Anyone who has seen the movie Joseph King of Dreams or experienced the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat will recognize the early scenes of these productions in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev. Vayeshev starts with Jacob finally thinking he could take a break, only to have things turn sour for his favored son, Joseph. I learned once that an important tool to reading the Torah is visualization, that we really need to imagine what is going on in the text from the perspective of the characters. Doing so with Vayeshev can be powerful—we can feel, and even understand, the hatred of the brothers toward Joseph, and our hearts break when we read of Jacob mourning the loss of his son. Read closely, and we can also witness how the text struggles with seemingly conflicting values while addressing a major theme of this parsha: honesty.
Genesis 37:4 states, “and [Joseph’s] brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, so they hated him, and they could not speak with him peacefully.” The legendary commentator Rashi points this line out as being a sort of contradiction. The brothers are evil because they hated their brother, yet they are also good because they weren’t being fake and hiding their hatred. At first glance, sure Rashi is right, good for them for being real. I think every one of us can think of those times when we had to deal with someone we just couldn’t stand with a smile on our faces, especially if you’ve ever had to work retail. Well, it seems like Rashi is saying next time you should feel perfectly free to just blow up and yell at those people. You might lose your job, but at least you’re following in the footsteps of your ancestors.
The problem is, there’s a difference between being honest with how you feel about someone and blowing up at someone. Joseph’s brothers disliked him, but they weren’t just open about it, they couldn’t even have a peaceful conversation with him. Our words and actions have a tendency to manifest themselves in the way we think. Think about those times you’ve spoken about someone behind their back. Sadly I think we’ve all done it, but how often does it start as a small complaint and then turn into an active dislike for the person you’re speaking about? That’s what the brothers did. While it might have been out of a dedication to honesty, when they stopped speaking civilly with their brother they stopped thinking civilly about him too. It’s the brothers’ own honesty that curses them and leads to their sin against their brother Joseph.
The curse of the brothers’ honesty is not the only warning against extreme honesty in this parsha, as Joseph’s own actions also serve as excellent examples of the dangers of being honest. When Joseph has dreams in which his brothers are bowing to him, what does he do? Probably the last thing he should have done—he goes and tells his brothers! Now, he had to be either really cocky, blissfully naive, or extremely honest to decide that he had to go and tell the brothers that openly hated him how he dreamt they would one day bow to him. According to Rashi’s reading even his own father, upon hearing of the second dream, attempts to debunk it in order to protect him. Jacob is trying to drop hints to the boy, “Hey! Don’t go around saying this stuff, moron!”. Of course, it’s a bit too late, and Joseph’s honesty is most likely the major catalyst for his brothers’ betrayal.
Now, the story doesn’t stop there, content with teaching us that honesty can be bad. It actually seems to take another step forward in teaching us that dishonesty is good in the form of Tamar and Judah, one of Jacob’s sons. Here we have a poor woman that seems to be a bit of a black widow. First she marries Judah’s oldest son and he drops dead, so she marries his second son. He drops dead too, and Judah doesn’t really want to let her have his third son. Can you blame him? Once Tamar realizes that she isn’t getting that third vict… husband, she goes ahead and hides her identity, tricking Judah into sleeping with her. When Judah finds out his son’s widow is pregnant, not knowing it’s his, he wants to have her burned. Now, Tamar does the exact opposite of the brothers and doesn’t come right out and say whose kid it is. Rashi says that this is because one should let themselves be burned before embarrassing another in public. Instead she gives clues to Judah, allowing him to realize on his own that the kid is his. Not only does she get off for her trickery, but she gets to be the ancestor of King David.
Growing up, I was taught I should be honest, and at Hebrew school they told me the only acceptable lies are white lies. Here we have an entire parsha that is telling us to stop being honest. Being honest leads to hatred and loathsome behavior, and telling people everything we think about them can get us killed. On top of that, one of the greatest rewards given to someone, the kingship of Israel, is as a result of dishonesty. Look at those big wealthy corporations we all love to hate, do you think they got ahead from being honest? It definitely looks like dishonesty gets you further, and we all know nice guys finish last.
We have to remember that even the Torah isn’t black and white. In the cases where honesty has a negative result, it’s because the character was thinking black and white—they were all honesty without concern for the emotions of others. If the brothers thought about Joseph, or if Joseph had only taken the time to consider how others feel, their behavior, and the events that transpire, would have been much different. In the case of Tamar, her actions were guided by concern for others. If she didn’t care about Judah, she could have called him out right in front of everyone else, but she didn’t. This is what makes her actions praiseworthy and deserving of reward. This is a balance that we all need to consider closely. We need to be honest, both with ourselves and with others, but we also need to be careful that we are considerate of others’ feelings.
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David G. is a recent graduate of Ramapo College.
