VAYEISHEV | Joseph and Tamar: Abandoning the False Skin of Privilege

וְיִשְׂרָאֵל אָהַב אֶת־יוֹסֵף מִכָּל־בָּנָיו כִּֽי־בֶן־זְקֻנִים הוּא לוֹ וְעָשָׂה לוֹ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּֽים: וַיִּרְאוּ אֶחָיו כִּֽי־אֹתוֹ אָהַב אֲבִיהֶם מִכָּל־אֶחָיו וַֽיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָֽכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹֽם

Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he had made him an ornamented tunic. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him.

Genesis 37:3-4

I moved many years ago to a Zen monastery, looking for peace and enlightenment. I imagined the road to that peace and enlightenment would itself be a peaceful and enlightened road.

Instead, I continually rubbed up against myself and the nuns and lay women I lived with.

The Abbess told me, that is exactly what this is meant to be. “Here,” she said to me one day, “in the kitchen, we are like potatoes boiling in a big pot. We rub up against one another until our skins are smooth.”

What is the skin this journey is meant to free us from? In this week’s Torah stories Joseph and Tamar wrestle with the shedding of false identities that are born from sibling rivalry, jealousy, and the strategies of meeting our needs at the expense of others’ needs.

Joseph

Vayeishev, meaning, “and he (Jacob) settled,” introduces the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob, their father, loves Joseph more, and marks this favoritism by giving Joseph a new skin, a special ornamental garment, often translated as a coat of many colors.

With this gift, Jacob tragically continues the family karma of favoritism and sibling rivalry. Jacob’s mother, Rebecca, had covered young Jacob with an animal skin disguise to win dominance over his brother Esau, Joseph now puts on this special multi-colored coat, this special skin, and takes on the role of superiority. He becomes blinded to the impact of his words and dreams on his brothers. The impact, Torah tells us, is that his brothers hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

Caught in the continuing karma of anger and revenge, the brothers strip Joseph of his special coat and throw him into a pit, from which he is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Egypt. To cover their crime, Judah and the other brothers dip the coat in blood and present it to their father as (false) proof that Joseph was killed by wild animals. The family is fooled again and again by disguises and false identities.

Jacob, taking the bloody coat as proof of Joseph's death, mourns the loss of his favored son. Judah separates from the clan, finally embarking on his own journey.

Tamar

On his own, Judah suffers loss after loss, losing his sons, his wife, the possibility of progeny. A new relationship to role and power, a new paradigm, is needed to end this cycle of violence and strife.

This new paradigm arises through Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. Tamar is widowed when Judah's son dies. Empowered by the patriarchal society, Judah banishes her to invisibility in her father's house.

Tamar rejects the widow's white robes as her identity. She refuses to submit to the invisibility and powerlessness assigned by the patriarchy to the role of widows. She sees through the veils of roles and victimhood, and then uses another of the roles assigned to women as a source of her power — the prostitute.

She devises and carries out a plan to gain her freedom and place in society by taking on the cloak of identity of a temple prostitute, setting a trap that Judah falls into. Judah propositions her, not recognizing her in her disguise, and she bargains with him for the markings of his identity and power — his staff and his seal. She uses them to claim her freedom, understanding that power and privilege are fluid and ephemeral. In her disguise as a prostitute, Tamar conquers Judah nonviolently and obtains his birthright status.

By refusing to sink into the shame and invisibility that accompany the roles assigned to women, Tamar uses her inner power to embrace a new paradigm. She pretends invisibility, without identifying with it, without taking on the shame associated with the roles, to claim her new status in the family and society.

Joseph

Tamar's light shines brightly as the story returns to Joseph, now a slave in the house of Potiphar. Potiphar's wife attempts to seduce Joseph and rather than abandon his values, he flees from her, leaving her holding his coat. Joseph, like Tamar, now understands the danger of identifying with  the veils that cover our humanity.

These are cracks that let the light in. As we celebrate Hanukkah, which always falls around the time that we read this story, let the light in! Celebrate the cracks!

This is surely the anthem of Torah of our time: What do we have to shed to break out of the endless cycle of rivalry, objectification, manipulation, abuse?  How can we abandon privileges born from the oppression of others? Can we learn to be fluid with our identifications, even the most precious ones, so that we encounter each other without skins that separate us?