Towards the end of this week’s Torah reading there is a description of the creation of a new status in Egypt – the status of slavery. This is a result of desperate Egyptian need and Joseph’s pragmatic wisdom. He exploits the situation well.

Here are the relevant verses:

“There was no bread in all the land for the famine was very severe… and Joseph gathered in all the money… as payment for the ration that were being procured… And the money gave out… and Joseph said: ‘Bring all your livestock…if the money is gone’… And when that year was ended they came to him (again, and said:) … nothing is left at my lord’s disposal, save our persons and our farmland…so Joseph gained possession of all the farmland of Egypt ..and he removed the population, town by town…”

(Genesis, 47,13 onwards, with omissions).

This means Joseph took all from them in exchange for sustenance, and he removed them to the cities – to serve Pharaoh. Does this sound familiar?

As Soforno explains (verse 23):

“’Whereas I have thus acquired you and your land’… and therefore you are (now) slave to Pharaoh…”

The great irony is, of course, that this very institution which Joseph created for Pharaoh back then will, as the Torah’s narrative continues, become the source of suffering for Joseph’s own people. Many commentators on this episode have pointed out this irony in the story. Something which was at first good for the people of Israel (and for the Egyptians as well) become, with time, a rigid and eventually brutal social structure which hurts even those who were crucial in its creation.

This is also true in the case of the contemporary State of Israel. A military victory in a defensive war in 1967 created a complex situation in which the Jews ruled the lives of another people (directly and indirectly) for many years, in most cases until today. A temporary solution to a specific security problem became a rigid social institution – “the occupation”. What seemed at first to be a great redemption for the Jewish people became a security and a social trap or web, which is difficult and morally corrupting. The late Jewish philosopher, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, among others warned of these dangers at the time.

May it be G-d’s will that just as the people of Israel eventually (290 years later!) were freed from Egyptian bondage, so too may we – speedily and in our days! – be liberated from the slavery of lording it over the lives of others and taking (some say “liberating”, I say stealing) their lands. May we soon reach the time of spiritual liberty and freedom from greed and cruelty in our actions here in the Holy Land.

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Categories: Bereshit / Genesis, Vayyiggash
Tags: Bo, fen, human rights, palestinians, settlers