COMPLICATIONS:

Joseph: The Tragedy of Being Truly Righteous (Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, Jan. 2, 2004, Jewish World Review)

Joseph's life is the epitome of the complications of human existence in the extreme. It is a life in which human conditions are far from ideal. There are no black and white choices in which it is easy to take a stand and where the good guys and the bad ones are clearly identified. Every choice includes a complex mixture of good and bad. Even with best intentions one sometimes cannot help hurting those one really loves the most and doing favors to those who are corrupt.

Reading the story, one wonders what must have gone through Joseph's mind and heart when he took a hard stand on the people of Egypt by buying up everything that they owned till in the end he made the whole population enslaved to Pharaoh without any private possessions. The text also clearly indicates that he uprooted everybody from their home and that all of them became refugees in their own country (Genesis 47). This was nothing less than a population expulsion, one of the worst human experiences. Commentators explain that this was the only way he was able to save the country from even greater disasters and in fact the only way to revive the economy. Still, he must have been greatly disturbed to bring about such upheaval in the nation. Few must have understood what he did, and millions must have cursed him for making their lives miserable.

His behavior towards his father and his brothers surely must have given him sleepless nights, year after year. While ruling the land of Egypt, he never told his father that he was still alive. Joseph's own life must have been unbearable every time he thought of his suffering father. "How can I endure one more day knowing that my father is in constant anguish because of me?"

His awful, hard stand against his brothers when they came to Egypt to buy food, must have given him nightmares and depressions. "What will my brothers and all the servants in the palace think of me? No doubt in their eyes I must look like a cruel despot looking for sadistic ways to hurt people wherever possible. What are they thinking of me as I am imprisoning Shimon and forcing the brothers to bring Benjamin to Egypt?"

Still, as many commentators explain, he had no option but to do what he did.

The genius of political correctness is that we'd all rather fit in than do the right, but unpopular, thing.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 2, 2004 10:45 AM