God Is with You

November 30, 2007
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

This Torah portion includes much of the story of Joseph. Now it has always amazed me that we have three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not four patriarchs. Why should the Jewish Mount Rushmore not have room for Joseph? He certainly was important enough in early Jewish history. If not for him, the people might have died of starvation during the famine in Canaan. If not for him, the people might never have gone down into Egypt, and if not in Egypt, there could not be an Exodus or a Moses or even a Mount Sinai. He is so critical to the continuation of the early Israelites that the Book of Exodus reminds us that everything was just fine in the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived until "there arose a Pharaoh who did not remember Joseph."

Then why is Joseph left out of the canon of patriarchs? Later commentators gave many suggestions to answer this question. Some were equivocal, hardly worth noting. It was suggested that Joseph could not reach the heights of the patriarchate because he took an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife. But the suggestion that a foreign wife or a foreign name could stain his character is too strange to be believed. After all, Isaac took a wife who was not a Hebrew and Jacob took two. Even though their wives were distantly related to them, the issue of a wife's religion does not even occur to the writers of Genesis. Rachel, Jacob's most beloved wife, even managed to steal her father's household idols and bring them along on the journey to Canaan for luck, if not for actual worship. So we cannot claim any religious reason for not taking an Egyptian wife.

There are two major reasons why Joseph does not get the press of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But let's cut to the chase. Here's the second reason. Joseph is too much like us.

Joseph is the first secular Israelite in the history of the Jewish people. In our prayer called Avot or "Ancestors," we do not say, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Instead, we say "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The fact is that each of these three ancestors encountered God directly. Each of them made a covenant with God. God is consistent throughout. God reminds each of them that "I am the God of your father [or fathers]." From God's point of view, then, there is only One God. But the patriarchs each lived under a God he knew personally -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

Joseph never made a covenant with God, never faced God personally as his forefathers had. Joseph was the first person in the Bible to be religious in the way that you and I are religious. Joseph was secular and religious. Joseph trusted in God, and Joseph speculated on what God was doing, and Joseph believed that God was always present, but Joseph had dealings with the outside world and these were the most important dealings in his life.

Joseph is not worried about gaining the blessing that would make him the head of the Jewish people. Like David Ben Gurion or Isaac Meyer Wise or Theodor Herzl, Joseph becomes the leader of the Jewish people through his secular dealings. When he is called upon to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh's servants, the baker and the cupbearer, he tells them that they should repeat their dreams to him and God will provide the interpretations. But it is not God who speaks to Joseph in a dream. It is Joseph who trusts that God will guide him in the task of interpreting the dreams. So, too, with the dreams of Pharaoh. Joseph does not stop to pray or lay down for the night on a pillow of stone or set up an altar before he offers an interpretation of Pharaoh's dream. He trusts that God will guide his interpretation, but he utters no prayer and looks for no vision. He is like you and me.

We trust that, if we do good, God will guide our lives in a way that will satisfy our needs. Trusting is all that we expect of God. Our faith does not lead us to believe that we will be granted a vision of God or that we will enter into a covenant as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did. We are like Joseph.

Later on, when Joseph encounters his brothers, he tells them not to worry about him, because he is a "God-fearing man." And, still later, when he reveals himself to his brothers, he again tells them not to worry and he speaks of God again. He says,

I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt. Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. It is now two years that there has been famine in the land, and there are still five years to come in which there shall be no yield from tilling. God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and God has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt [Gen. 45:4-8].

This is the most God-filled moment in Joseph's life and it is remarkable that God does not come to Joseph here. Instead, it is Joseph who comes to God, not just here, but throughout the story. It is Joseph who trusts that God is with him and knows that God guides his every step.

But Joseph is entirely secular. He is not one of them -- not an Abraham, an Isaac, or a Jacob -- he is one  of us, a Jew who trusts that God is with us constantly, that God guides our every step, that God knows what we are doing and why we are doing it, and that God puts us in the right place at the right time to do the right thing with our secular lives.

When you are called on to support the Temple, you have a choice. Will you be like Joseph, fearing God and doing what is right because you know it is right? When there is a catastrophe in the world, we do not expect you to be like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and wait for God to tell you what you must do. We expect you to be like Joseph to do the right thing because you trust that God is always there, always with you, always watching over you. Joseph is the first of us, the most outstanding example of us in the entire Bible. He lives among a majority of people who are not of his faith and yet he brings his faith to bear in everything that he does.

That is all that is expected of you, too. Not to become Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, but to follow the model of the man of the world, to be the secular person that you are day by day, and to trust that God is with you. And let us say: Amen.