ישימך אלהים כאפרים וכמנשה – “May God make you as Efraim and Menashe (Gen. 48:20).” For a name that is etched deep in the warmest memories of many Jewish boys who received that blessing from their parents every Friday night, the name Menashe doesn't fare too well in Jewish tradition: from the Bible, where the 7th c. BCE Menashe is considered the worst Judean king because he spilt innocent blood (apparently not such a hard act to follow...), till modern Jewish literature, where Menashe Hayyim is the lead, tragic character in Agnon's great short story והיה העקוב למישור (The Crooked Straight), the bearers of this name face an uphill struggle.
The birth of Joseph's children comes at the apogee of his family life: sold into slavery by his brothers and mourned for dead by his father, he has arrived at the opposite end of the spectrum of success in his new life. The usual translation of Menashe's name is one that insists on Joseph's determination to put his Canaanite past behind him: כי נשני אלהים את כל עמלי ואת כל בית אבי “God has made me forget all my troubles, everything to do with my father's home”. The echo of these insightful words, spoken by the one whose ability to predict the future has taken him from the pit to the pinnacle, is still with us when the scene switches to Jacob's household as his brothers are sent to Egypt to purchase food from his storehouse.
If Joseph understood his own words and realized his success was dependent on his leaving his past, he could have just treated them as ordinary customers, sold them grain and set them on their way. But he doesn't: he can't. I'd rather read Menashe's naming this way: “God stripped away all my troubles (just as my brothers stripped my father's coat off of me), but he also took me completely away from my father's house (but not forever).” So Joseph procedes to bring his father's house in its entirety to Egypt, in stages: first, he manages to provoke the brothers into disclosing the existence of their additional brothers. Now notice how he forces them to bring Benjamin: first, by holding them all captive except for the one who will fetch Benjamin, and then holding “only” one and having all the others struggle with Jacob and recreate the scenes of his childhood which included tale-bearing and declothing (hence his accusations of spying and exposing nakedness).
The rabbinic texts follow the biblical text in its focus on the Joseph's role as savior of the family and the people Israel (but do they extoll his role as savoir of humanity? I haven't checked). There are midrashic claims that Joseph kept his brothers in a comfortable lock-up, and that he fasted, didn't drink wine, and sat in sackcloth, i. e., mourned his father's absence throughout their entire separation (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, “Joseph”). Indeed, Joseph the Tsadik. But can Joseph possibly escape our censure for the thrice-repeated statement of bereavement, שכלתם, שכלתי, שכלתי that he puts on Jacob's lips -- the most gripping point in the entire story -- which makes clear that the Joseph story is really only the last chapter of Jacob's life -- when he forces him to part with the last remaining son of Rachel? Next week's joyous reunion will not be enough to sweeten Jacob's summary of his life (47:9) as one of suffering.
Jacob struggles with God and men, and passes this down to Joseph, who, never shaking off his father's house, does the same, but even better. His vision doesn't only multiply flocks, it nourishes all of civilization. Brought up in a home where children trick fathers, he can outdo them all, because he has a divine power that bestows upon him mundane power, which he exercises while divining (with the cup, since, as Rachel's son, he also uses the concrete to reach the intangible). Joseph's story is one of power, but not of spirit, which is the ultimate biblical story. Joseph will bring his family to him, down to Egypt. Like him, they will go down, into slavery and up to power. And down again. But what will count is spirit.
I was taught, and would like still to believe, that the rabbis of late antiquity didn't have much use for the legacy of the Maccabees; Hanukkah, their holiday, is not even mentioned in the Mishnah, and is given only a few pages in the Babylonian Talmud. These are the same rabbis who had us respond to this week's part of Joseph's story with a Haftarah that proclaims:
לא בחיל ולא בכוח כי אם ברוחי אמר ה' צבאות
Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, said the Lord Ts'va'ot (Zecharia 4:6)
Shabbat shalom v'Hanukkah sameah,
posted for Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom
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