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Parashat Miketz
Essays and Articles:
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?חכמה ונבואה או נבואה חכמה
Wisdom and Prophecy or Wise Prophecy? Rabbi Haim Lifshitz
Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai "After God has informed you of all of this, there is no one as insightful and as wise as you are." Again we stand before the same riddle – the encounter between the two tracks: "And Yosef answered Paro, saying: Biladai 'I do not enter into it. God will answer for the peace of Paro.'" What sort of answer is this? If Yosef is claiming he is not the person they want, why does he continue to express his views? Why does he continue to interpret the dream? Was his answer merely a polite gesture of yirat shamayim, like those people who have "God's magnificence is in their throats," who say b'ezrat Hashem, baruch Hashem, please God, thank God, God willing, and then immediately switch over to the practical-existential track, having paid their lip service, instead of their heart's service? It seems Yosef wants to explain to Paro that he is not the dream craftsman Paro might have understood him to be. He does not hold the keys to the secrets known to the sorcerers, who take a professional approach, who analyze a dream item by item. Yosef has no dealings with dreams, nor is he a miracle worker by profession. His single occupation is the worship of his Creator. More exactly, he deals with connecting the extremes, with creating an encounter between the dimension of height and the dimension of reality, through use of the three-staged human structure. Yosef is preoccupied with closing the circle that connects the higher view from above and bringing it into earthly existence, by applying the higher meanings to the lower track. In the dimension of prophetic dreams, a force of gravity is at work, in which the dreamer exerts a pull toward the earth, drawing down heaven's higher meanings in order to clothe them in a tangible earthly event. We could also say metaphorically that the dream constitutes a pre-reality encounter, in which the dreamer's view of reality rises and pierces through the plane of tangibility to meet the heavenly meanings that are descending to earth for the purpose of becoming Godly presence in the real world. Only someone who deals with this, someone whose work is expediting the encounter between the two tracks, is capable of interpreting this particular dream – this particular point of encounter. It is only for this reason, Yosef explains, that his interpretation will be different from those of all the professional dream interpreters. Biladai – I do not enter into it in the sense that you think. I have no technical capacity to interpret a dream. I do not have a professional methodology with which to approach the specific features of the dream phenomenon per se`. My view of your dream is a view of encounter – between heaven's track and earth's track. So in this, man himself becomes a point of encounter. Man's Godly abilities are expressed, because these abilities are not a localized or incidental phenomenon, but rather an encounter between the Godly track and a human being who has refined his Godly quality, and purified it of mechanical and material limitations. This refinement and this encounter comes about through amal hayira – "the toil of awe", an effort which demands the most of the tsadik's intellectual and spiritual capacities. Paro comprehends Yosef's explanation. He comprehends the structure – the dynamic process towards completion, towards closing the perfect circle – which merges human wisdom with Godly wisdom to become a single entity of perfect Godly presence. In this spirit we can better understand Paro's apparently contradictory remarks: In pasuk 38, "Is there to be found such a man, that the spirit of God is in him?" and immediately in the following phrase: "After God has informed you of all this, there is no one as insightful and as wise as you are." Meaning, only someone "insightful", who understands the ways of encounter between the two tracks, and someone "wise", who knows and recognizes the human structure through which the ways of Divine Providence connect with the ways of reality, only "such a man" is privileged to be the one through whom the Creator sends his messages to the world. This explains what otherwise seems to be brazenness on Yosef's part, for he freely and doubly expresses his opinion: Not only does Yosef tell Paro the rules of the ways of the Creator, but he also tells him how these rules should be applied to real-world systems and pragmatic patterns – it is a combination of diagnosis, prognosis, and prescription. Indeed the Torah forbids separating theory from practice. "The reader of the epistle will be the one who saves us from our quandary," meaning the messenger bringing and reading out the document must also be its executor. Paro understood this. Therefore he put Yosef, the wise and insightful one, in charge of the practical management of his kingdom. Why did Yosef delay in sending his father the good news that he was alive, once he had risen to power? "And were it not for this, Yosef would have sinned a great sin, to cause his father sorrow, and to leave him for many days in a state of bereavement and mourning over Shimon and himself, and even if it had been his will to somewhat distress his brothers, how could he not have had pity on his father's white hair? However, everything was done by him properly at its right moment, in order to fulfill the dreams, because he knew that they would be fulfilled in truth." (Ramban 42:8) It is not clear from the words of the commentaries why Yosef attributed such tremendous importance to the fulfillment of the dreams – to the extent that they were given greater weight than the need to honor his father. However, according to the principle discussed above, it was by way of the dream that Yosef extracted the connection that unified the two tracks. It was the dream that was the sign of reconciliation between the two tracks, on their journey toward their ideal of actualizing God's presence in the world. Yosef understood that his father had chosen him among all his brothers, to thus complete his father's task in the world: That the peril must be prevented from running its ruinous course - that a separation between the ideal Godly track and its actualization on the track of existence must not be permitted. Yosef perceived this separation to be the dangerous error of his brothers, for they had sat and judged him, and had found him guilty and had condemned him to death based upon the sublime principles of heavenly truth. They had ignored their father's teachings, their father's Torah, for he had labored all his life to make truth come down to earth, to join the tracks into one, and to bring the track of the higher element into the mundane realities of existence. Yosef realized that even so, it would not have been enough. The mission had not yet been accomplished. It was not enough to bring truth down from heaven to earth – to the ground. It would be necessary to plant truth in man's heart; truth needed to be grown in the human garden. Only then could it also be absorbed by man's emotions and by his rational understanding, only then would one heart see through to another's heart, based upon the sublime principles of truth. Only under these conditions could peace dwell and love reign between man and his fellow, having immersed themselves in truth's purifying waters. Yosef understood that the dreams coming true and his brothers admitting to the truth of the dreams were a necessary pre-condition to his brothers' understanding of their role in the world. Yosef was compelled to restrain his compassion for them and his love for his father in order to bring this human truth down to earth. Even his accusation that they were spies was designed to demonstrate the extent to which reality can deteriorate. Despite reality being supported by clear-cut facts solidly anchored in pristine logic, it can still bump into absurdity's stone wall to become crying idiotic injustice. This is the danger of honest stupidity. The by-the-book, strict-letter-of-the-law fool can become vicious, if his viciousness is supported – as Lavan's was in his time – by high-sounding ideals that float in theory's lofty heavens, that ignore the lowly earthly realm of a theory's practical effects. The "insightful and wise" one knows that truth must pass the test of human reality. Only under reality's conditions is truth put to the true test of good and evil. In contrast, the brothers saw the dream as some sort of mystical reality derived from an alien source (as in alien worship – avoda zara) that was neither in heaven nor on earth. Rather it was the perversion of a nefesh habahamit (an animalistic soul) who did not obey reality's rules because he found existence too hard and he wished to escape reality and to ignore reality's rules of logic, while at the same time ignoring the sources of Godly truth as well. Indeed, "there is no dream without irrelevant things". This refers to the usual dream, which normally expresses an emotional experience that the dreamer finds difficult to digest. However, as the Or HaHaim HaKadosh remarks on "that the dream was repeated twice," there is a category of dreams that have real substance, that express a message sent from heaven to the dreamer and to those near him. This is the dream that Yosef, in his insight, perceived: It was a link connecting the two tracks – a dream that expresses the truth that flourishes in the garden of the human heart. The brothers find it difficult to renounce the linear laws of logic. They find it difficult to accept Yosef's stubborn insistence on seeing Binyamin. Is that a reasonable cause for him to believe them? Is that the only possible sign that they are telling the truth? Does the story of the old father and the little child of his old age (who is himself a father of ten!) provide such vital and positive proof of their honesty or of the reliability of their claim that they are not spies? Yet curiously enough – perhaps because they have no choice – they accept Yosef's claim. They do not suspect his intentions, just as they did not suspect him when he asked if their father was well, and after asking if the father was well, added "is he yet alive," although if he was well he is probably yet alive. So, too, they do not suspect Yosef when they are accused of gross theft, of stealing the money that was found in their parcels, nor do they suspect him when he imprisons Shimon. Not only do they not suspect Yosef, but they accept his abuse of them and blame themselves, for their sin of the distant past, their selling of Yosef. In this self-accusation they focus upon their own cruelty, their own ignoring of what was precisely the human aspect of the situation, though they remain confident that their judgment was based upon true values. While believing that they had done what they had done with the support of the law, they understood for the first time that halacha cannot be truth if it does not consider the human perspective, if it does not encompass the human perspective in all its aspects. Thus for the first time they accept Yosef's version. They admit that justice lies with him rather than with them. This realization culminates in Yehuda's official declaration as the leader of the brothers. Until this point is reached, Yosef must restrain himself and contain the outburst of his love for them. We see before us an epic struggle between titanic forces. It concludes in victory for a hashkafa that embraces the entire universe in its scope, and defeat for the picayune diggings of linear logic in a shallow and segmented reality. From the parasha of Yosef and his brothers we can extract a foundation point, in relation to man's confrontation with hovato b'olamo his obligation toward his world. The point first elucidates the slack and slipshod nature of existence's track, including the rules by which it operates, for they hold only superficially. They hold optically, seducing one into pursuing existential tranquility, which is eventually exposed as illusion, ultimately bringing disillusion and heartbreak. Oblivion to the search for truth can actually be caused by routinely tranquil conditions. Sometimes man needs a wrenching, in order to be rescued from the trap of routine. In this wrenching, man is presented with a situation that is existentially absurd: Conflicts of interests collide, the rules and methods created by man in his arrogance begin to behave treacherously, and their basic credibility is impeached. At this point, there is no escaping an infiltration of Godly truth into the human earthly systems. One need only educate for acceptance of a supreme authority. One need only educate for the reverence for and acceptance of ol malchut shamayim. This does not refer to a simple acceptance of the principles of faith, but rather to its infiltration into the heart of the human system through behavioral patterns that fill routine (that stupor-inducing lethargy) with content that fosters creative challenge, that requires man to confront creative goals, and that immunizes against the temptations of imagination and of the senses. Such indeed is the Torah system, which includes first and foremost its halachic components, including the sublime meanings, values, and ideals which grant them a dimension of height. In this parasha, a powerfully courageous and utterly basic conflict is arranged between the pillar of Halacha and the pillar of Godly values, and the midot that derive from these values. The brothers are attached to Halacha as the exclusive track representing truth, giving Halacha the final authority to address any and every behavioral and human dilemma. Yosef sees danger in this approach – a danger capable of eroding the foundations of truth itself. Without tireless and uncompromising efforts to educate and cultivate the midot that represent supreme values, that represent truth joined to hesed, truth cannot survive. Only Hesed based upon truth and truth joined to hesed together comprise the redeeming formula ultimately accepted by all the shivtei Ka, and thus it is bequeathed by all the tribes of Israel to their future generations. This formula has stood by the children of Israel during slavery's sufferings throughout the length of the galut. This formula contains the powerful secret of Jewish survival: It sometimes appears that selfish logic would require separatng hesed from truth, making hesed appear as human weakness - as the inability to take a solid stand, while truth appears as a cruel instrument, conceived in the study halls of Lavan and Esav. Nevertheless Yaakov b'chir ha'avot entrusted his unifying and redeeming formula to the hands of his beloved son. His gift to Yosef - a striped robe, a robe of tracks and more tracks: Left to themselves, they will never meet. They await the skillful hands of the tsadik, to weave of them the robe, to weave of them the formula that becomes the garment with which the tsadik is robed. It is a garment begun by the Creator Himself, for "God made for Adam and his wife robes...and He clothed them." for Adam and Hava. With those same glorious garments, Shem wrapped his father Noah. Those same "precious garments" a devoted mother such as Rivka kept in her personal closet, knowing in her ruah hakodesh which of her two sons was truly deserving of them. These are the same bigdei hakodesh lechavod uletiferet "garments of sanctity for glory and for splendor" worn by the kohen gadol hamesharet bakodesh the high priest, when administering the sacred service, the same mantle that the prophet Eliyahu shed, to give to his student Elisha, the same mantle of royalty that David ripped, when fleeing from King Sha'ul. These are the same garments of royalty that were anointed with shemen hamishha sacred oil for the kings of the house of David, and that are held in keeping for the future anointed one,melech hamashiah. Go To Top
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