The dream within a dream

1.

The ancient texts that we will read this Shabbat are living words that hold true even now. The ancient feud between the sons of Leah and the sons of Rachel that led to a split between the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel is not over: Throughout history, it just changed its form. We can see it in the complex tensions – that are both consuming and fruitful at the same time – between the religious and national foundations that compose our collective personality.

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The saga in the House of Jacob reaches its climax. Joseph, who re-appears as an Egyptian ruler, blames Benjamin for stealing his silver cup and is about to leave him in Egypt as a slave. The perplexed brothers do not argue and accept his judgment. "God has uncovered the iniquity of your servants" (Genesis 44:16). It is not you but the account that has remained unsettled for 22 years since we sold our brother. Like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), who seeks to cleanse himself and atone for murder, and therefore consciously and unconsciously aims to be caught. "The Creditor has found an opportunity to collect His debt" (Rashi). But the Egyptian insists: it is only Benjamin who stole.

On the face of it, a dead end. Rachel and Joseph are gone, and now Benjamin. Has the end come for the House of Rachel? It is very tempting for the brothers to think that they are "on the right side of history," and the laws of selection that pushed Ishmael and Esau out of the family, also apply to the House of Rachel. But Judah had prepared for this moment ever since he proposed to his brothers that they should sell Joseph, and in the face of his grieving father and the family that was falling apart. He understands that the family cannot exist without all its branches, and without Benjamin, there is no future for the Abrahamic dream. Thus, he promises to look after him: "I myself will be surety for him; you may hold me responsible: if I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever." Jacob hears in Judah's promise a deep reconciliation with the decisive place of Rachel in the existence of the House of Israel. "All Israel are responsible for one another."

2.

Joseph dreams that the brothers bow to him. The meaning of the dream is the annulment of tribal familial sectionalism and recognition that the greater national ideal in whose name Abraham went from his homeland and from the land of his fathers to the Land of Israel: "I will make of you a great nation" (Gen. 12:2). The sale of Joseph constituted an abandonment of the national dream and relapse into sullen tribalism in competition over who was the Chosen One. In his speech, Judah gives himself up for Benjamin's sake: "Please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers" (Gen. 44:33). Leah's eldest son gives up his life for the last representative of the House of Rachel; that is, for the national idea.

Joseph for his part learns to recognize his responsibility. Judah's speech together with his own life experiences teach him that he too had a part in the brothers' decision to sell him, because of the thought that everything revolves around him and his desire to postpone the end and push his brothers against the wall. He understands that it is not the rivalry between Leah and Rachel that stands at the center of the conflict, but the rivalry between him and his brothers, which he too nurtured and poured fuel on the fire of hatred.

3.

Who are Judah's words aimed at? Not only at the Egyptian ruler; he also speaks to his brothers, his partners in the drama. He certainly also addresses his words to God: even if he chastises them for the sorrow they have caused, they do not despair and do not give up. They will move heaven and earth and look for every crack in the mighty wall erected as a barrier between their family. Judah jumps into the pit to rescue his brother. That is why his words are also directed at their brother Joseph, wherever he may be, to tell him that they are here to redeem him. And if they don't find him, they will at least redeem his brother Benjamin, who was born of the same mother, Rachel. From behind the mask of an Egyptian leader, the words echo in his soul like the sound of water washing away the anger and hatred that have grown stronger over the years.

Judah's words are also directed at the tribes of Israel: the southern kingdom (The House of Leah) and the northern kingdom (The House of Rachel), Judah and Ephraim. It was these divisions that were the dagger that brought about the destruction of the First Temple in the sixth century BCE. The prophet Ezekiel heard the despair of the Babylonian exiles: "Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed" (Ezekiel 37:11). Indeed, from where could they draw hope? They did not know about the possibility of redemption after the exile, and were afraid they would disappear from the map of history

Thus, Ezekiel makes his prophecy of the dry bones that are resurrected and become a mass that can march to the Land of Israel and restore past glories: "I am going to open your graves and lift you out of the graves, O My people, and bring you to the land of Israel… I will put My breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil" (Ezekiel 37:12-14).

Some 2,500 years later, the poet Naftali Herz Imber corresponded with similar feelings among the Jews of his time and authored a poem to lift their spirits: "Our hope is not yet lost." The words of the national anthem are based on Ezekiel's vision of redemption. But hope does not end with a return to the Land of Israel. The prophecy of Ezekiel continues: "Thus said the Lord God: I am going to take the stick of Joseph—which is in the hand of Ephraim—and of the tribes of Israel associated with him, and I will place the stick of Judah upon it^- and make them into one stick; they shall be joined in My hand… I am going to take the Israelite people from among the nations they have gone to, and gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land… I will make them a single nation in the land... Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms" (Ezekiel 37:19-22).

4.

Judah also speaks to us, citizens of the State of Israel, descendants of the Jews who returned to Zion. Judah and Israel (Joseph) are the two sides of the coin of our identity: the Jew and the Israeli. In order to get Joseph to drop his mask and reveal himself – and vice versa, to make Judah emerge from sectarian tribalism – each side must be willing to sacrifice itself to save the other; just as is happening today in Gaza. This is the imperative of the prophecy that rhymes with the history of our people: We as a society must not give up on each other, even if our differences are deep and difficult. We complement each other.

5.

In the depth of the dreams of the Book of Genesis lies the great dream of our elder Abraham in the Covenant Between the Parts (Genesis (15. Even if we are exiled ("Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed…"), at the end of the historical process we shall return home: "And they shall return here in the fourth generation…"  This dream fed and nurtured the dream of the generations: "When the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion – we see it as in a dream" (Psalms 126:1). A dream not just in the sense of desire and longing, but as a deep historical current that pushes reality towards its purpose, and our people to its destiny and homeland. This in the face of all those who would fight against us: "Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn" (Genesis 32:25). Even if we remain eternally isolated and great forces wrestle against, "He sets bounds to darkness" (Job 28:3) and the dawn shall rise. "Exultation shall reign, ah, for night's on the wane, on Abaddon's joy shines the light. Ah for night's on the wane, its joy ancient appears, maybe. Brethren! This once in a thousand years for our death there is morning's light!"  wrote Alterman in his prophetic poem "Joy of the Poor" in the face of the Nazi army on its way to the Land of Israel.

There is a fateful historiosophical lesson here that the book of Genesis teaches us: Although we act by force of our will and deal with unfolding private and national events, beneath the surface there are larger and deeper forces at work that, from a historical perspective, create a different and more significant picture than the one we see in front of us in the here and now. Then the masks are removed and the redemptive cry is heard: "I am Joseph, does my father yet live?"

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