This past Shabbat on Zoom — an experience we will have one more time this coming Shabbat to give our staff time off during this holiday season; I hope you’ll join us — we studied Parashat Miketz, the portion of the Book of Bereshit (Genesis) known as Miketz, which means “at the end.” The story comes near the end of the Book of Genesis, the book centering on the individual narratives of the foundational patriarchs and matriarchs of the People of Israel.
Much of the end of the book centers on Joseph, the favorite of his father Jacob’s twelve sons—he is so much the favorite that his brothers come to loathe him, a hatred stoked by Joseph’s proclamation of his dreams that he will one day rule over them. They nearly murder him but instead settle for selling him into slavery to a passing-by caravan.
The caravan descends into Egypt where he is sold, and rises from slave to grand vizier over all Egypt, on the strength of his skill interpreting dreams—he does so for Pharaoh, helping Egypt stave off the effects of a devastating famine by facilitating their stocking up during years of plenty for the years of famine he is able to foresee.
We collectively studied a section from the parashah in which, in the midst of Joseph’s rise to power, he has a family. His life has endured terrible ups and downs, and we can feel the pathos in his experience through the names he gives his two sons: Manasseh, meaning “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home,” and Ephraim, meaning “God has made me fertile in the land of my affliction.”
In these names we can hear Joseph’s struggles and his wrestling with his past. As one Torah study participant pointed out, in the name Manasseh, we can tell Joseph, in a sense, wants to “forget completely my hardship and my parental home” and yet it is clear that, in naming his son Manasseh, an enduring reminder of this past, he has not forgotten completely his hardship and home. He is still very much wrestling with it. He has not fully grieved the loss, hope in a reconciliation still budding. We all have to wrestle with our relationship to our own pasts and come to a sense of peace; what that looks like will take different shapes, as it did for Joseph over the course of his life.
Another Torah study participant interpreted the name in a different way: that Joseph had a sense of guilt and ambivalence about moving on from his roots. Under this reading, the phrase “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home” demonstrated Joseph’s guilt about assimilating. “God! You did this!” Joseph cries out in frustration according to this reading.
In both readings, we are reading a moment in Joseph’s life where he is not at peace with his relationship with his past. It still has a deep hold on him and no degree of denial or blame-shifting will alleviate that. Ultimately, Joseph will have to confront his past more directly. For him it will come in the form of his brothers coming to Egypt in search of food. For others of us it may mean grappling with our memories and what meaning we make of them as we look to ultimately move forward. Joseph notes the presence of God in his relationship to his past and his future. For some, God is the presence that invites us to formulate a sacred relationship to past present and future.
