Two-and-a-half million years ago, out of the long and twisting tunnel of evolutionary history, there emerged a new species of life on earth – an animal that would eventually refer to itself as “human.”
For the vast majority of their time on earth, these humans barely scraped by at the middle of the food chain: constantly on the lookout both for predators and for prey, sizing up every creature that they encountered to assess who was stronger than they were, and who was weaker.
But then, a mere half-a-million years ago – relatively recently in the very old story of human evolution – suddenly, all that changed. Because their brains had grown, because they had learned to fashion more sophisticated tools, because they had learned to cooperate in increasingly complex social structures, suddenly, these humans sped to the top of the food chain – now able to hunt not just the animals that were weaker than they were, but also, the animals that were stronger.
So rapid, in fact, was their rise to the top that, although their eating habits quickly changed, their mental habits did not have time to keep up. Two million years of constantly comparing themselves to all the other creatures around them proved a difficult habit to shake. And this old habit left them in an unusual position: making them at once both one of the most powerful animals on earth, and also, one of the least self-assured – a potentially dangerous combination – breeding in them the deeply human feelings of competition, envy, jealousy, and rivalry, in a story that is indeed very, very old.
Here now is another old story – not two-and-a-half million years old, but still, verifiably ancient. It is the story of a group of twelve brothers that was riddled with jealousy and rivalry. One of the brothers, whose name was Joseph, aroused in his siblings so strong a feeling of jealousy that they could not stand to be around him – so they sold him into slavery in Egypt. And because of this jealous outburst, some four hundred years later, their entire people will find themselves enslaved there in Egypt – so that what began as a petty fraternal rivalry will eventually culminate in explosive catastrophe for the entire Jewish people.
Our sages say that the day Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery was the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei – which just so happens to be today. And ever since that mythic act of jealousy, we, the Jewish people, gather together every year to undertake a ritual of forgiveness – to mark a Day of Atonement – not only for what Joseph’s siblings did to him, but also, for all the ways in which we, their descendants, continue to act out our own feelings of jealousy and rivalry.
Rabbi Ellen Lewis writes that Yom Kippur is a day for retelling old stories – not just the stories that come from our Jewish tradition, but also, the stories we tell about ourselves and who we are. We retell our old stories, she writes, in hopes that, by doing so, we might discover something new: a new insight into who we are, a new perspective on the things we have done. If we can learn to reimagine our past, then perhaps we might also be able to reimagine our present and our future.
This morning, let us do precisely that. Let us try to reimagine an old story, the story of Joseph and his brothers, in order to better understand why we humans are so prone to jealousy and rivalry – and also, in hopes that we might be better able to harness these feelings that have been with us for two-and-a-half million years.
***
In our usual telling of this story, we tend to portray Joseph’s brothers as the villains. But what if we try retelling the story from their point of view? Rather than centering Joseph as the protagonist, let us, instead, try telling the story from the perspective of one of the lesser-known brothers – say, for example, from the perspective of Naphtali: a character about whose life we know almost nothing, a character about whom the Torah contains barely a single sentence.
All his life, Naphtali has been overlooked – overlooked not just by the narrator of the Torah, but equally, and far more painfully, overlooked even by his own father. We might wonder: what was Naphtali like? Perhaps he was a skillful archer. Perhaps he loved to count the stars. The Torah does not tell us. But whatever Naphtali may have been like, his father, Jacob, does not seem to notice him. In Jacob’s family tree, Naphtali and his fellow less-well-known brothers are, at best, marginal characters: on the outside, always looking in.
And then one day, their father brings home for their brother Joseph – a child for whom he has seemingly endless time and affection – a beautiful, colorful coat. Now, every time that Naphtali and his brothers see Joseph, they are reminded not only of how deeply loved he is, but also, how deeply unloved they are.
Perhaps we are able to recognize this feeling – the feeling that we are insignificant, inadequate, unworthy. We see the beautiful, colorful lives that other people seem to have, and it makes us feel inferior. Our neighbor’s house is bigger than ours. Our colleague got the good job. Our sibling is smarter or more creative than we are. Our friends’ kids are more well-adjusted than our own.
It is as if we have put a social-media filter over our own eyes: viewing everyone else’s life as if it were an endless stream of happy memories and charming anecdotes – forgetting all of the moments that we do not get to see, all of the unfolded laundry, all of the dinner table arguments, all of the failures, the doubts, the pain. Seeing only that everyone else’s life seems to be better than ours, we begin to forget what it is that makes our own life good.
This, precisely, is what happens to Naphtali and his brothers. Joseph’s coat is, for them, a painful reminder of how inadequate they all feel. They will do seemingly anything to make the feeling go away.
From a distance, they see Joseph coming. Who could miss him, strutting around in that pretentious, colorful coat? They grab hold of him, strip him of the loathsome garment, and sell him into Egyptian slavery. They take the coat and tear it to shreds – splattering the tattered remains with blood.
When they show it to their father, he asks them what happened. “He was mauled by a wild animal,” they tell him. “A predator got him.”
They mean it as a lie. In fact, it is the truth. And that predator, of course, was them.
***
It is likely that none of us has ever acted out our jealousy in quite so vicious a way as Naphtali and his brothers. And still, we might be able to identify with the feelings that gave rise to their heinous crime: feeling unseen, insignificant, inferior – reverting to our two-and-a-half-million-year-old habit of sizing ourselves up in comparison to every creature that we encounter.
But if we are going to undertake the kind of transformation that Rabbi Ellen Lewis tells us is possible on Yom Kippur, then we need to retell our old stories not just from one perspective, but rather, retell them from as many perspectives as possible. So let us tell it again, and see if we might be able to find a more sympathetic view of Joseph.
***
In our usual telling of this story, we tend to portray young Joseph as self-aggrandizing and egotistical. But what if we try to understand him on his own terms?
Even before he was born, Joseph was already being doted upon – the long-awaited first pregnancy of Jacob’s most beloved wife. And after he was born, his father could not help but see reflections of himself in his young son: a bookish child; a younger sibling; a dreamer, as he had once been – as on that famous night of his youth, in which he dreamed of a ladder that stretched to the sky.
Add to this that Joseph is, in fact, quite gifted. He will eventually prove himself to be talented both in the arts and in the sciences – both as an interpreter of dreams, and also, as Pharaoh’s minister of agriculture.
What’s more, he is irresistibly charming. Seemingly everywhere he goes, he is adored: Potiphar adores him, and makes him head of his household; Potiphar’s wife adores him, and tries to seduce him; in prison, the warden adores him, and puts him in charge of the other prisoners; when he is released from prison, Pharaoh adores him, and practically adopts him as his own son.
But despite being doted upon, despite being gifted, despite being loved everywhere that he goes, Joseph feels lonely. For all his many talents, he struggles to form deep and meaningful relationships. In his house growing up, he had a dozen siblings – but he could not call a single one of them his friend.
Even if we do not experience it to quite the same extreme degree, perhaps some of us might be able to identify with Joseph. We have plenty of casual acquaintances, people who know our face and our name – but very few people who know us on a deep and personal level.
Others of us might be able to identify with Joseph for a different reason. His talents drove his brothers away from him. So too, we might sometimes feel that we need to diminish ourselves in order to fit in. Perhaps you are a person who asks serious questions, or has strong moral convictions, or is quick to learn new skills. When we show these traits to other people, they sheepishly back away – unsure whether they can relate to us. It is as if the world wants us to be someone other than who we are – to diminish ourselves, so that we do not inadvertently make other people feel inadequate.
For Joseph, his talents only make him feel more alone. How could anyone else in the world – least of all, his brothers – possibly understand the dilemma of being exceptional.
And clearly, his brothers do not understand it. From the day that they ambush him and seize his coat, Joseph’s loneliness only continues to grow. He is alone as he is sold into slavery; will be alone, as he sits in his prison cell; alone, as the sole Israelite in a vast empire of Egyptians.
There, in faraway Egypt, Joseph thinks of his brothers, and compares himself to them. True, he had his special talents; but they, at least, had one another. If he could trade with them, he would.
***
For two-and-a-half million years, we humans compared ourselves to every creature that we encountered as a matter of survival. Today, that instinct serves us far less well. Today, our comparative nature tends to harm more than to help: causing us, like the eleven overlooked brothers, to feel that we are inferior – or, alternatively, causing us, like Joseph, to feel that we need to diminish ourselves for the sake of others.
But this Yom Kippur morning, we have the opportunity to reimagine things – to break free from the pain that our comparative instinct so often inflicts upon us. To help us do so, let us finish retelling our story – to see how the story ends, and to imagine how the future could be different.
***
For these rivalrous brothers, who have been trained their entire lives to think of their family system as a food chain, it seems entirely fitting that the event that eventually brings them back together is a famine.
For years, the eleven overlooked brothers have been starved for attention. And although they have now rid themselves of the brother in whose shadow they felt so inadequate, still, their problem has not gone away. The father who had so single-mindedly put all of his energy into loving Joseph now single-mindedly puts all of his energy into grieving for Joseph – and the eleven overlooked brothers continue to go hungry.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, Joseph is at the top of the food chain. Because of his careful planning, he and the entire kingdom have stored up enough food to survive the famine. And although he has plenty to eat, still, he is starved for companionship. He may be Pharaoh’s second-in-command, but despite his position, deep down, he continues to feel lonely – so much so that he gives his firstborn child the name Menasheh: a name that, in Hebrew, means “forgotten.”
The eleven brothers – starved not only for attention, but also, for bread – journey down to Egypt in search of food. When Joseph sees them, he recognizes them immediately – although they do not recognize him. Joseph devises a series of tests to see if his brothers have changed. When they prove that they have – that they are no longer consumed by sibling rivalry – he gives them food, and at last reveals his identity. They share a tearful reunion. And the brothers, for the first time in their lives, are now able to truly see Joseph: not the boy that they had once found so irksome, not the boastful kid in the colorful coat, but rather, their brother – who had spent his entire life alone, hiding within his colorful coat, wanting nothing more than to be seen.
Their whole lives, these twelve brothers had believed that, in order to survive, they needed to compete with one another. Now they realize that the exact opposite is true: that their survival depends on their cooperation. Joseph provides his brothers with food, and they provide him with companionship.
This, after all, is precisely what propelled us human beings to the top of the food chain in the first place. It was not merely that our brains grew bigger, or that our tools grew more sophisticated. Equally, it was that we humans learned to live in complex social groups. Competing with one another may have helped us to survive, but it was cooperating with each other enabled us to thrive.
It is deeply human to compare ourselves to other people. After all, it is a habit that we have been practicing for two-and-a-half million years. So when that old instinct arises in us, we need to be especially careful – and instead of falling into self-criticism, remember the things that make each of us valuable.
When we start to feel bad about ourselves because it seems that other people have more friends than we do, we need to remember that although our circle of friends may be small, it is exceptionally tight-knit.
When we start to feel bad about ourselves because it seems that other people are smarter than we are, better informed, more well-read, we need to remember the gifts and talents that make us special: that we are surprisingly handy with tools, or that we are a fantastic cook.
When we start to feel bad about ourselves because we are worried about our kids – worried that they will face more life challenges than many of their peers, that they struggle in school, that they have difficulty regulating their emotions, that they have trouble making friends – we need to remember that, although we cannot take away their challenges, we can support them to grow from their challenges.
When we start to feel bad about ourselves because we fear that we will never be able to match the example of our parents – that they were around more than we are, that they were better providers than we are – we need to remember the things that make us good parents: how much we love our kids, and how much they love us in return.
We will never outgrow the habit of comparing ourselves with others. But we can outgrow the habit of evaluating ourselves in comparison with others – and instead learn to recognize that we all are merely different.
***
We gather together on Yom Kippur to tell the story of how a group of twelve brothers was nearly consumed by their comparative instincts – and how, regrettably, the same so often happens for us.
But Yom Kippur is not a day to wallow in regret, not a day to lament how vulnerable we are to the relics of our evolutionary history. Rather, it is a day on which we affirm that we can overcome that history: that we can change, that our future can be different than our past.
The story we are retelling might be very old. But today, we get to write one that is new.
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