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Now, on the offchance that anyone's interested in hearing me wittering on about parshat Miktez, I'm putting it up here. Behind cuts.
In Parashat Miktez, we hear Paro's retelling of his dream to Yosef. Something interesting there is how what Paro says about his dream is different from how the Torah described the dream, earlier in the chapter. The Torah gives us a narrative; when Paro absorbs that narrative and communicates it to another human being, he factors it through the prism of his own experience.
Narrative: Two years passed, and Paro dreamed: he was standing by the Nile, and he saw seven beautiful healthy cows coming up from the Nile, and they fed among the reeds. Then, seven more cows came up from the Nile after them – these were scrawny and ill-favoured – and stood next to the cows by the river. And the scrawny, ill-favoured cows ate up the seven beautiful healthy cows – and Paro awoke.
Paro slept, and dreamed again a second time: seven nice plump ears of barley grew on one stalk. Then, seven thin, scorched ears of barley grew up after them, and the thin scorched ears swallowed up the plump, ripe ears. And Paro awoke, and it was a dream.
Retelling: Paro said to Yosef:
In my dream I was standing by the Nile. Then, seven healthy, beautiful cows came up from the Nile and fed among the reeds. Then, seven more cows came up from the Nile after them, scrawny and ill-favoured; I never saw ones as bad as those in all Egpyt. And the nasty thin cows ate up the first cows, the healthy ones, but when they had eaten them all up, you couldn't tell that they'd eaten them – they were just as scrawny as they were before – and then I woke up. And [then] I saw in my dream seven ears of barley growing on one stalk, nice and plump. Then seven withered, thin, scorched ears grew up after them, and the thin ears swallowed up the nice ears...
When Paro tells his dream over to Yosef, he changes details. He adds adjectives, he interpolates bits of commentary – detail – and the thing is that in dreams, details can be quite important. One source has Yosef picking up on these details – every time Paro adds something that wasn't precisely in the dream, Josef says hey wait, no it wasn't. If Paro wants an accurate interpretation, Yosef needs the precise dream – Paro knows this, so we must conclude that he doesn't think his little additions are significant. Perhaps he's not even aware he's doing it – but the extra commentary he adds undoubtedly gives a different cast to the story. How we see things depends on who we are.
Sometimes, I think, this inevitable filtering of events through human consciousness has the power to destabilise communities. I'd like to bring a reflection on the weekday readings for Hanukah. The Torah readings for Hanukah are taken from parshat Naso, where the theme is the dedication of the first altar. A leader of each tribe brings an offering:
And he who offered his offering the first day was Nahshon the son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah; And his offering was one silver dish, the weight of it was a hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them were full of fine flour mixed with oil for a meal offering; One spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense; One young bull, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering; One kid of the goats for a sin offering; And for a sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five lambs of the first year; this was the offering of Nahshon the son of Amminadab.
The Torah repeats this identical paragraph twelve times. This gets – to be totally honest – rather boring, particularly if you're a scribe. Even the great biblical commentators ran out of things to say about this part of the Torah. The details simply aren't that interesting. One might go so far as to say that it seems really quite pointless. But evidently it was important to have down in writing the exact details. It does make it absolutely, undeniably clear that every tribe made exactly the same offering – if one tribe later on added an adjective here and there, like Paro did in his dream telling, perhaps not thinking it was of any significance - “one really nice silver dish” - this might have made one tribe's offering seem better than another's, when it was important to emphasise that each tribe was equal in what they brought to God. The tribes went their different ways once they were established in the land of Israel – in terms of numbers, occupations, aggression, assimilation, wealth – but here the Torah makes the unavoidable point that no matter what they did with themselves afterwards, what they dedicated to God was the same for each. The immediate analogy is clear, here – we as Jews go our different ways, but what we dedicate to God from within ourselves is fundamentally the same. The broader analogy returns to the content – sometimes context is the thing, not content.
Finally, this week's section also tells of the famine in Egypt, a famine which spread throughout the region, as far as eretz Cana'an. Jacob and his eleven remaining sons (Yosef being in Egypt) suffer from the famine, but hearing that there is food to be had in Egpyt, Jacob sends his ten oldest sons to Egpyt to obtain supplies.
Now, Yosef is in charge of distribution, so when the ten brothers arrive, it's Yosef they meet. Yosef recognises them, but they don't recognise Yosef – and the story then takes a bizarre turn; Yosef pretends not to recognise them, and gives them a really hard time. He is mean to them. וידבר אתם קשות, Torah says. He accuses them of being spies, doesn't believe their protestations of innocence, and generally messes them around. It's really rather problematic behaviour, and there's not really much clue in the Torah as to what's going on there. Yosef appears like a rather nasty bit of work, abusing his power and being unpleasant.
But Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, gives us another perspective: Yosef is scared. Here's Josephus: '...this he did in order...to know what was become of Benjamin his brother; for he was afraid that they had ventured on the like wicked enterprise against him that they had done to himself, and had taken him off also.' He's scared to ask, so he hides behind a show of power. I thought this was tremendously illuminating, because up until the other day I realy didn't like Yosef very much; I thought he had some bad attitude problems and was generally a rather nasty person. Josephus gives me a clue to the human behind the nasty behaviour. Yosef's actions are perplexing, but if we understand Yosef as a human being, we come to understand him. I believe very strongly in pluralism, and in trying to judge people favourably, but this week I realised that I've had a long-standing dislike of Yosef, and I haven't tried to judge him favourably – so over the next few weeks I'm looking forward to reading and writing the rest of the Yosef narrative with this new view in mind.
I've also had a long-standing dislike of Hanukah. Historically, what happened? The Maccabees had a military victory against Greek culture; they immediately did what the Greeks did when they had military victories, i.e. instituted a festival, and then went on a fanatical anti-assimilation trip and ended up killing people who didn't play along. I had a major problem with that! Then, historians teach us today, the rabbis weren't so keen on that, so they chose to downplay the military bit and emphasise that really Hanukah was about miracles and God. Fair enough, but I had a problem with that too – it didn't seem a very good use of liturgy. So then I thought, what if it wasn't that? What if it was the religious leadership seeing that despite starting out with decent intentions, the military leadership was getting it all HORRIBLY WRONG - I don't suppose the people were especially happy with the unpleasant zealousness of the Maccabees, nor with the dawning realisation that this was not going to work out well - I wonder if the miracle story served to pull attention away from a leadership which was increasingly ineffective and increasingly out of control, and give the people something to focus on other than fanaticism? That certainly makes the rabbis seem less like apologeticists and more like brilliant leaders.
The thing is that Hanukah is another example of an event which acquired layers of meaning in the telling. I'm coming to realise that just because I don't like the interpretation I've heard doesn't mean there isn't something else. There are as many prisms of human experience as there are humans, like Paro and his dream. Events have a way of altering themselves through layers of human experience, as hinted at by the list of offerings and as shown by the different meanings put on Hanukah. And sometimes our prisms of understanding are affected by things we don't show others – with Yosef it's fear, but there are all kinds of things we don't necessarily understand that affect how other people act. This parsha, and Hanukah, are reminding me that there are always more ways to try to understand people.
It's a journey. Isn't everything.
In Parashat Miktez, we hear Paro's retelling of his dream to Yosef. Something interesting there is how what Paro says about his dream is different from how the Torah described the dream, earlier in the chapter. The Torah gives us a narrative; when Paro absorbs that narrative and communicates it to another human being, he factors it through the prism of his own experience.
Narrative: Two years passed, and Paro dreamed: he was standing by the Nile, and he saw seven beautiful healthy cows coming up from the Nile, and they fed among the reeds. Then, seven more cows came up from the Nile after them – these were scrawny and ill-favoured – and stood next to the cows by the river. And the scrawny, ill-favoured cows ate up the seven beautiful healthy cows – and Paro awoke.
Paro slept, and dreamed again a second time: seven nice plump ears of barley grew on one stalk. Then, seven thin, scorched ears of barley grew up after them, and the thin scorched ears swallowed up the plump, ripe ears. And Paro awoke, and it was a dream.
Retelling: Paro said to Yosef:
In my dream I was standing by the Nile. Then, seven healthy, beautiful cows came up from the Nile and fed among the reeds. Then, seven more cows came up from the Nile after them, scrawny and ill-favoured; I never saw ones as bad as those in all Egpyt. And the nasty thin cows ate up the first cows, the healthy ones, but when they had eaten them all up, you couldn't tell that they'd eaten them – they were just as scrawny as they were before – and then I woke up. And [then] I saw in my dream seven ears of barley growing on one stalk, nice and plump. Then seven withered, thin, scorched ears grew up after them, and the thin ears swallowed up the nice ears...
When Paro tells his dream over to Yosef, he changes details. He adds adjectives, he interpolates bits of commentary – detail – and the thing is that in dreams, details can be quite important. One source has Yosef picking up on these details – every time Paro adds something that wasn't precisely in the dream, Josef says hey wait, no it wasn't. If Paro wants an accurate interpretation, Yosef needs the precise dream – Paro knows this, so we must conclude that he doesn't think his little additions are significant. Perhaps he's not even aware he's doing it – but the extra commentary he adds undoubtedly gives a different cast to the story. How we see things depends on who we are.
Sometimes, I think, this inevitable filtering of events through human consciousness has the power to destabilise communities. I'd like to bring a reflection on the weekday readings for Hanukah. The Torah readings for Hanukah are taken from parshat Naso, where the theme is the dedication of the first altar. A leader of each tribe brings an offering:
And he who offered his offering the first day was Nahshon the son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah; And his offering was one silver dish, the weight of it was a hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them were full of fine flour mixed with oil for a meal offering; One spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense; One young bull, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering; One kid of the goats for a sin offering; And for a sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five lambs of the first year; this was the offering of Nahshon the son of Amminadab.
The Torah repeats this identical paragraph twelve times. This gets – to be totally honest – rather boring, particularly if you're a scribe. Even the great biblical commentators ran out of things to say about this part of the Torah. The details simply aren't that interesting. One might go so far as to say that it seems really quite pointless. But evidently it was important to have down in writing the exact details. It does make it absolutely, undeniably clear that every tribe made exactly the same offering – if one tribe later on added an adjective here and there, like Paro did in his dream telling, perhaps not thinking it was of any significance - “one really nice silver dish” - this might have made one tribe's offering seem better than another's, when it was important to emphasise that each tribe was equal in what they brought to God. The tribes went their different ways once they were established in the land of Israel – in terms of numbers, occupations, aggression, assimilation, wealth – but here the Torah makes the unavoidable point that no matter what they did with themselves afterwards, what they dedicated to God was the same for each. The immediate analogy is clear, here – we as Jews go our different ways, but what we dedicate to God from within ourselves is fundamentally the same. The broader analogy returns to the content – sometimes context is the thing, not content.
Finally, this week's section also tells of the famine in Egypt, a famine which spread throughout the region, as far as eretz Cana'an. Jacob and his eleven remaining sons (Yosef being in Egypt) suffer from the famine, but hearing that there is food to be had in Egpyt, Jacob sends his ten oldest sons to Egpyt to obtain supplies.
Now, Yosef is in charge of distribution, so when the ten brothers arrive, it's Yosef they meet. Yosef recognises them, but they don't recognise Yosef – and the story then takes a bizarre turn; Yosef pretends not to recognise them, and gives them a really hard time. He is mean to them. וידבר אתם קשות, Torah says. He accuses them of being spies, doesn't believe their protestations of innocence, and generally messes them around. It's really rather problematic behaviour, and there's not really much clue in the Torah as to what's going on there. Yosef appears like a rather nasty bit of work, abusing his power and being unpleasant.
But Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, gives us another perspective: Yosef is scared. Here's Josephus: '...this he did in order...to know what was become of Benjamin his brother; for he was afraid that they had ventured on the like wicked enterprise against him that they had done to himself, and had taken him off also.' He's scared to ask, so he hides behind a show of power. I thought this was tremendously illuminating, because up until the other day I realy didn't like Yosef very much; I thought he had some bad attitude problems and was generally a rather nasty person. Josephus gives me a clue to the human behind the nasty behaviour. Yosef's actions are perplexing, but if we understand Yosef as a human being, we come to understand him. I believe very strongly in pluralism, and in trying to judge people favourably, but this week I realised that I've had a long-standing dislike of Yosef, and I haven't tried to judge him favourably – so over the next few weeks I'm looking forward to reading and writing the rest of the Yosef narrative with this new view in mind.
I've also had a long-standing dislike of Hanukah. Historically, what happened? The Maccabees had a military victory against Greek culture; they immediately did what the Greeks did when they had military victories, i.e. instituted a festival, and then went on a fanatical anti-assimilation trip and ended up killing people who didn't play along. I had a major problem with that! Then, historians teach us today, the rabbis weren't so keen on that, so they chose to downplay the military bit and emphasise that really Hanukah was about miracles and God. Fair enough, but I had a problem with that too – it didn't seem a very good use of liturgy. So then I thought, what if it wasn't that? What if it was the religious leadership seeing that despite starting out with decent intentions, the military leadership was getting it all HORRIBLY WRONG - I don't suppose the people were especially happy with the unpleasant zealousness of the Maccabees, nor with the dawning realisation that this was not going to work out well - I wonder if the miracle story served to pull attention away from a leadership which was increasingly ineffective and increasingly out of control, and give the people something to focus on other than fanaticism? That certainly makes the rabbis seem less like apologeticists and more like brilliant leaders.
The thing is that Hanukah is another example of an event which acquired layers of meaning in the telling. I'm coming to realise that just because I don't like the interpretation I've heard doesn't mean there isn't something else. There are as many prisms of human experience as there are humans, like Paro and his dream. Events have a way of altering themselves through layers of human experience, as hinted at by the list of offerings and as shown by the different meanings put on Hanukah. And sometimes our prisms of understanding are affected by things we don't show others – with Yosef it's fear, but there are all kinds of things we don't necessarily understand that affect how other people act. This parsha, and Hanukah, are reminding me that there are always more ways to try to understand people.
It's a journey. Isn't everything.
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