summary

Parashat Miketz (Genesis 41:1-44:17) begins with Joseph being called from prison to interpret Pharoah's dreams. Joseph begins as he continues, by emphasising that it is "God who will determine the well-being of Pharoah", not he, Joseph. Joseph's suggests that Pharoah's dreams are a two-fold vision of the future in store for Egypt, seven years of bounty from the land followed by seven years of famine. Pharoah appoints Joseph ("a man with the spirit of God in him") as his number two and to supervise the storage of produce in the former to cover the shortage in the latter.

During the famine, Jacob sends his sons, without Benjamin, from Canaan to Egypt to purchase provisions. Joseph recognises them although they do not see through the regal Egyptian wear to their brother. Joseph asks them to return with Benjamin - his full brother - and holds Simeon as a bond. Jacob initially refuses but as the famine worsens has to let them go with Benjamin.

As the story of Joseph and his brothers reaches its climax, it becomes clear that Joseph is testing his brother's feelings toward Benjamin and is working out his own relationship to them. He places a silver cup in Benjamin's sack of provisions. The brothers, still unaware of Joseph's true identity, offer to be taken as slaves in place of Benjamin. The parasha leaves us hanging with Joseph saying that the "thief" will remain with him as a slave, effectively leaving Jacob without his sons from his beloved Rachel.

The parasha is full of wonderful narrative between human beings that is seldom found in the Torah. The characters of the individuals concerned are developed, Jacob, Joseph, Reuben, Judah and Benjamin.

commentary

"Not I - it is God who will account for Pharoah's well-being (Gen 41:16)".

For most of us, the experiences of the young Joseph would be enough to convince one to have a rather pessimistic worldview! - indeed, one in which God had seemed to play but a bit-part in Joseph's arrogant perception of his life and its relationships. We glimpse a slight change when Joseph rebukes the sexual advances of Potiphar's wife and are told by the narrator that God protected Joseph in his subsequent captivity. But could this not be a turn of phrase, an excuse to get himself out of a tricky situation?

Whatever has happened to Joseph, he enters Pharoah's presence as a man who has a faith in God that is unshakeable. He is utterly convinced of God's protection and that provides him with purpose in his life. This he shares with the Maccabees of our Chanukah story, both that told in the Books of 1 & 2 Maccabees found in the Apocrypha (the books that failed to make the canon of the Tanakh - Hebrew Bible) and in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 21b. They trusted in a way that saw them, so few in number, take on the might of the organised army of the Greeks and their own leaders who wished to subject their people to Hellenism, and prevail. Their trust also brought them to light the Menorah using the one kosher cruse of oil left in the defiled Temple. They could just have well have kept it for a rainy day, but they put a small amount in each cup and they shone brightly for eight days.

Their trust in God and their physical battles have come to symbolise the battle against assimilation. I do not think that we would be who we are now without our people's adoption, generation by generation, of their host nation's and host people's cultures and customs, faiths and languages and the rest. However, we would not still be identifiable as a distinct People were it not for maintaining our distinctiveness. Each generation and within each generation, we are faced with the same balancing act. In an increasingly secular British society, as witnessed by the de-religion, how will our generation and how will we as individuals find its sense of balance - and its sense of purpose?

shabbat shalom and chanukah sameach (happy chanukah)

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