Being special

D’var Torah Vayeshev

Dec 20, 2024

Part 1: Intro

During this part of the year, we are on a marathon of sibling rivalry stories. 

Cain and Abel

Isaac and Ishmael

Jacob and Esau

Sarah and Leah 

You might start to think the Torah has some kind of preoccupation with the comparison and conflicts of siblings. 

Something it’s trying to work out. Generation after generation. Story after story. 

Part 2: Summary of the parsha

This week, we find ourselves with Joseph and his brothers. We are in Act 1 of “Joseph and the Technicolored Dream Coat”. If you aren’t familiar with the story (or the musical/movie) the basic premise is that Jacob, Joseph’s father, loves him the most of all his children and gifts him a multicolored coat.

This is, understandably, upsetting to Joseph’s 11 other brothers. Joseph only makes it worse by sharing his dreams in which his family is bowing down to him. The brothers can’t take it anymore, they decide to throw him in a pit and sell him to slavery. 

Now in Egypt, Joseph becomes the slave of Potifar. Again, he seems to get a little bit too much attention, this time from Potifar’s wife, who wants to sleep with him and when he repeatedly rejects her, she accuses him of making advances at her and Potifar throws him in jail.  

While in jail, Joseph returns to dreams again, interpreting the dreams of the other prisoners. This time, correctly predicting the success of one man and the death of another.

Joseph is gifted. His is literally given gifts that others are not. He clearly has a knack for interpreting dreams and even predicting the future. He is even “well-built and handsome”. And all of this makes him both admired and a target. 

Part 3: How is the favoritism bad? How is it good? 

The tradition seems pretty firm that Joseph’s superiority is bad for everyone involved. The commentators even say that the jealousy of the brothers for Joseph is what ultimately leads to the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt many years down the line. 

Yet (apologies for spoiling Act 2) we would be remiss not to mention that Joseph’s superiority, the brothers jealousy, and the ensuing story also saves the family from the impending famine. The enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt is only possible because Joseph and his brothers reunite, and he helps them survive the upcoming seven years of famine. 

Part 4: Gila

I’m not particularly competitive with my brothers. But I have one friend who is like a sister to me. When I am feeling down, her extroversion, ability to love, emotional intelligence become bothersome to me. I admire her and find myself lesser next to her. She is more graceful, more generous than me.

We’ve come a long way in our friendship. But recently, we recently talking and I was telling her about Community Shabbat. I found myself shrinking it so as to not provoke jealousy in her. Projecting my own assumption of comparison onto her. 

And she said something beautiful to me. She said “The bigger you are the more invitation I have to be big.”

The more special you are, the more special I get to be. The more you honor your fullness the more I can honor mine. No one needs to pretend to be less or more. 

Part 5: Two options

I find that we seem to be presented with only two options: shrinking or supremacizing. 

This is true on many levels of our lives. 

The need to compare is ever present and someone is always better, someone always worse. 

Part 6: Where is God?

In our Torah portion, God doesn’t do any of the choosing. It is only the humans who constantly compete. 

Instead, God shows up in two other places. First, God shows up when Joseph is at his lowest, imprisoned in Egypt, to be of comfort. As it says, “YHVH was with Joseph, extending kindness to him.”

Second, God is the source of the gift. it is God working through Joseph to interpret the dreams. As Joseph says “surely God can interpret”.  God is the source of the specialness.

God is almost buffering both sides:  

I am here when you are low. I am here when you are powerful. 

I won’t let you fall. I won’t let you get too bold. 

I won’t let you not be the true special person that you are. I won’t let you not be gifted. I won’t let you be less or more than anyone else because that would compromise your true beauty. 

Hierarchy is destructive. But specialness is undeniable. 

The balance between the two poles of supremacy and shrinking is the spiritual work, the places we need God. 

How can I fully live out my specialness, right here in the middle?