Reframing
“Don’t be distressed, it wasn’t you who sold me here, rather it was God who sent me here to be a life-saving provider” Joseph says to his brothers (Gen 45:5). They’re stunned. They have no idea what’s just happened or what to make of it. In this week’s portion of Torah, Joseph, as Mark Gerson shows, invents something called reframing (P. 63-77).
When you reframe, you turn a painful situation into a more positive one. It’s one of therapy’s most important tools.
For me, Gerson’s most impressive reflection on the matter relates to how God reframes our people’s history as slaves in Egypt. Bondage was bitter. At the Seder we eat bitter herbs to recall this. But when the time comes to learn lessons from that time, God calls us, not slaves, but strangers. This reframing is meant to make our suffering an engine for empathy and dignity for strangers everywhere. It’s also meant to keep us far away from the trap of victimhood.
In 1969 Shirley Chisholm of NY became the first black woman elected to Congress. When she learned she’d been assigned to the Agriculture Committee, she was frustrated. It had nothing to do with serving her Brooklyn constituents. Except for one of them.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe called to ask her to visit. She accepted. When she told him how upset she was by her appointment, the Rebbe had a surprising response. “What a blessing God has given you! This country has so much surplus food, and there are so many hungry people. You can use the gift that God has given you to feed the hungry.” She returned to Washington to partner with Senator Bob Dole to create the WIC (Woman, Infants, Children) Program which uses surplus food to feed our nation’s neediest.
When Congresswoman Chisholm retired years later, she reflected on the origins of WIC which had fed umpteen millions. “A rabbi who is an optimist taught me that what you may think is a challenge is a gift from God. And if poor babies have milk, and poor children have food, it’s because this rabbi in Crown Heights had vision.”
Joseph’s reframing fed people through famine. WIC feeds them through food insecurity.
How can you tell if reframing is healthy? It’s a good question. If it generates more honesty, generosity, and dignity, then it’s praiseworthy. As you prepare for 2026-resolutions, may you make it so in the lives you touch.
