Virtuous Joseph – Nationmaker
By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF
“Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.” Genesis 15:13
Have we ever considered that the morality of Joseph, son of Jacob, determined the destiny of the Jewish people? You might even say that the fate of the Judeo-Christian world hinged on the character of Joseph, son of Hebrew shepherds. History held her breath. Judaism and Christianity were at stake.
I refer to that pivotal incident when Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. Remember that with the exception of Moses, Joseph is the sun, moon, and stars of the biblical galaxy. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Solomon – good people, but many of them struck with flaws still to be seen in all of mankind, which is only to say that they were not perfect. Joseph comes close. And with world-shaping results.
The proof? Potiphar’s wife – Joseph’s boss’s wife – sees Joe doing his work one day. WOW! Goes her feminine heart. “Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance,” says the Chumash. A singular statement made about no other character. Potiphar’s wife is a blunt-speaking lady: “Come lie with me,” she purrs. Instead of ripping off his clothes (Joe hesitates for a nanosecond – he is human, you know) – he replies with a speech that cites his obligations (and gratitude to Potiphar) – none of which includes pleasuring his wife. Joseph, in an age of lascivious misbehavior, has a soul pure white as snow. The
wife, probably an ex-street walker, screams rape. (She’s so unimportant we don’t get her name unless it’s “Heyuu”.) But she grabs a chunk of his sleeve.
The libidinous ex-street walker swears that he assaulted her. (Look at his sleeve!) Joe claims his innocence, but who is going to believe a slave? Joe finds himself in jail where he enters the dream interpretation business. Business booms and our ex-prisoner finds himself in Pharaoh’s court. They need a dream reader. You know the rest of the story – how, eventually, he brings his family to Egypt. They prosper and grow until that pharaoh who knew not Joe enslaves the Israelites.
What follows? The Exodus, Sinai, Torah – all of which made Judaism and the world as we know it.
All because of Jacob’s son’s virtue. It’s incredible that one man who turned his back on lust and disloyalty could shape our world. Yes, generals have politically carved new nations on the globe with their martial skills. And politicians have drawn new maps and great
collectives of similarly-minded people and constructed new nations.
But it’s hard to find a single act of virtue that has created a people and their mission – a mission so fitting to their charter – a provenance built in the resistance to treachery and rejection of lustful love. Put it any way you like: Tikuun Olam – a lamp to a barbaric world. When Joseph said “no” to temptation, G-d smiled and future Napoleans, Caesars, and even Einsteins were diminished.
And Joe’s weapon was not muskets or theology, but intellect.
It seems unnecessary to point out that had he yielded to his normal desires, the most explosive event in history – the Epiphany at Sinai – would never have happened. Fate would not have pushed him into the ruling circle at Egypt. Pharaoh would have said “no” to a few dozen starving sheepherders from Canaan who wanted grazing land in Egypt.
And Judaism would be a footnote to history.
The sheepherders, yes, were enslaved. But their trek to freedom, lit by the lamp of G-d, encountered Torah and brightened the world. A man had made a nation.
