Vayeshev
This Shabbat we are reading the most important parashah in the Torah, Vayeshev (Gen. 37:1-40:23). This is a pretty lofty statement, I know. But, think about it. If Joseph’s brothers did not push him into a pit and sell him into slavery he would not have ended up in Egypt. He would not have become number two to Pharaoh. He would not have invited his brothers and father to come dwell with him in Egypt during the famine.
If Jacob’s children did not go down into Egypt, their decedents would not have been enslaved by a Pharaoh that “did not know Joseph.” If the Israelites were not enslaved, they would not have been miraculously redeemed from Egypt by God with an outstretched arm. And, if they were not redeemed by God from Egypt, the children of Israel would never have wandered to Sinai to receive the Torah. So, you see that our whole sacred story depended on Joseph being pushed into that pit.
Not only is this the most important parashah of all the parshiot in the Torah, this parashah has the most important character in all of the Torah. This character, though, doesn’t even have a name. Let me read to you from chapter 37:12-17 in Genesis:
“One time, when his brothers had gone to pasture their father’s flock at Shechem, Israel said to Joseph, ‘Your bothers are pasturing at Shechem. Come, I will send you to them.’ He answered, ‘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’ . . . When [Joseph] reached Shechem, (here comes the most important character) a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, ‘What are you looking for?’ He answered, ‘I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?’ The man said, ‘They have gone from here, for I heard them said: Let us go to Dotan.’ So Joseph followed his brothers and found them at Dotan.”
So there you have it. The most important character in the Torah. Without him inquiring of Joseph about what he was looking for, Joseph would have never found his brothers. We don’t know his name. The Torah only calls him in Hebrew, Ish—a man. Who was he? A Midrash says that he was a messenger of God sent there to make sure that our people’s holy destiny was played out.
I would like to give a kind of Hassidic interpretation to this. The man, ha-ish, was God, for every human, every ish, is part of the oneness in the world that is God. We are told in the first parashah of the Torah, Bereishit, that humans are created in the image of God. To the mystics, this means that we are all together part of the greater whole that is God. This is written about beautifully in a poem by Abraham Joshua Heschel. The poem in Yiddish is called “Ich und Du,” “I and You.” It is part of a collection that he wrote in his youth in Warsaw called “HaShem M’forash: Mentch.” “The Ineffable Name of God: Man.” “Mentch” in Yiddish and German means the same as the non-name of our important character—Ish, a man, a human.
Here is Morton M. Leifman’s tanslation of Heschel’s poem:
I and You
Transmissions flow from your heart to Mine,
trading, twining my pain with yours.
Am I not–you? Are you not–I?
My nerves are clustered with Yours.
Your dreams have met with mine.
Are we not onie in the bodies of millions?
Often I glimpse Myself in everyone’s form,
hear My own speech–a distant, quiet voice–in people’s
weeping,
as if under millions of masks My face would lie hidden.
I live in Me and in you.
Through your lips goes a word from Me to Me,
from your eyes drips a tear–its source in Me.
When a need pains You, alarm me!
When You miss a human bein
tear open my door!
You live in Yourself, You live in me.
The person we just happen to run into on the street for directions is an image of God (or to be radical like Heschel, is God), and those directions, like in the Joseph story, make history. History is made, and God is encountered, in our everyday interactions.
