dislike for me. I think Chris egged Larry on. I dreamt of revenge. Then in 7th grade, Chris went to the public school, and Larry lost interest. I discovered that I was tall and started to grow in self-confidence. I also sent him down the stairs after he tried to start bulling me again, so I’m not perfect or above revenge. However, our relationship changed and when it came to our 8th Grade trip to Washington D.C., Larry requested to be my roommate.

When we were lying there in the dark, I asked Larry why he bullied me. He said he didn’t know, but that he was sorry. He went onto say that’s why he wanted to by my roommate. If I could face him down, then I probably wasn’t afraid of anything. Larry was afraid of being in D.C. He felt like a country mouse in the city and was expecting to be jumped.  Tears came to my eyes then, in that dark hotel room. I was thankful Larry couldn’t see. Everything was forgiven in that moment.

Joe’s brothers don’t recognize him. So Joe frames one of them, Benjamin, for stealing something from his house, to test them. When the brothers’ affection for one another and the love of their father becomes evident, when they hint that they now consider their sale of Joe a crime, and when Judah offers himself as a slave to save his framed brother Benjamin, it is then when Joe can reveal himself and reconcile.

They cry together. All is forgiven. But it isn’t without much learning and pain and change. Each of the brothers had to change and evolve, even Joe.

Yet I am conscious when reading this story that there are people in my life whom I cannot make that move with. I still haven’t evolved. When Chris, the short bully from my youth, asked to friend me on Facebook, I denied his friend request. I still have members of my family that I am not on speaking terms with. I have no idea how to reconcile with white supremacists. Not everything is a happy ending. Thus we must hold tightly to those areas where we can manage to change and reconcile.

Like Joe and his brothers. Like Larry and me in Washington D.C. Like in October 1960 when Pope John the 23rd greeted a group of 130 Jewish leaders… After all the anti-Semitism and hatred between the church and the Jewish Faith, he greeted them with the words from Genesis 45:4. “I am your brother, Joseph.” The pope uses his baptismal name, not his title.

Sometimes it takes giving up our identities, our grudges, our egos, our need for revenge and to recount all the pains someone has inflicted on us, it takes all this and more to truly reconcile. What I love about the story of Joe is that it shows that it can be done. That reconciliation is possible. It’s so important that we teach this story to our children and grandchildren and hopefully the lesson will rub off on us. Despite being clothed in a coat with long sleeves, or a technicolor dream coat, despite all our fancy titles and positions and expertise in any given area, that when it comes time to reconcile; it is best to be an elm in winter.

It was Joe’s job to store up grain into warehouses. He could have been storing up grievances, but instead he chose to root himself in his father’s religion and forgive and reconcile. We see this in our tradition as well with Christ on the cross saying, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” If anyone had a right to store up grievances, it would be Joe and Jesus. I know I have a warehouse, and maybe you do too. I think it’s time to put a match to them. This is easier said than done, it’s why I need to read and re-read the story of Joe and read poems like this one from the Sufi master Hafiz that’s called “The Idiot’s Warehouse.”

I know the idiot’s warehouse
is always full.
I know each of us
Could run back and forth from there
All day long
And show everyone our vast collection.
Though tonight, Hafiz,
Retire from the madness for an hour,
Gather with some loyal friends
Or sit alone
And
Sing beautiful songs
To God.

 

Works Cited

Hāfiz, and Daniel James. Ladinsky. The Gift: poems. New York: Penguin / Arkana, 1999.

Plaut, W. Gunther, and David E. S. Stein. The Torah: a modern commentary. New York: Reform Judaism Publications, 2015.

[1] The Torah, A modern commentary. Page 261

[2] The Torah, A modern commentary. Page 272

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