Parashat VaYeshev Genesis 37:1−40:23
Dear TBE Community,
I have described before the surreal landscapes in Torah, especially as I imagine them in the book of Genesis. The visual rendering of biblical landscapes—topographies of narrative meaning — has a long-standing tradition in Judaism. Think of illuminations and papercuts, agricultural scenes like waving wheat fields or desert sunrises; city panoramas; even tableaus depicting the tribes, many of whose symbols evoke nature.
(Check out these beautiful illuminations from Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz’s Passover Haggadah. And while not a Jewish or Zionist painting, look at this image from Vincent van Gogh’s The Sower series for a synthesis of similarly redemptive imagery.)
Perhaps because we cannot make images of God, like icons or other figurative representations of the Divine, the landscape moves to the fore. When we can’t picture God, or even humans created in God’s image, place becomes a way to express divine attributes. HaMakom, one of the rabbinic names for the unpronounceable Name, may be understood in this light: terrain as revelation, landscape as a way to make holiness seen. Place becomes Presence.
In literature, a recurring theme or formula is called a topos. This is fascinating, because in Greek topos means place, location, region. A symbol or motif, with all its layers of association and implied cross-references, becomes like a tangible place one can grasp, recognize, understand.
One such topos in Torah narrative and mysticism is the field—שדה, sadeh. During Elul, the phrase “the king is in the field” describes the thin boundary between the human realm and the Divine in the weeks leading up to the New Year: God becomes more approachable, more easily encountered, when out in the field.
Another relevant passage is Isaac ambling in the field in the late afternoon light, meditating or praying—perhaps conversing with himself and with the Divine—when he sees Rebecca arriving from the east. There, in the field at twilight, something ethereal and transcendent unfolds: love, destiny, the fulfillment of a step in a divine plan.
Indeed, Bereishit, the book of Genesis, largely focuses on divine providence and prophetic visions. All three patriarchs are blessed with God’s promise to multiply their offspring. Like in a surreal, or impressionist, dreamlike painting, the entire redemption story is already foretold before it begins to unfold in the narrative. And while arguably, the Israelites’ redemption story begins in Gan Eden, or after the flood, or when Abraham sets out for the east—it is in this week’s parasha, ironically just after Torah states that Jacob is settled in the land, that another inception emerges. And it spirals into a new layer of the story and leads the family tribe deep into Egypt, as announced to Abraham in Genesis 15:13.
Jacob sends his son Joseph to find his shepherding brothers. When Joseph reaches Shechem—a layered and significant location in the patriarchal narrative—he is “straying in the field.” And he is found by an ish, a man.
And the man asked him, saying, “What is it you seek?” And he said, “My brothers I seek. Tell me, pray, where are they pasturing?” And the man said, “They have journeyed on from here, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” And Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. (Genesis 37:15–17)
Imagine the scene. What kind of field? What does the tableau look like? And what stands out? Joseph, in his multicolored coat, ambling alone.
Alone, and lost—or at least wandering—unaware of how far he has drifted off the path. The Hebrew תָּעָה, ta’eh, encompasses the semantic range of straying, erring, wandering, and the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael cites precisely this verse as a proof text.
And while Joseph is straying in the empty, open field, he is found. The Hebrew here is in the passive voice: Joseph does not encounter the man; he is encountered by a man—ish. As with Jacob, and as in other passages from the prophetic writings (for example Joshua or Judges), an ish can be understood as a divine messenger, perhaps even God. While Robert Alter is skeptical that this man here can be likened to these other divine apparitions, he concedes that “what it is safe to say is that the question and answer in a field outside Shechem reinforce the sense that Joseph is being directed, unwitting, to a disastrous encounter.”
It is also safe to say that in that moment, in that field, another micro-level of the Israelites’ redemption story is set in motion once again, coiling and uncoiling at the same time. Joseph is sent to Dothan, to meet his brothers, who plot to kill him.
Why did God encounter Joseph and direct him toward a path that would lead to suffering in Egypt? Why must redemption pass through challenge first? I personally don’t subscribe to the idea that everything happens for a reason, or that hardship inevitably leads to a better place. But I can’t entirely dismiss it either. Especially when I try to decipher Torah’s imagery and montage, the message it is sending.
As Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger writes in his davar on VaYeshev:
Not that suffering guarantees meaning. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. (…) Tragedy may break us. But if we do surmount the obstacles, we are far better off than we were to begin with.
Perhaps God sending Joseph down to Egypt so that we have something to talk about at the seder feels just as challenging as God hardening Pharaoh’s heart plague after plague to demonstrate divine power. Why not just one plague, a Bat Mitzvah student recently asked. Why expose Egyptians—and Israelites alike—to the horrors of multiple plagues? Why make Joseph believe he is being guided toward blessing when the path first leads to despair?
In Torah, the answer seems to be: God has a plan and God intervenes—and in hindsight, it all makes sense.
But what about foresight, something humans possess far less of? Joseph’s brothers see him walking toward them from afar, as Abraham saw Mount Moriah from afar. They know something before they know where it will lead. So we too are often knowingly unknowingly like somnambulant agents in the larger, unrevealed narrative of our intertwined lives, whether directed by angels, God, or just ordinary people.
Maybe the beginning of Joseph’s story also comes to reassure us that when we step into open fields—places where certainty as well as boundaries between the human and divine realm thin, where the path is unclear, where we might be lost more than we are aware—it can be good to trust that someone may find us there. Even when the encounter leads first to challenge or dislocation, there can be revelation—and redemption—in its wake. Being found may sometimes be the first step toward becoming who we are yet to become. Sometimes things do happen for a reason.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch