Vayeishev - A Salutary Lesson in Parenting
Joseph had
everything going for him.
At
seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper
to the sons of his father’s wives, Bilhah and Zilpah."
He was
following the family tradition of being a shepherd. He fitted into the mould,
alongside his brothers. However, not all is well as we told in the same verse:
And Joseph
brought bad reports of them to their father."
You would
expect the Torah to tell us that Jacob admonishes Joseph for tale-bearing.
Wouldn't that be the logical follow-on to this episode?
However,
strangely, the next verse informs us that:
(3) Now
Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age;
and he had made him an coat of many colours."
Chizkuni, a
13th Century French commentator explains that:
(The word פסים -"of many colours" can be seen) as a 'compensation,' for being a half orphan, not having a mother
anymore. Jacob tried to compensate him by having a costly garment made for
him.
If we join
the dots, we find that we have a petulant teenager, the apple of his father's
eye, who despite his behaviour, is given a wonderful gift. Notice the order of
the information provided. Firstly, Joseph badmouths his brothers and then,
Jacob's initial response is to seemingly ignore his behaviour and to add insult
to injury, reward him with a beautiful coat.
Rashi tells
us that the word פסים is a term for 'raiment of fine wool' (Gemara Masechet Shabbat 10b)”
The next
verse underscores the dysfunctional family dynamic by stating:
And when
his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers,
they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him."
Can you
imagine the table conversations that took place at meal-time?
Jacob
looking at his beloved son with dreamy eyes, all the while his other sons
complaining bitterly about how unfair it all was. Why should Joseph be given
preferential treatment over them? How could their father reward his poor
behaviour in such a manner?
In their
eyes, this was a travesty of justice and it wasn't helped by the following
verses which describe his dreams!
He dreamed
another dream and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another
dream: And this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to
me.” (10) And when he told it to his father and brothers, his father berated
him. “What,” he said to him, “is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I
and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?"
It is very
easy to view the narrative in the Bible as being removed from the present day.
These people lived in a time that seems so different to our own. Yet, as a
parent and teacher, I find that they don't seem so different from the kind of
people we are these days. How many of us realise the mistakes we made, either
following Joseph's example or falling into the same parental trap as Jacob?
It is all
too easy to let our emotions guide us into the wrong territory.
Why didn't
Jacob discipline his son? Why did he choose him at the expense of the
obvious hurt caused to the brothers? It's easy to view the disastrous result
from the luxury of hindsight - but that is what makes Jacob, Joseph and his
brothers so very human in our eyes.
Rabbi Sacks
in Covenant and Conversation (2017) explains:
"Our
failures, seen in retrospect many years later, turn out to have been our
deepest learning experiences. Our hindsight is always more perceptive than our
foresight.
We live life facing the future, but we understand life only when it
has become our past.
Nowhere is
this set out more clearly than in the story of Joseph in this week's parsha.
It begins
on a high note: 'Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because
he was a son of his old age and he made him a richly embroiderer robe.' But with dramatic speed, that love and that gift turn out to be Joseph's
undoing. His brothers began hating him. When he told them his dream, they hated
him even more.
His second dream offended even his father. Later, when he went to see his brothers
tending their flocks, they first plotted to kill him, and eventually sold him
as a slave". And that is just the start of his woes. By the end of the
parsha, he has even been forgotten by the Royal butler and is languishing in an
Egyptian Jail. How the mighty have fallen!"
If we set
aside the parental angle, we see another fascinating aspect of the relationship
between Jacob and Joseph.
In the
1920s, the eminent psychologist Edward Thorndike of Columbia University suggested the idea that a person can be perceived as having a “halo” by someone else.
In his paper, 'A
Constant Error in Psychological Ratings', he wrote the following:
“In a study
made in 1915
of employees of
two large industrial
corporations, it appeared
that the estimates
of the same man in a number of
different traits such
as intelligence, industry, technical skill, reliability, (etc), were very highly correlated and very
evenly correlated.
It consequently appeared probable that those
giving the ratings were unable to analyse out these different aspects
of the person’s nature and achievement and rate
each in independence
of the others. Their ratings were apparently
affected by a marked tendency to think of the person in general as rather good
or rather inferior and to
colour the judgements
of the qualities
by this general feeling.
This
same constant error towards suffusing ratings of special
features with a halo belonging
to the individuals as a whole appeared
in the ratings
of officers made
by their
superiors in the army…”
The
Halo effect is very readily applicable in many different situations, most
notably in the process of selecting applicants for a job. The interviewer finds
something in common with the interviewee (such as their having grown up in the
same town or attended the same school) and this can then prejudice their
objectivity in being able to select the appropriate candidate for the post. The
same concept works in reverse and is known as the “horns effect” (e.g) the candidate doesn't wear appropriate clothing when attending the meeting and the interviewer takes a dislike to him/her based on this - to the extent that it prejudices the interviewee's chance of successfully obtaining the job.
Is
it possible that Rachel’s death had understandably blinded Jacob to his younger
son’s failings, in the same way that his father had been dazzled by Esau, all
those years before?
As Sir Tim Rice put it
so succinctly in 'Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat':
“And their father
couldn’t see the danger, he could not imagine any danger – he just saw in
Joseph all his dreams come true”.
Jacob’s biased view of
Joseph turned out to be as destructive as any employer who too has let a
prejudiced viewpoint cloud their judgement.
As a parent
and teacher, I can readily see the result of the mistakes we make when bringing up our children. Mistakes that could have been so easily avoided in hindsight.
I regret
the times when I should have acted differently towards my own children and those when I should not. Yet, as I look at the wonderful young adults my own
daughters have developed into, I realise that maybe the mistakes I made were
beneficial in helping them to avoid their own when they Please Gd become
parents themselves.
Like Jacob,
I have all too human failings but not to the extent that my children have sold
their younger sibling into captivity!
As teachers,
we have limited control over the children we instruct. We try our best to
instil in them the right way to behave towards one another and adults in
general and at the end of the day, we aspire to send them into the world with
the values that we cherish - in terms of being responsible contributors to the
societies they inhabit.
Perhaps, we
can take note from the lessons that the Torah is teaching us, with regard to
Jacob, Joseph and his brothers. The domino effect that Rachel's passing had on
the family cannot be underestimated - yet, at the same time, with a little more
thought and foresight, perhaps the situation could have turned out differently.
I think
that Rabbi Sacks' comment about how 'our failures, seen in retrospect many years
later, turn out to have been our deepest learning experiences' resonates more,
the older we become.
If I have
learned anything from my experiences, it is, that the lessons I have internalised
will hopefully help the next generation to avoid the same pitfalls.
May we all
be blessed with the ability to continue learning from our mistakes - and maybe,
even the foresight to avoid making them in the first place!
Shabbat
Shalom.
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