Rabbi Patricia Karlin-NeumannStanford University
University Public Worship May 30, 2010/17 Sivan 5770
From fratricide to forgiveness:
Reflections for Memorial Day
(Genesis 4:1-4:16;Genesis 37:1-36)
Most of us don’t think of comedienne Sarah Silverman as a prophet. With her potty mouth and her outrageous, politically incorrect brand of humor, she directs a spotlight not to our better angels, but rather to our seamier side. Nonetheless, one rabbi I know of insists that Sarah Silverman is, indeed, a contemporary version of a biblical prophet. "Sarah's really calling out the ills of society. She's saying: I'm not interested in your rituals, in what you pray and what you say. I'm interested in the fact that we live in this really racist society, that we live in this really violent world. She's interested in the [same] things that God actually is interested in."[i]This rabbi should know. Rabbi Susan Silverman is Sarah’s sister.
In our Genesis texts, we see the origins of sibling relationships that, like Rabbi Susan Silverman and her sister Sarah, apparently veer off into very different directions. But as we look beneath the surface of these texts, like the Silverman sisters, we wonder, “What is hidden and what is revealed?” How well do we know our brothers or sisters? How often does rivalry blind us to their possibilities? How do we come by the generosity that might enable us to see beneath the facade?
Our text begins “This then is the line of Jacob.” but what follows this statement is oddly not a genealogy. No long list of begats. No archaic names to crack our teeth on. “This then is the line of Jacob.” And then, “At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers.” It is as if Jacob’s twelve other children didn’t exist… We know how this goes. A mother of three is asked, “How are your kids doing?” and she gushes, “Oh, you know my beloved Steven. He’s been accepted at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Pomona, and of course at Stanford. He’s the State Debate champion and he has the fastest times of any high school runner in California… Whenever he’s not travelling for debate or cross-country, he volunteers in a soup kitchen. I will be so lonely next year without my Steven, when he goes off to college,” sighs his mother. Never mind that there are two other children who will be at home, children this mother hasn’t breathed a word about …
Remember those old lyrics, “I only have eyes for you”? It can be true of parents as well as lovers. What about the twelve kids before Joseph? Do they get named? Not here. It doesn’t take a therapist to realize that the stage has been set for bad blood between Joseph and his brothers. The text continues, “And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him.” (Genesis 37:2-4)
Like Sarah Silverman, Joseph steals the spotlight. The rabbis picture a seventeen year old fixing his hair, preening at his reflection in the water, and wearing his special coat with an arrogant flair. We know three facts about Joseph from this introduction to him. First, he brought “debaatam ra’ah”—“bad reports” regarding his brothers. Second, to paraphrase Tommy Smothers, of Smothers Brothers fame, “Joseph’s father always loved him best.” The gift of a special coat, the embodiment of Jacob’s favoritism made it hard for the brothers to deny their jealousy and hatred. Third, Joseph has two dreams—in the first dream his brothers bow down to him—Joseph, the baby, imagines lording it over his big brothers. In the second dream, not only his older brothers, but even his father and mother, bow down to him.
So what does Jacob do after learning of Joseph’s dreams of power, even over his own parents? “v’aviv shamar et ha davar.” Davar can mean word or thing, so literally, “His father guarded the word,” or perhaps more colloquially, “he kept the thing in mind.” What are the various connotations of this phrase? Jacob played it over in his mind, he protected the statement, Jacob preserved the moment. Could Jacob be guarding this knowledge like the melachim, the angels who protected him when he was his son’s age fleeing from his family after deceiving his own brother? Was Jacob remembering his own awe-filled experience of a ladder reaching to heaven? Just as Jacob’s dream revealed the presence of divine protection, could he be safeguarding the same hope for his son, Joseph?
If Joseph’s father hasn’t forgotten the hostility between the brothers, hostility that he helped to engender, then what follows is all the more troubling.
“One time, when his brothers had gone to pasture their father’s flock at Shechem, Israel said to Joseph, “Your brothers are pasturing at Shechem. Come, I will send you to them. He answered, “Hineni. I am ready.” And he said to him, “Go and see how your brothers are and how the flocks are faring and bring me back word.” (37:12-14)
If Jacob is protective of Joseph’s dreams, if Jacob identifies with the son who dreams as he once dreamt when he was a lonely teenager imagining a ladder to heaven, then how might we understand this father sending his favorite son off to the brothers who feel humiliated by him? Is Jacob so confident of the prophetic nature of Joseph’s dreams that he doesn’t see the neon sign flashing, or hear the sounds of “Danger, Will Robinson” screaming in his ears?
Nearly every word of the text resonates with that danger, and suggests the three features we learn about the relationship between the brothers in the opening section. The brothers are pasturing the flock at Shechem. (37:12) What happened in Shechem? The rape of Dinah. (34)Shechem is a place of lawlessness and violence. When Joseph is asked by his father to go there, Joseph responds, “Hineni”—behold, here I am.” His father, Jacob, too said, “Hineni”, when he was a teen, as he deceived his father and pretended to be his brother Esau, wearing animal skins, bringing game his mother roasted and stealing the blessing Isaac intended to offer to Esau, his firstborn. So this moment is resonant with the past and prescient about the future.
When Jacob asks Joseph to check on his brothers—literally, to “get the shalom of your brothers”, we have to ask—Shalom? Figuratively, there is only bad blood between them, and soon, literally, there will be bad blood. Speech between these brothers has only been hostile. Remember that initially the brothers, “…hated him so that they could not speak a word of shalom to him.“ Could not speak a word of shalom. And yet, Jacob asks him to bring back a word of shalom. Jacob asks Joseph to bring back a dvar—a word. But remember, the only words that Joseph has a history of bringing to his father from his brothers were “debatam raah”, evil reports, tattletale’s words.
And yet, Joseph goes in search of his brothers. The brothers see him from afar. How do they know it’s Joseph as he appears on the horizon? He’s wearing that signature ketonet passim, coat of many colors…. Remember the couple that crashed the White House dinner last November? If I were to ask you for a visual, I’ll bet that the image that would come to your mind would be the bright red sari that Ms. Salahi was wearing. She had no intention of fading into the crowd. Some clothes leave a vivid impression, and this coat of many colors, evoking favoritism and arrogance proved to be as provocative to Joseph’s brothers as a red cape is to a bull. They see him coming from afar and declare, “Hineh, baal hachalamot.”(37:19) “Behold, that dreamer is coming.” To his brothers, Joseph has ceased to be kin. To them, their voices dripping with sarcasm, Joseph is “the Dreamer.” Joseph’s dreams of his brothers and even his parents bowing down before him, was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, Joseph’s dreams, and his proud recounting of them broke the circle of kinship. So Joseph’s somewhat innocent arrival is met by the sneering of his brothers, “Hah! We shall see what comes of his dreams!”
And we do see what becomes of his dreams. So here’s the irony. Not only do Joseph’s dreams came true later in the story—unwittingly the brothers do bow down to him, although they believe they are bowing down to a powerful Egyptian vizier. Paradoxically, even in the act of trying to destroy the dreamer, the brothers were unable to destroy the dream. They are haunted by it.
I think of Myles Horton, the founder of the Highlander Center, an adult school during the civil rights movement where blacks and whites worked together to end segregation. It was at the Highlander School that Rosa Parks studied before she refused to give up her seat on that fateful bus in Dec. 1955. Scandalized by the efforts to instill brotherhood and equality between black and white, the Southern police came to close the Highlander Center down. Defiantly, they put a padlock on the building. But Myles Horton, lawbreaker that he was, only laughed. “You can padlock a building,” he said, “but you can’t padlock an idea.”
Similarly, you can try to kill the dreamer, but you can’t banish the dream. When the brothers return to their father, having stripped Joseph of his telltale coat and drenched it in the blood of a goat, Jacob was inconsolable. The brothers surrounded their father, bowing as it were, to the absent Joseph, but Jacob refused to be comforted. Joseph remained at the center, now, at the center of their father’s grief, and the brothers surrounding him are unable to move him from that place of honor.
But, irony of ironies, in the unlikeliest of places-Egypt—long after the brothers believe that Joseph is dead, they come to learn that while they may have tried to kill the dreamer, they can’t banish the dream. Brothers have to find a way to reconcile. And reconcile, they do. Joseph emerges from the pit his brothers threw him in. Joseph is freed from the prison the Egyptians locked him in. Through his hardships and his isolation, Joseph becomes a man not only of power, but also of insight. His hardscrabble existence tempered the arrogance of his younger years. Now, in a position of authority, Joseph has gained understanding. After toying with his brothers in Egypt, after taking their measure, after becoming convinced that the brothers have come to rely on and protect each other with their very lives, Joseph is able to reveal himself to his brothers. Taking off the mask of Egyptian vizier to rejoin his circle of kin, Joseph forgives his brothers. “I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you…God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; and God has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household and ruler over the whole land of Egypt.” (Genesis 45:5-8) Joseph’s dreams materialize, and the circle of kin is no longer dominated by power and arrogance. It is filled with forgiveness and connection. Joseph is one model for brotherhood.
However, much earlier in the Bible, the quintessential brother story in Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel does not end in forgiveness; rather in ends in fratricide, it ends in the first death in human history recorded in the Bible. There are many parallels between the two sibling stories. Just as young Joseph and his brothers are constantly measuring their value to the father, a competition sealed by the coat of many colors, Cain and Abel compete in giving gifts to their Divine Father, to God. Abel’s gift is accepted; Cain’s gift is not. Abel, like Joseph is a shepherd. Abel, like Joseph, meets his fate in a field, --in a place of lawlessness, devoid of parental protection, a place of danger from all directions. “And when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.” In both stories, the blood of a brother is mentioned, although in both stories there is no willingness to own up to their evil deed. “Then Judah said to his brothers, “What do we gain by killing our brother and covering up his blood?’ Come, let us sell him to the Ishamaelites, but let us not do away with him ourselves.” (37:36) And when the Eternal said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper? Then God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me form the ground.” (4:10)
Yet, as many similarities exist in the two tales of brotherly conflict, so there are differences. We never know what words were spoken in the field between Cain and Abel, prior to Abel’s murder. We do know the deliberations of Joseph’s brothers filled with their jealousy, their anger, their humiliation. God knows what took place between Cain and Abel and calls Cain to account. But Jacob is deceived and unable to provide any larger parental wisdom. And finally, most significantly, Abel is killed. Joseph lives.
If the story of Cain and Abel is a cautionary tale about fratricide, about loosening the bonds of brotherhood so fully that a brother causes a sibling’s death, then the parallels between these two tales suggest that Joseph and his brothers offers a different, a more felicitous ending. The parallels between these two tales direct us to the possibility of reconciliation, of forgiveness, while not denying the depth of violence and hatred possible between brothers. Early on in Genesis, we are taught of Abel’s death. But Genesis does not end with Cain killing Abel. Genesis moves toward reconciliation. Genesis does not end with fratricide. Genesis ends with forgiveness.
On this Memorial Day weekend, when we mourn the loss of those brothers and sisters who died before it was possible to reconcile with an enemy, before armistice, before the cessation of war, before hatred could give way to understanding, let us learn the lessons of Genesis, the lessons of Joseph, ever mindful of the tragedy of Cain and Abel. Let us live our lives so that not fratricide, but forgiveness prevails, so that our circle of kin can grow ever larger. Let us live our lives so that we can learn to speak, to hear and to embody words of peace. Shalom Aleichem. Salaam Alekum. Pax Tekum. Peace be upon you.
[i] Raphael Ahren, “Seeing the Holy in the Profanities”Haaretz,