How Joseph the Candid became Joseph the Righteous

When is lying acceptable? Required?

The Jewish tradition is to explore fundamental questions, including those involving ethics and theology,  through storytelling rather than purely conceptual debate.

Stories can be anchored in relatable human settings. Sometimes, when we do philosophy, we instead get lost and misled by abstractions.

Stories can have multiple meanings and resonances. They can permit us to engage with questions through our spirit and imagination, rather than merely our capacity for rational thought.

The stories in Genesis are fraught with tales of deception. The Deceiver tricks Eve into believing that eating the forbidden fruit will make her God-like. After Cain kills Able,  he is evasive in responding to  God’s question about Abel’s whereabouts. Abraham fudges the truth over whether Sara is his wife or his sister,  Isaac engages in a similar evasion, and Jacob tricks his brother Esau out of Isaac’s blessing.  And so on and on. We, the readers, are challenged to consider whether and when we can condone or justify willful distortions of the facts.

In the Tradition,  honesty about the facts is highly valued. But some exceptions are permitted:  to save human life, to spare the feelings of others, to safeguard our own privacy,  to protect others from exploitation, and for the sake of peace. (Here, I recall with amusement and affection the more radical view of my mother’s late mother,  Leah Serlin. She used to say, “If you do not say what you are thinking, you are lying.”  She practiced what she preached with bracing rigour).

In the Parashat Va-Yeshev, Tamar dresses up as a prostitute in order to trick Judah into impregnating her. When  Judah confronts her, however, Tamar responds in a way that leads to the truth – that she is Judah’s daughter-in-law, desperate for children after Judah has wrongly blocked her marriage to his surviving son. But she does not merely call him out and humiliate him. Instead, she gives him a chance to come clean. He does. “She is in the right, not me,” he acknowledges. Judah is ultimately the ancestor of King David, and Tamar is revered in Tradition despite her trickery. It was in a higher cause.

Joseph, as a youth,  is too candid.  He angers his brothers by telling them of his dream of ascendance – apparently, over them. (A more mature Joseph might have refrained from telling the dream or at least provided an interpretation of it that was inspiring rather than demeaning,  For example: “Perhaps the dream means that one day, despite my failings, I can do something for all of you my family that is worthy of your gratitude)”.

Joseph acts on his father’s behalf to monitor the work performance of his brothers. Joseph keeps bringing bad reviews. Perhaps he could have been tactful and constructive. He might have tempered his reports with acknowledgments of respect in which his brothers performed well. He might first have diplomatically given his brothers a chance to improve their work in some way before he went home and dissed them.

Joseph, the young man in Egypt,  later exhibits admirable loyalty and integrity by resisting Potiphar’s wife’s attempt to seduce him.

After  Joseph is thrown in jail,  he interprets the dreams of the cupbearer and baker. We, the readers, might ask if Jacob is still too candid. Joseph tells the baker that he will be impaled in three days. Could  Joseph not have provided something less brutal than his unqualified and gruesome prediction? Perhaps Joseph’s prediction was actually self-fulfilling; could it be that Pharoah or his officials looked at the terrified baker and interpreted his panic as proof of his guilt?

Eventually, both Judah and Joseph will find a way to address the world that embraces but transcends acknowledgment of the simple fact. Instead, they engage in midrash, in a creative explanation or response to the facts that are given.

The older and now eminent Joseph wants to test whether his brothers, who had sold him into slavery, are reformed. He plants a silver cup in Benjamin’s luggage. Judah does not challenge whether Benjamin pilfered it or Joseph planted it. Instead, Judah moves to a transcendent response. “How can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered our guilt.” In a moment of supreme magnanimity, Judah then offers to take Benjamin’s place in whatever punishment, including slavery, that Joseph wishes to inflict.

Joseph himself then engages in a wondrous midrash. Overwhelmed by Judah’s courageous and selfless offer, Joseph finally reveals himself as the brother the others had sold into slavery. He asks if their father, Israel, is still alive, and then he says, “  Do not distress or reproach yourself [brothers]  because God sent me to Egypt before you so I can be a provider.”    Joseph is reconciled to both his brothers and the arc of his life. His humiliation and suffering have led him to become the Prime Minister of Egypt – and thus able to save his people from famine as well as the people of his adoptive country.

Faith does not fit neatly into abstract conceptual categories. It can be some ineffable combination of hope, imagination, and dreams. In the Jewish tradition, we often approach faith through stories. The Lord is the Truth, says the prayer. Yet, like prayer,  storytelling is not confined to describing simple realities. We face in our individual lives, in our lives as a people, many cold hard facts. They can lead us to despair. Yet in our Tradition, with all of its storytelling, we can find memories,  remembrances, images, sensations, and connections. These can help us. We can acknowledge the cold, hard facts – but still feel blessed. We can emerge with the feeling that we have found some meaning, some comfort, and, in the end, some peace.