WHO KNEW NOT JOSEPH

SERMON   Parashat Shemot 5784     January 5, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai S. Burlington, Vermont

WHO KNEW NOT JOSEPH

So, I’m not so good at getting out of my work gear.  It takes me a few days to wean myself off and slow down. One of the ways I do that is to listen to new Jewish or Israeli music and figure out the guitar chords (that I can play) and make a chord sheet with the lyrics.  If it’s an Israeli tune, I also spend time getting to know the lyrics, appreciating the poetry. That way I feel I’m doing something work-ish, but it is also fun and since there is no deadline, I can just have fun with it.   

Last week, I was learning a couple of Ishay Ribo songs, some of which you will be hearing around the High Holy Days, when I discovered a new group, The Solomon Brothers, who are three Israeli American folk musicians that were finalists on the Israeli version of The Voice.  They do covers of several popular Israeli songs with spiritual messages, like those of Ishay Ribo. They translate some of the song into English and do some in Hebrew, so check them out.  

Anyway, Tim and I were scrolling through YouTube on our TV, checking out some of these when we came across a song by one of my favorites, Hanan ben Ari.  The song starts with these lines:

Every person has been expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Everyone passed through the flood.

Everyone has some sort of Abel inside that can be deathly jealous

In everyone there is a Babel Tower of rebellion and confusion.  

 The song goes on to say that in everyone is a Queen Esther, or a Warrior-Judge like Deborah, and like Rachel and Moses on Mount Nebo, each of us sometimes cries in secret.

I liked the lyrics and thought they would make a great way to teach about many of these Biblical characters and events to the Seventh Graders that I teach. First of all, the song is pretty good, but also because it asks us to relate personally to them, to internalize them and think about the way these archetypal stories play out with each of us. 

As always, here at Temple Woebegone, our 7th graders are all good-looking and way above average, and they were great at making those connections with these key Biblical characters and moments.

Then I met with a family and a bar mitzvah student, and we had a similar conversation, because almost every topic in his Torah portion related strongly to the struggles we are having today, like what are the limits of authority? how do we wage war in a just way?  how do we treat the environment during a war?  And what is needed to have a reliable, fair rule of law and court system that rich and poor alike can trust? 

I am amazed, year after year, at how profoundly relevant these ancient stories of ours are, and how deeply they capture the complexity of human beings in a society groping toward goodness or slipping into cruelty.  

In this week’s Torah portion, we start the Book of Exodus.  Having just spent many chapters of Genesis reading the stories of the complex, dysfunctional, and very human family of Jacob and Leah and Rachel… and Bilhah and Zilpah if we’re being honest.  Having sold their brother Joseph into slavery and telling their father that his youngest was killed by an animal attack, they all end up fat and happy in Egypt, the most affluent, powerful country on Earth at that time, and they are prosperous, safe, and accepted. 

And then we read:

“וַיָּ֥קׇם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף׃

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

And the entire story we have been reading takes a drastic, frightening turn.  There is a shift in the political landscape and the Israelites suddenly aren’t as comfortable as they were the day before.

I can imagine people who were their friends, even some who had become family suddenly looking at them differently, avoiding them, not speaking to them. 

The greatest of the rabbinic commentators, Rashi, from 11th Century France, reading that line, “who knew not Joseph” said this:

he acted as though he did not know him.

In other words, the Pharoah knew who the Israelites were, but started acting as if he didn’t.

Rashi also says that it might not be a new Pharaoh at all, but that the old Pharaoh just changed his politics, his allegiances, and started making laws to oppress the Israelites and enslave us.  He forgot how Joseph had saved Egypt, and how much the Israelites had contributed to Egypt, and instead, started to act as if they were a threat because they had too much power.

A new Pharaoh arose that knew not Joseph.

These stories of ours persevere because they are always relevant, because human beings back then were astonishingly like human beings today, and while we might have different ideas than the Torah about many things, the stories capture so much of human condition, of who we are as human beings when we struggle with our conflicting drives and insecurities. There are no perfect characters in our stories, no perfect moments. Everything and everyone are more complex than that, and we have the responsibility and burden to choose our actions. 

The chorus of the song I Dream Like Joseph offers one possible choice.  It says, “And I also dream like Joseph, and I have also been thrown into the pit.  History repeats itself but, in a costume, and like David, I choose to make from all this a song.”

It is up to us to find the beauty, the joy, and creativity, the inspiration in our lives and what is happening around us. We don’t always make the times we live in, but we have some power to choose how the times make us.  King David lived through some horrific things, many of his own making. He lost children, and had others try to kill him, and had a king trying to kill him over and over, and still, he wrote songs, Psalms, many of which we still sing today. Tonight.

We don’t choose the times we live in, but we can choose to see the beauty, to see the art in our fragile, beautiful lives. Art, story, music – these are how humans have long expressed the better angels of our nature. 

To be a part of this tradition is to be part of a long chain of people who found ways to find the art in life, to make beauty and joy and rest in the face of the same awful things we deal with today, and sometimes much worse.  Our stories, our texts are testaments to humans trying to understand ourselves in all our contradictions, to find the right balances in life, to work out relationships in families and in nations, and to see that while we often fail, we also regularly do profound and beautiful things.

Like helping one another.  Like finding the art in life.  Like making music and writing songs. Like Shabbat.     

Shabbat shalom.