Joseph Slave Trade

So Rabbi, I had talked to you earlier in the week and we were going to talk about a whole bunch of things and then it occurred to me that if this section is about anything, it’s about human trafficking and in its most natural way, which is tribes sell their own. Tribes attack their neighbors and sell their own. The traders might be Midianim and might be Ishmaelim, but this is a classic case of the slave trade. And so therefore reading it,

You have to keep in mind not only is it a segue between the story of Genesis and the Exodus that we’re going to, but it’s a unique and powerful moment in talking about this scurvy of humanity. So, just hadn’t really focused on that before. I don’t know whether you had, but we always think of slaves in Egypt as slaves of Pharaoh.

and of the Jewish people. But this is the one unique case where he was sold by his brethren. That is for sure true. So let’s start. As I said, it’s called Vayeshev and that’s because of the first verse. Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had should sojourned, the land of Canaan. Vayeshev Yaakov be’erets Megurei aviv.

Adam Mintz (02:02.148)
That is for sure true.

Geoffrey Stern (02:19.585)
So that really struck me right from the get-go because if you look at the Hebrew, it means he dwelled in the land of his father’s sojourning. It’s kind of a play on words. And the Ramban picks up on it and the Ramban says that what is happening here is that Jacob, as opposed to his brother Esau who went ahead and settled somewhere permanently,

It says that Jacob dwelt as his father had, as a stranger in a land which was not their own, but which belonged to the Canaanites. A stranger in his own land. I that struck me so much. But it really got me thinking that we always think that going down to Egypt was the beginning of

Adam Mintz (03:01.265)
you

Geoffrey Stern (03:10.489)
fulfilling Abraham’s prophecy. God said to Abraham in the Brit Bene Ptahrim, in the covenant between the pieces, your people are going to be in servitude. And I always assumed, and I think most of us would, that that servitude was in Egypt. But what the Ramban is kind of saying is that

Adam Mintz (03:22.994)
you

Geoffrey Stern (03:33.785)
beginning even with his father. They were strangers in a strange land. If you go back to Genesis 15: 13, it says, God said to Abram, know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs. And now they shall be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years. But I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve, and in the end they shall go free with great wealth.

Adam Mintz (03:54.574)
.

Geoffrey Stern (04:00.429)
Then it goes on to say, shall go to your ancestors in peace. You shall be buried at a ripe old age and they shall return here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. So we have 400 years. We have fourth generation. I’m not sure if the text itself expected us to take it that seriously, but clearly there’s an issue here. Were the Jews, were the Israelites?

really down in Egypt for that long. And I quote a long Rashi in Exodus where Rashi actually says, guess what? He says it, you are compelled to admit even though unwillingly that the other settlements which the patriarchs made in lands other than Egypt came also under the name of sojourning as a stranger, including also that at Hebron.

So Rashi does a whole calculation and it turns out that you begin counting these 400 odd years from when Isaac was born and he was a

Adam Mintz (05:10.17)
Born, correct. I just have one point to make, which is important. They play a little trick. In Hebrew today,

Lagur means to live. Now that’s a play, because it’s also ger. To live is to be a stranger. know, so Rashi and Ramban highlight the fact that M’gure aviv means that he was a stranger in the land. But the truth of the matter is that that’s not 100 % true, because the word M’gure’ could mean where he lived.

Geoffrey Stern (05:45.069)
And you’re right, in the prophecy or the blessing from God, it doesn’t say anywhere the word ger or stranger. It says that you will be a, what does it say? Yezra ha-be-eretz lo-lehem. That they will be in a land that’s not theirs.

Adam Mintz (05:51.366)
Right.

Adam Mintz (06:02.236)
Doesn’t use the word right.

It’s not, now, the Ramban notices something strange. Vayeshev Yaakov, be’eretz M’gure’ aviv. It should say, Vayechev Yaakov, be’eret Asher Yashav bo aviv. Means the relationship to the land should be the same. He lived where his father lived. The fact that the word changes is surprising.

Geoffrey Stern (06:29.417)
And the Abarbanel says it should say, Yagar Yaakov, it’s m’gure’ aviv. If he really was a stranger like his dad, it should have. So there’s a tension here. It’s eliciting this conversation, I think. what I wanted to bring it to the fore was it’s not altogether certain that to fulfill Abraham’s

Adam Mintz (06:38.669)
Right, that’s correct, right.

Geoffrey Stern (06:55.097)
prophecy or God’s blessing or prophecy to Abraham, they had to go down to Egypt. You can be a stranger in your own land. According to both Rashi and Ramban, part of those years were in any case in the land of Canaan. And so from that perspective, it puts the whole story of Joseph into a different frame, because clearly you could make an argument that

While Abraham and Isaac both had famines, both went down either to Egypt or to where the Philistines were and had to leave their home, they came back. And what was different about what we are going to read about Joseph as an individual and what we’re going to read in the book of Exodus about our people is they went down and they stayed. And they stayed for multiple generations.

The only other thing that I was struck by, Rabbi, was I hadn’t ever focused before on this word, v’dor revi’i, the fourth generation. Clearly there is a connection somehow between 400 years, or at least I think there might be, 400 years and four generations, and that would lead me to believe you shouldn’t take the 400s so seriously, just like we might not take the ages that the patriarchs lived to so seriously.

Adam Mintz (08:09.777)
and four generations.

Geoffrey Stern (08:22.841)
It means a lot of time. It means a long time. But what struck me is that dor revi’i the fourth generation, this could have ended with Joseph. Joseph could have been the fourth generation. We could have talked about not only our four matriarchs, we could have talked about our four patriarchs. If this was following the structure,

Adam Mintz (08:23.412)
400 years means a long time.

Geoffrey Stern (08:50.699)
of all of the stories that we’ve read heretofore it would have been a case where Yakov picked his chosen. And maybe the only difference would have been that rather than picking one and casting out the balance, he would have had them all live together as a happy family. But that’s hardly what happened. But it does make you think a little bit as we kind of look into reading this story.

Adam Mintz (09:18.749)
Most definitely does, yes.

Geoffrey Stern (09:20.919)
So, we’re not gonna read the story because it is so well known, and if you don’t remember it, just rent Prince of Egypt and you can watch it on the big screen. But what I’m gonna focus on is we’ve in the past, especially in Genesis, focused on names and places. There is no question that what the text is doing is not only trying to position

Joseph maybe as a segue into the Exodus, but they’re also trying to position the other tribes, because as I mentioned before, no one was kicked out of the house. This is it. This is the 12 tribes. So in Genesis, we have Joseph have the two dreams, dreams of all of his brothers bowing down to him, then possibly a second dream where his mother and father and his brothers bow down to him, and he just can’t stop.

And that’s why I said he was immature and tactless. He is chosen, loved by his father. He has this multicolored coat and he just puts it in their face. And I think you probably got to believe rather than being facetious, he’s just a kid. And he’s a really good looking kid and maybe he doesn’t have a mom to really teach him how this all works. But in any case, he gets into trouble and his father goes sends him

to visit his brothers who are tending to the flock and they decide they’ve had enough with this kid and they decide to get rid of him and this is where we are in Genesis 37 when Reuben heard what they wanted to do, meaning to kill him, he tried to save him from them. He said, let us not take his life and Reuben went on, shed no blood.

cast him into the pit out in the wilderness, but do not touch him yourselves, intending to save him from them and restore him to his father. I bring this because Reuben was literally the firstborn. If you recall, Yaakov gets married, he thinks he’s marrying Rachel, Leah gets switched. Reuben is the firstborn of Leah, Yaakov’s first wife.

Geoffrey Stern (11:33.529)
He wasn’t going to get the bechorah, be the chosen one, because he slept with one of the maidservants of his dad, literally tried to usurp the throne, the bed. But I think it’s trying to put him into a good light. It is positioning the story in looking to the future. And the other…

Adam Mintz (11:59.32)
just say one thing, we don’t know in retrospect, you know that he wasn’t gonna get the right of the first board because he slept with his father’s concubine. But you only know that at the end of the book of Genesis. Here you don’t know that yet. I would read this story that Reuven is trying to protect his Bechorah (first born status). And therefore he says, don’t kill him. Cause if you kill him, it’s gonna be on my head.

And I’m going to lose the Bechora because of this. I think that plays in this.

Geoffrey Stern (12:32.567)
I love it that you’re looking at it in real time because it again, it emphasizes what I said before. We’re used to a structure by this point where somehow the choice is made. Which one is the firstborn? Which one gets the blessing? And what you’re saying is no, it’s dynamic. We don’t know at the end of the story even if it’s gonna be Joseph, if it’s gonna be Reuben, and now we get to Judah.

who was not the firstborn of Leah, but he was, I think, the thirdborn, and therefore you’d say, hey, God never picks the first guy. He always brings the second. He’s in the running. Then Judah said to his brothers, what do we gain by killing our brother and covering up his blood? Come let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let us not do away with him ourselves. After all, he is our brother, our flesh.

His brothers agreed. So this Judah now is showing leadership skills. And then the most amazing things happens with regard to Judah, we’re in the middle of this enthralling narrative, and there’s a station break, and all of a sudden we get to a story about Judah and Tamar.

And here, Yehuda, and we don’t even have a sense of when this actually occurred, although the Bible says, vayehi b’et ha’hi

Adam Mintz (13:55.672)
That’s the only thing that matters. The Torah wants you to think that it happened at the same time.

Geoffrey Stern (14:01.621)
And it’s a great story. I’m sure we’ve dealt with it in prior years. I’m sure we’ll deal with it in future years. But the takeaway is that when it’s all done and it’s a riveting story of where Judah sleeps with a woman he thinks is prostitute, but it’s actually the widow of his two sons who were barren and she gets pregnant, the kicker is at the end that she gets

pregnant with twins. We know twins is a big deal. After all, Yaakov himself was one of a twin with the heel and all that. And these ones come out first. And the name of the one who comes out first is Perez. And those who are reading this in generations after the event know that Perez was what? The grandfather of King David. And of course, Judah

Adam Mintz (14:55.554)
Right.

Geoffrey Stern (14:58.099)
ultimately became the Judean Empire and Jews come from the word Judah. So I bring this all up to say that there are elements that we’re used to, but they’re kind of hidden behind the scenes and we just don’t know what’s going on, but we’re expecting a chosen child and we’re expecting to see what

Adam Mintz (15:06.358)
Right.

Geoffrey Stern (15:24.953)
what follows. It’s a strange different story. It’s kind of like, it’s a break. It’s a segue, but it’s also a break,

Adam Mintz (15:34.902)
Absolutely right. mean, you see, you also talk in real time. You can appreciate the story of Judah in real time. You have to understand that the reason the story of Judah and Tamar is introduced here is because later on, Judah is going to be the one who takes responsibility when they appear before Joseph. So you need to say, where did Judah learn the importance of responsibility? Tamar taught him the importance of responsibility.

Geoffrey Stern (16:02.413)
Yep, it’s definitely, this is written from a perspective that we’re used to, which is from the future, looking back where all the pieces belong. But I want to focus now on what’s so unique about the story itself, how it’s written. know, Jacob Mann wrote Joseph and his Brothers. I mean, this is a novella. This is a story within itself.

great biblical scholars like Moshe Weinfeld looked at it and they say it just reads differently than what comes before and what comes after. He says it’s kind of secular and down-to-earth quality. You know, the story progresses. I encourage all of you to not only look at the Sefaria notes, but to actually read the story

the text in the Bible, you all know that Joseph gets traded by Midianites, by Ishmaelites. He ends up in Potiphar’s house. He is so trusted that he turns out to run the house. The wife of the guy falls in love with him. He runs out of the house. She grabs his coat. He ends up in jail. He interprets dreams.

of the baker, of the wine merchant, and ultimately where he’s poised to enter Pharaoh’s court. What a story of rags to riches, of slavery to redemption. But what Moshe Weinfeld is seeing here is it almost reads, and I’ll say it right now, like the story of Esther. There’s lip service to God, but

This guy is beautiful, he’s smart, he reads the moment, he grows up in front of our eyes. There’s definitely something different about this.

Adam Mintz (17:51.502)
You know that Esther and Joseph are the same story, because that’s how Jews manage in a foreign country. Now, we’re not quite at that point yet for Joseph, but ultimately it’s the same story.

Geoffrey Stern (18:07.033)
I love it. in the source notes, I bring there is a literature about what is unique about this story. What, How do we wrap our arms around it? Where do we, what peg, What round hole do we put this square peg into? There are scholars who say it belongs in the genre of court legends. And that really speaks a little bit to what you were just saying, Rabbi.

Daniel and Esther. Remember, you could actually add Jonah if you want. Here we have a key Israelite Jewish figure who his ministry is outside of the land of Israel. He’s going down to Egypt, you know, he makes Moses promise to bring the bones back, but that’s about it. God never says you’re coming home, and I made that point before, and that is critical.

The other thing that they say a lot of is wisdom literature. Now, for those that you don’t know, there are books like Ecclesiastes, there are books like the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and they are considered wisdom literature. I think if we had to pick an American author of wisdom literature, it would be Benjamin Franklin.

early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and rise. It is practical knowledge about how to make something of yourself, how to keep your word in business. And if you look at the verses before us from that perspective, they start to jump out. So in Genesis 39, 2, it says, was with Joseph and he was a successful man.

In wisdom literature, the goal is a successful life. It doesn’t say anything about purity. It doesn’t say anything about dveikut with God, reaching some spiritual level. It is success. In Genesis 41, also part of our parasha, it says, Accordingly, let Pharoah find someone discerning and wise.. Ish navon v’chacham

Geoffrey Stern (20:17.753)
Chacham means wise, like wisdom literature. This literature is called, and I will add, I didn’t find this in any of the academics, but I think that the other part of wisdom literature is where we’re finding coming of age stories about the arc of life.

from being a child, from being a toddler, from being a dumb, silly, narcissistic adolescent, to being someone growing old. You have that in ecclesiastices and Kohelet for sure. And I think, Rabbi, what struck me this reading was that unlike many of the readings we’ve had till now in the patriarchs, you really see Joseph grow in front of you. You really do see a kid

become a statesman, a child who can’t control his mouth to become a leader ,a Prince of Egypt. What do you think?

Adam Mintz (21:16.692)
Well, I mean, but, you know, even in the House of Pharoah

It’s not entirely clear that he didn’t bring on his trouble with Mrs. Potepar.

Right?

Geoffrey Stern (21:31.813)
And so we’re seeing, I think what you’re saying, what I’m saying is that we are really, it’s graded. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden. He doesn’t leave Israel as a, what we would call a nar, a child, get to Potiphar and all of a sudden be a smart guy. He had to learn there too, you know, about winking too much or.

Adam Mintz (21:55.166)
I think so. You know that in Yiddish, the word nahr means a fool. We say nahrishkite means foolishness. Probably it’s learned from Joseph. He was a nahr. He wasn’t just young, but he was foolish like a youngster.

Geoffrey Stern (22:15.641)
Absolutely. He fits the description. I think that if you look at the academic literature, they’re not all that convinced that this belongs in Wisdom literature. One of the biggest arguments they make is that it keeps on saying, because of God. He interprets a dream and he goes, God help me interpret it. And that doesn’t really happen in Wisdom literature. I’m not convinced. I said before it was mostly lip service, I thought.

and I’ll stick to that, but I think the rabbis, let’s throw away the academics for a while, the Midrash itself puts Joseph into the category of Wisdom literature. In Midrash Mishlei, it talks about Shlomo (Solomon), of course, who is the ultimate

There’s a lot of background noise. Is that for me?

Very strange.

Adam Mintz (23:13.726)
It’s not for me, I have no noise in here.

Geoffrey Stern (23:16.057)
Yeah, echo cancellation is off. Hello, hello. Okay, well let’s try it now. In Midrash Mishleh, it puts Joseph into, absolutely into wisdom literature. Solomon, who is considered the author of Song of Songs and is also the author of Proverbs, is there, but so is Adam, so is Abraham, so is Moses, and then it

quotes verses from Joseph and it says, Calcal this is Joseph as it is written and Joseph sustained his father and his brother, the Calcal Yosef Etaviv Etachav, Calcal, Rabbi in modern day Hebrew economics is called Calcala. So it kind of even proves my point.

Adam Mintz (24:05.523)
Right, that’s correct. Same word.

Geoffrey Stern (24:12.461)
that he really, and the other commentaries points, that He really was pragmatic, he was smart in the ways of the economy, but I will tell you that putting him into the Wisdom literature also has meaning for us because it makes his message that much more powerful. It becomes a universal message. And in Proverbs,

Right from the beginning, it talks about if they say, come with us, let us set an ambush to shed blood, let us lie and wait for the innocent. This is verse 10 in the first chapter of Proverbs. The rabbis in the Midrash go ahead and they use this few verses to actually tell the story of Joseph. I mean, it is so clear to me

that when it says, with us, let us lie and wait for blood, let us look secretly for the innocent without cause, that’s Mishle 1.9, the rabbi says these are the brothers of Joseph who were lurking and saying. So they literally go verse by verse and parse it, and I think what they’re saying at the end of the day, you can spend some time reading the sources, but at the end of the day what they’re saying is that this is a different type.

Adam Mintz (25:09.491)
That’s fabulous.

Geoffrey Stern (25:37.651)
of literature. And this is, in a sense, universal, and its meaning is, therefore, that much more impactful. Now, you’re hearing also a lot of background noise.

Adam Mintz (25:49.158)
No, I’m okay.

Geoffrey Stern (25:53.485)
When I talk, you hear it okay? Okay, good. No, you sound great. I’m just hoping that I end up being good too.

Adam Mintz (25:55.71)
hear it okay. You don’t hear it when I talk.

Adam Mintz (26:01.428)
I think it’ll be fine. Now, let’s just analyze that for a minute. So your argument is that Joseph is part of wisdom literature and wisdom literature kind of sees life in kind of simple terms. The moral quandaries, the moral complications that we saw in Abraham’s life about how we dealt with Yishmael, the moral complications in Yitzchak’s life with stealing the blessings.

That doesn’t come in this story of Joseph. Joseph kind of, in all things work out for him. He is an Ish matzliyakh (succesful man). The truth is he’s not only an Ish matzliyakh (succesful man in the house of Potiphar, he’s an Ish matzliyakh (succesful man throughout because at the beginning also he’s an Ish matzliyakh (successful man). First of all, his father favors him, then the brothers sell him, but it all works out for him. Ish matzliyakh (succesful man) is the heading on the description of the life of Joseph.

Geoffrey Stern (26:59.905)
I would go even a step further. The argument that I’m making for Wisdom literature, and I was the one who said yes, one of the motivations of Wisdom literature is success, living a successful life, but I wouldn’t contour that success as economic and monetary success only.

but also success from an ethical point of view, a moral point of view, a societal point of view. we’re approaching the end. I want to get into slavery. And I want to get to how this story was taken by the sages and by Jewish history. So Rabbi, we’re in Yom Kippur, and we are going through the service, and all of a sudden, there is this Eleh Ezkera.

We talk about the 10 martyrs. And normally, guys like you and I, focus on the martyrdom and we say, this necessary? What’s the message? Whatever. And we forget about the introduction. And the introduction is that there was a Caesar. And for whatever reason, Caesar was taught our texts, our Bible. He studied it for the rabbis were trying to get an ally. And he reads the story of Joseph.

And he reads later laws that say if you kidnap somebody, are chayav mita, you are culpable with death. And he brings the rabbis and he says the debt has never been paid. I need I need 10 of you, which would be the 10 brothers, as opposed to the 12 without Benjamin and without Joseph. And I’m going to execute you because you are

the recipients, you’re the culmination of Jewish tradition. And it’s amazing that the story of Joseph has such a strong kind of footprint in our Yom Kippur services. And I looked it up and there’s an amazing commentary. And his name is Meshech Chachma. And he culls all of the tradition. And he basically says,

Geoffrey Stern (29:21.655)
that There are two sins that were never paid. One is the Chet HaEgel, the golden calf, and it says that in every generation, every generation pays the price of the golden calf, which between you and me, Rabbi means that we all need to worry about idolatry. We all have that in us. It doesn’t go away. And then he says, But when it comes to Ben Odom Lechavei Ro,

Adam Mintz (29:43.928)
Right.

Geoffrey Stern (29:49.993)
sins between man and man, we all have the sin of the brothers selling Joseph. And he says that never goes away. And not only do we have Eleh Ezkera but according to the Talmud, when we have pidyon ha-ben, when we get a newborn child and we give that shekel, it is in place of the shekel or the 20 shekels that Joseph was sold.

And so what I’m trying to say is that the rabbis understood the profound nature of when a people sells its own. I’m not an expert on slavery around the world. I’m certainly not an expert in what happened in Africa in terms of the cross-Atlantic trade. But it seems to me that you had a similar story mode.

where local tribes would raid each other, villages would pillage each other, they would steal people, and they would trade them to the modern-day Ishmaelites and the Midianites. They would trail them to the colonists who were trading in slaves. But the ultimate point is that slaves’ trades done was done within one’s own. And that is the most evil, pernicious sin that can ever be put on another human being.

And think that’s what the rabbis took with this story. And you could make the case that without the sale of Joseph, we would not have had to encounter and experience all of Yitzhia Mitzrayim, all of going down to Egypt. We could have been strangers in our own land. And after 400 years or four generations, we could have finally felt like belongers. But this Joseph story had a

profound impact, I think, on Jewish law, but also on the Jewish texts and Yom Kippur. This Ben Odom Lechavi Ro, that’s what I would connect to wisdom literature. That wisdom literature is talking about living a successful life within society, within man, without the need to even introduce God.

Adam Mintz (32:07.311)
I think that’s fantastic. I mean, you know, obviously you always go back to Yom Kippur. If it makes it into the Musaf on Yom Kippur, obviously it’s something that we need to think about all year long.

Geoffrey Stern (32:20.067)
So that is the message that we have, that slavery and the outcome of slavery never goes away and that every generation has to understand that at its most basic level, I guess we’re all created in the image of God, but more that we’re all brothers and that we have to not only watch out for each other, but at the most basic level, we cannot sell or own or merchandise.

the life of another person. And that’s a pretty profound story from Joseph.

Adam Mintz (32:53.989)
It sure is. Thank you so much, Geoffrey. Shabbat shalom, everybody. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week