Forging the Hero Within: Yosef’s Journey Through Chaos and Redemption

Rabbi Yonasan Bender, LCSW – Therapist

Where do heroes come from? There are many ways to take this sort of question.  With hope – in your hardest moments you look in the proverbial distance for the loyal rider on his horse.  The powerful eagles to swoop in to save you from the catastrophe you’ve fond yourself.  With despair – you ask this question rhetorically.  Heroes don’t come from anywhere.  Then, there’s the way it ought to be asked.  Introspectively.  Sometimes we get lucky and there’s a knight in the distance.  But, at times in life, there is no savior just over the ridge.  Yes, there are heroes in this world, and it is humbling to meet them.  But, the hero you ought to meet is the hero within.  What part of you is the fertile ground that will cultivate you as a hero?  Why despair no one will take the necessary responsibility to make the world better?  Obviously, you care about it otherwise it wouldn’t embitter you. How can you be that hero?  Yosef’s story lays out the archetypal roadmap (Ramban, introduction to Chumash) of what it takes for you to become the hero.

It’s important not to get bogged down in confusing a good person with a hero. Someone who’s hard working, dedicated, and bring their ideals into reality is good. You can even call it heroic. But, it doesn’t mean the person is technically, a hero.  Sure, we can throw around the term and that’s just fine.  The next time a neighbor calls your husband or wife a hero, I wouldn’t jump to correct them.  Unless you want a fight when you get home.  But it’s worth knowing that a hero is also something very specific. To make the definition more complicated, a hero has a thousand faces.  David is not Yosef.  Avraham is not Moshe.  These great men led very different lives representing very different ideals. Malchus, Yesod, Chesed, and Tiferes (Rabbi Segal, personal communication).  Each is essential, and their distinctiveness allows fuller expression of the divine. Together, they form a tapestry of divine-human interaction, each fulfilling a specific purpose.  Each different but in a united purpose.  It’s easier to see this point with our own chachamim.  Imagine Rav Noach Weinberg, Rav Shimshon Rapahel Hirsch, the Rogatchover, Rav Wolbe, and the Seridei Eish all sitting in the same room. They’re given the same Sheilah.  Different eras, different worldviews.  Some might even have a hard time believing they’re all a part of the same religion!  Yet, all heroes.  Ellu v’ ellu.

To understand what a hero is you have to focus on context. What sort of space in the world do they live in?  That’s because, fundamentally, heroes are a type of intermediary.  Yosef exemplified the concept of Yesod.  This symbolizes integration and connection in a way that’s sustaining.  It’s not just any type of foundation, though.  It’s a bridge between paradoxes. The most extreme being the terrible chaotic present and the ordered sustaining future (R’ Fraenkel, 2021).   First, we’ll zero in on the uncertain chaotic present Yosef emerged from. This will lead to understanding how he brought real good into the world.  What will emerge is the map of the hero. The descent into chaos. The finding of oneself in order to engage with both the good and bad of the unknown. The creation of harmony in bridging good and bad.

So, with all that preamble, where do heroes come from? They’re born from chaos and then choose to meet that head on. A hero is first stripped of home and a sense of identity.  Descending into the pit of chaos he must choose to confront the unknown.  By willingly confronting reality instead of hiding, the hero sees two general themes. Good and bad. With a little more sense of the situation, he bends both to his will and forward vision.  He molds both into meaningful order.  In so doing, he discovers something no one else could.  He sees something no one else has the eyes to see.  Ascending back out of the pit with his treasure in hand, it’s offered back to the home and family he lost (Campbell, 2008). The hero with a thousand faces. New World Library.).  Put another way, the hero’s journey is a two-step act of creation.  Not only does the hero lift up that which no one else could see – or willing to see, out of fear.  He then teaches the blind to see for themselves the value in his discovery. The hero has this last leap of a step – I’m going to show you how you can’t live without the thing you’ve lived without.

Descent into Chaos

From slavery to standing before Pharaoh, Yosef consumed in chaos.” Stripped of individuality, symbolized by the colorful coat (Bereishis Rabbah 84:16), Yosef is tossed into the pit. Both a literal and symbolic descent into hell.  Chaos doesn’t just envelop Yosef.  Even his brothers are enveloped in it.  While their intentions were just and noble, their premises weren’t true (Rav Hirsch, 37:11-12, Haemek Davar 37:8). “And it came to pass, when Yosef came to his brothers, that they stripped Yosef out of his coat. And they took him, and cast him into a pit.” (Beresishis 37:23–24). This pit—Full of terror and death (Shabbat 22a)—encapsulates the primordial chaos. A realm of darkness where the hero is forcibly removed from the security of home.

Yosef’s decent doesn’t end at the bottom of a pit.  He’s sold to the Ishmaelites ultimately landing in Egypt. “And they drew and lifted up Yosef out of the pit, and sold Yosef to the Ishmaelites,” and “the Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar.” (Bereishis 37:28, 36).  How many times did Yosef get passed on?  Trading cards are passed on.  Money is exchanged.  Not people.  Being sold as a slave is dehumanizing enough.  Being passed from group to group amplifies the sense of being a generic product.  Directionless.  Purposeless (Midrash Tanchuma 1:9:13).  His final destination – unknown territory beyond the bounds of any comforting horizon. A place whose alien culture, new language, and strange rituals (Rambam Sefer Hamitzvot, Negative Commandment 46.) plunge Yosef into further existential chaos. It’s hard to imagine being farther from one’s sense of self than this.

In Potiphar’s home, we see the first glimpse of light in the pit.  All of us fall into pits of our own at some time in our life.  There are easy solutions that can help you continue with your life as is despite it.  Avoid, ignore, patch up, even self-compromise.  These can be effective. And you can go on because not every part of your life is touched by the chaos. Marriage is tough but work is good. But these holding-part methods don’t offer creative discovery.  They re-establish the old status quo. “And Yosef was brought down to Egypt. And his master saw that Hashem was with him.” (Bereishis 39:1–3). Managing Potiphar’s household building a semblance of stability out of a broken home is no small act. Workers to manage. An angry wife contemptuous of her husband. But the first rumblings of making order often attract another surge of chaos. It doesn’t let go easily. Potiphar’s wife, a dark stalking force of unpredictability, accuses Yosef falsely. “And it came to pass after these things, that his master’s wife cast her eyes on Yosef” (Bereishis 39:7, 16–18).  Yosef’s jacket isn’t the only thing turned inside out.  Here too his clothes symbolize stripping of identity in a chaotic irrational way (Oznayim Latorah Vayeishev 39:12).  His life is upended again, falling deeper in.  This time, prison. “And Yosef’s master put him into the prison…” (Bereishis 39:19–20).  Amplifying the sense of chaos, everyone knew Yosef was innocent (Bereishis Rabba 87:9).  In this inside out world, facts didn’t matter.  Also, Yosef wasn’t sent to an American prison.  No HBO and Taco Tuesdays for him.  Even in today, most prisons in our world are just a death sentence played out over years instead of seconds.  However, even here Yosef discovers he can bring some good into this broken place. “But Hashem was with Yosef, and showed him mercy… And that which he did, Hashem made it to prosper” (Bereishis 39:21, 23). He brings order and stability even in prison.  His discovery – creating trust with the prison keeper in a place of hopelessness.

Contending with the Unknown: Promise and Danger

Everything in his life fell apart. His physical body and loss of family, slavery, prison, and then his final decent into the human psyche. “It came to pass after these things, the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord… And he put them in ward… where Yosef was bound.” (Bereishis 40:1–3).  In these verses, the king’s officers have committed some unknown offense. Knowing what they did would ruin the motif of senselessness. Each brings with them a new wave of “darkness.” Each man anxious, not knowing his own fate. Taunted by their dreams. Yet even here, Yosef displays his capacity to cast some light in the dark. He volunteers to interpret their dreams, observing, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me them, I pray you.” (Bereishis 40:8).  This illustrates Yosef’s humility. The fuel for fire in a pit. On the one hand, he asserts dream interpretations comes from the transcendent source of all meaning. On the other, he doesn’t shrink from engaging this mysterious domain head-on.  Dreams embody the confrontation with the unknown, the realm of hidden meanings, where both promise and danger co-exist (Ramban, Bereishis 40:8).  In dream interpretation, one enters the nebulous border between meaning and meaninglessness.  It’s not necessarily rational (Haemek Davar, Bereishis  40:7). From that emerges practical insight.

“In my dream, behold, a vine was before me… and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes… and I pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup.” (Bereishis 40:9–11).  In the language of archetypes, a vine laden with healthy grapes recalls the “promising” side of nature. An outpouring of nourishment and new birth. Yosef translates these symbols into practical prediction.  “Within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place.” (Bereishis 40:13).  The interpretation lifts up the hidden good within the dream.  This time benevolent and safe. The unknown can bring gifts of prosperity. By contrast, the baker’s vision captures the other side of the unknown.  Danger. “I had three white baskets on my head… And the birds did eat them out of the basket.” (Bereishis 40:16–17).  Birds devouring bread in the open-air signal a destructive potential. Yosef delivers the dire verdict.  “Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you, and shall hang you on a tree…” (Bereishis 40:19).  Where the wine steward’s dream holds restoration, the baker’s reveals nature’s fearsome capacity to “devour”. Yosef, though faced with the pain of speaking a difficult truth, never hesitates. He shows the heroic willingness to admit both sides of reality and distill the gentle and harsh elements it contains.

Bridging the Good with the Bad

The wine steward forgets Yosef (Bereishis 40:23). He’s thrown back into another pit of ambiguity where reality’s promise recedes. He remains in prison, disregarded. Yet, this is a temporary eclipse of the hero’s light. Yosef is not the only one in the pit of ambiguity.  “Pharaoh dreamed and behold, he stood by the river. (Bereishis 41:1).  These fertility symbols are laden in ambiguity.  In the world of dreams these objects can be what they are or represent something else.  Are they about Pharaoh’s personal injunction to be fruitful and multiply warning about his daughters (Rashi, 41:8)? Assuming the nature elements are concrete, who says the other elements in the dream are?  Also, every farmer knows the yield is no sure thing.  Is this a common worry in an overactive imagination or something to take seriously? Pharaoh had a sense that what was coming down the pike was no good but he lacked clarity about what.  As in most dreams, we have them but forget them.  While Pharaoh recalled the bare bones imagines, he forgot the meaning behind it (Rabbeinu Bechya, Bereishis  41:8).  He wasn’t so much looking for logic as much as a feeling he knew he had but lost.  The tension between the themes of abundance and famine left Pharaoh with too many “what ifs”.  This is where the cupbearer steps in and Yosef is once again brought back into the world of ambiguity.  Finding himself without certainty, Yosef doubles down on the values that stand above reality.  “It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace” (Bereishis. 41:16). Heroism begins where we recognize our limitations.  This is a type of order building.  Setting limitations also helps direct our attention.  We can’t pay attention to everything, so limiting your focus is vital.

Seven years of abundance.  Seven years of devastating famine. This is the two-fold nature of reality.  However, rather than allow reality to swallow society, Yosef does the only thing you can do in the face of nature.  You can’t overcome or beat it.  Instead, counterintuitively, you do exactly what you don’t want.  You pull away from the good and lean into the bad.  Avoid absorbing the good as much as possible to save it and accept every drop of the bad to mitigate it.  You have to swim in the stream either way. Reality is always going to be reality.  Just don’t swim up it.  By storing the surplus grain, Yosef tames the unknown by reordering the world around him.

Pharaoh, astounded by Yosef’s composure and wisdom, elevates him to second-in-command.  “You will be over my house, and according to your word shall all my people be ruled. (Bereishis 41:40).  Once you know the trick of reality, success is easy but who wants to do it?  Pay your taxes on time and avoid penalties.  Cut out half your diet so you can lose weight.  Do you really think you can work your entire life and avoid paying into your 401K?  Being a hero means taming your hubris.  A rarity.  That’s why the rest of the world comes to him.  “All countries came into Egypt to Yosef to buy corn…” (Bereishis 41:57). Symbolically, Yosef forged a bridge between the threat of the unknown and the promise latent within it. He extracted nourishment from the jaws of potential catastrophe.

Yosef epitomizes the hero who masters mother nature.  He’s called decerning and wise – Binah and Chochma.  These two levels of knowing represent the two tools of the hero.  Forget to use one, the other is useless.  Combine both and the world sits tamed at your feet.  First, Yosef escaped chaos because he forced himself to see clearly both the good and bad in each situation simultaneously.  He chose to pull out of the darkness the good that he could put his efforts in. Manage the estate fairly, make the prison livable, help anyone in their moment of confusion. This is the moral element of Binah that taps into the mind and spirit.  Second, he used the strategic acceptance of Chochma to answer the technical need given the facts (Rabbeinu Bachya, Bereishis 41:33; Haemek Davar, Bereishis 41:33).  The willingness to get his hands dirty in work is what saved Yosef.  His hands had to get dirty either way. The only difference was if he would choose to voluntarily engage the terrible or not. Only by willingly facing catastrophe can you leverage it.  The good can only be bridged with the bad when you also have a firm moral conviction that stands above the details of the world.  Yosef connected heaven and earth.  While there certainly is bad to contend with, there’s a transcendent morality and divine mission you can choose to take upon yourself here on earth.  By first becoming a bridge between heaven and earth you can move on to bridging the good with the bad.

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Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces. New World Library.

Fraenkel, A. (2021). Shomer Emunim. Urim Publications