Dear Friends,
“Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” (Genesis 45:3)
After having been betrayed by his brothers twenty years earlier, being sold into Egyptian slavery, spending some years in prison wrongly charged with abusing his master’s wife, and then being elevated to Pharaoh’s vizier on account of his ability to divine the meaning of dreams, Joseph’s life experience was far from that of the coddled favorite child of his father – the world he had known prior to his series of escapades.
However, during the entire period that he was away in Egypt, apparently Joseph never sent a message back to his father informing him that he, Joseph, was alive and thriving. Even when Joseph was second only to Pharaoh in the executive order of Egyptian leaders, when presumably Joseph could have sent back to Canaan at least a postcard with the Pyramids, stating, “Great time in Egypt! Wish you were here!” no message was forthcoming.
Hence, once he played out a power ruse on his supplicating, vulnerable, remorseful, and unknowing brothers, and he revealed himself as not merely Pharaoh’s secretary of state, but their younger brother, Joseph, did he ask about his father’s welfare.
Surely, communications were difficult 3600 years ago. The telephone would not be invented for another 3450 years, and the internet another 125 years after that. But, just as enemy kingdoms procured strategic information on their contending neighbors, even in antiquity, there was always a way to get and send messages. Even Jacob, Joseph’s fathers, sent emissaries to his warlike brother, Esau, a few chapters earlier in Genesis, towards heading-off an unwanted battle.
So, couldn’t Joseph have written home? Even the extraterrestrial learned to say, “ET phone home.”
Thus, as much as I indict Joseph for his incommunicado, I do extol him for making his first thought once he revealed himself to his wayward, ashamed brothers, “How is Dad?” In so doing, he demonstrated both his abiding interest, despite the years and miles of distance, and his disapprobation of his brothers’ duplicity and treachery in robbing him of his father, and his father of him.
Thus, perhaps it is never too late to reach out and call, to send a Hallmark Card, or to shoot off a message!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
“Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” (Genesis 45:3)
After having been betrayed by his brothers twenty years earlier, being sold into Egyptian slavery, spending some years in prison wrongly charged with abusing his master’s wife, and then being elevated to Pharaoh’s vizier on account of his ability to divine the meaning of dreams, Joseph’s life experience was far from that of the coddled favorite child of his father – the world he had known prior to his series of escapades.
However, during the entire period that he was away in Egypt, apparently Joseph never sent a message back to his father informing him that he, Joseph, was alive and thriving. Even when Joseph was second only to Pharaoh in the executive order of Egyptian leaders, when presumably Joseph could have sent back to Canaan at least a postcard with the Pyramids, stating, “Great time in Egypt! Wish you were here!” no message was forthcoming.
Hence, once he played out a power ruse on his supplicating, vulnerable, remorseful, and unknowing brothers, and he revealed himself as not merely Pharaoh’s secretary of state, but their younger brother, Joseph, did he ask about his father’s welfare.
Surely, communications were difficult 3600 years ago. The telephone would not be invented for another 3450 years, and the internet another 125 years after that. But, just as enemy kingdoms procured strategic information on their contending neighbors, even in antiquity, there was always a way to get and send messages. Even Jacob, Joseph’s fathers, sent emissaries to his warlike brother, Esau, a few chapters earlier in Genesis, towards heading-off an unwanted battle.
So, couldn’t Joseph have written home? Even the extraterrestrial learned to say, “ET phone home.”
Thus, as much as I indict Joseph for his incommunicado, I do extol him for making his first thought once he revealed himself to his wayward, ashamed brothers, “How is Dad?” In so doing, he demonstrated both his abiding interest, despite the years and miles of distance, and his disapprobation of his brothers’ duplicity and treachery in robbing him of his father, and his father of him.
Thus, perhaps it is never too late to reach out and call, to send a Hallmark Card, or to shoot off a message!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
