With this week's Torah reading, we begin the set of tales that wrap up the book of Bereishit, leading into the descent of the Israelite clan into Egyptian exile and servitude. This final narrative, which is essentially the end of the story of Yaakov, is concerned with the sibling rivalry among Yaakov's sons, which leads to the horrible sale of the brother Yosef into slavery. This part of the story takes up the whole of chapter 37. The story of Yosef's travails in Egypt continue on in chapter 39, but first there is a caesura, an interruption of the linearity of the narrative to tell us the sordid tale of Yehuda's descent into Canaanite culture and life, which makes up the whole of chapter 38. In this chapter, we find Yehuda leaving his brothers, and stepping out into the surrounding society, where he makes friends, marries, loses two sons, and eventually impregnates his daughter in law, thinking her to be a roadside harlot. After Tamar is found to be pregnant, the family wants to have her killed, thinking she was violating family honor, but at the last minute Yehuda realizes that she was not only innocent, but that (verse 26) "she is more in the right than I". A set of twins are born from this liason, who go on to have important roles to play in Jewish redemptive history. At this point the story returns to that of Yosef, who despite being an extremely exploited worker, withstands temptation, and goes on to become Egypt's finance minister, saving the Pharonic dynasty from the ravages of economic collapse brought on by drought.

It is clear that this textual operation, which we might call in modern cinematic terms, crosscutting, is meant to contrast the two figures who clearly emerge as the dominant descendents of Yaakov, Yosef and Yehuda. It is particularly in the later generations of Hasidic commentators, who tend to be more interested in meta-theory, who develop contrasting archetypes out of the two juxtaposed narratives. I first became aware of this approach in an essay by R. Soloveitchik on this theme. (Does anyone have the actual article in a book? I only have the version printed in Yediot Aharonot in their Pesach supplement of 1980). He points out that while the portrait of Yosef is only made more positive by the contrast with the escapades of Yehuda, yet, in the end, it is "Yehuda" who is given the monarchy through his descendant, David, not "Yosef". Interestingly, his explanation is exactly that presented by R. Tzadok Hacohen of Lublin in "Peri Tzaddik". The paradigms of Yosef and Yehuda represent the two ways to spiritual truth. Yosef is the "righteous one"; he is the saint from birth who intrinsically safeguards himself from temptation. It is part of his psychological makeup to be distant from sin and connected to Gd. Yehuda, on the other hand, symbolizes the route through which all can achieve atonement and transcendence; Yehuda sins, but learns from his mistakes; he discovers, that despite his initial impressions, "she was more in the right than me", he was able to recognize that he himself was the flawed one and needed to correct himself. Yehuda lives in the real world, this sometimes puts him in the situation of sin, but he quickly recognizes the damage, learns from these mistakes and thus perfects himself and the surrounding society - this is "Yehuda consciousness". The route of Yosef is unattainable for most; one is in a sense genetically endowed with "Yosef consciousness", but this outlook cannot be applied in a wide scale in society. The masses can only be perfected and improved via the route of Yehuda, the route of learned experience; that is why "Gd's name is contained within him", that is why the rule of the people is given to Yehuda and not Yosef.

This approach is found in R. Tzadok's teacher, the Izhbitzer, in his Mei Shiloach, albeit in a slightly different version, but still privileging Yehuda. Yosef represents the strict letter of the law; he sees the world though the eyes of halacha, he is "Halachic Man", if you will, who cannot even see the world in any other way, and acts with the full severity of the law, whereas Yehuda is the "Man of Gd", he sees as though through Gd eyes, even when he knows the law, his primary concern is to feel the presence of Gd within the ruling; he knows that one could follow the seeming strict letter of the law and yet be doing the wrong thing both morally and even legally (say, for example, that it is clear to him that a witness is lying, even though technically he can't prove it. Would executing an innocent man be "more halachic"?).

Support for this approach is found in the Talmud. In BT Sotah 10: we find a privileging of Yehuda over Yosef:

Yosef sanctifies Gd's name in private, and thus has one letter added to his name (tehillim 81), Judah, who sanctified Gd's name in public, has within his proper name Gd's name.

In years past, I would have ended here, with this view, with an uplifting note, praying for the imperfections of society to be transformed through self improvement. However, it has become clear to me recently that a defense of Yosef is in order. Part of the rethinking comes from what is often called the "postmodern" literature. The work of thinkers like Kenneth Gergen is full of optimistic analyses of the contemporary situation. To him, and to many others, the current explosion of technology and information, with all the possibilities that accompany these changes, with all the potential for interconnection and transfiguration easily attainable at the click of a mouse, may lead to a new kind of individual, and a new kind of society. The human consciousness, now fragmented and multiphrenic, by exposure to all the possibilities of the human situation at all times, populated by a multiplicity of options and opportunity, may develop into the "relational self", where the ego is transcended, and all our interactions are centered upon interaction, thus leading to an end to divisiveness and violence. These dreams are very endearing, and to those of us who yearn for a better world, it seems so attainable, so close, a transformation occurring within our very lifetimes.

However, with the passing of time, a kind of psychological dampening of these hopes has evolved. Fredric Jameson, a central thinker of postmodernity, describes as:

constitutive features of the postmodern: a new depthlessness, which finds its prolongation both in contemporary 'theory' and in a whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum; a consequent weakening of historicity, both in our relationship to public history and in the new forms of our private temporality'

And in another essay:

The postmodern severing of contact between signifiers and the "real" can lead to a schizophrenic fragmentation: schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence. The schizophrenic thus does not know personal identity in our sense, since the feeling of identity, since the feeling of identity depends on our sense of the persistence of the "I" and "me" over time...

So what we are left with is a schizophrenic position experienced more as a loss of personal identity, akin to Peter Berger's homeless mind, a deepening of anomie. Adorno's warning, that endless pursuit of the new entails a forgetting of the old, citing Kafka: "to believe in progress is to believe that there has not yet been any", becomes compelling. Levinas warned of this; in "Nine Talmudic Readings" he argues that the contemporary malady is this fragmentation and splitting, where one tries a little of everything but in the end is nothing in themselves. This he calls "the temptation of temptation":

What is tempting is to be simultaneously outside everything and participating in everything...The temptation of temptation is philosophy...its starting point is an ego which, in the midst of engagement, assures itself of a continual disengagement...

So, then, returning to our set of paradigms, there is a danger in Yehuda consciousness adapted undialectically. If Yosef consciosness is an unattainable goal for all, the unbridled stepping out of Yehuda consciousness runs the risk of emptying identity of all content, we remain nothing but the outside possibilities presented to us. This has certainly been recognized in the sphere of organized religion, in all major religions too much "hipness" has led to a dissipation of all sense of belonging and of meaning. Thus, I feel the need to defend Yosef.

The Sefat Emet takes a more measured approach to the two archetypes. He bases his approach on the similarity between the name Yehuda and the word "hoda'a", which means "admission". Yosef represents a state of enlightenment, a direct apprehension of the good, of the meaning behind. Yosef is never deluded, he knows the meanings behind the illusion, even within dreams. Yosef is the "pre-exile" state, the coherent identity aware of his mission. Yehuda, representing "hoda'a", finds enlightenment despite the darkness, even within the darkness. Initially the situation appears hopeless, but through faith, Yehuda recognizes the truth. Yehuda, then, is the paradigm of faith in exile, in galut. To the Sefat Emet, then, the two are complementary. Yehuda is the road back, whereas Yosef is what one finds there. Yehuda recognizes truth through self-effacement, though overcoming of the ego, whereas Yosef is self assurance, a healthy unified ego-ideal. Thus, Yehuda represents the days of the week, the days of activity and progress, but Yosef is the memory of transcendence, represented by the Sabbath.

But what of the accusations of non-relevance, of presumed superiority, of the Yosef consciousness being elitist and unattainable? Here I would like to propose a slight modification of the Sefat Emet's picture, built on a teaching of the Shem M'Shemuel, on a picture of Yosef painted by the text which is not seemingly congruent with what we have idealized up to this point -

Bereishit 39:6 explains how Potiphar, Yosef's boss, came to respect Yosef and elevated him to the position of House Manager (or something like that); the same verse ends by telling us that Yosef was a handsome lad. We are then told "and it was after these events" and thrown into the attempted-seduction-of-Yosef narrative. Rashi explains this confluence of verses are meant to tell us that once Yosef saw himself in a position of power, he began to live well and "curl his hair"; Gd then replies "your father is suffering and you are doing your hair - I will sic the bear (i.e. his master's wife) upon you".

This accusation of vanity and apathy to the sufferings of others doesn't entirely fit with our conception of Yosef, the Righteous, who seems to us otherwise to be virtually an ascetic and a dreamer. In fact, the Shem M'Shemuel rereads this teaching in a different manner - he states that Yosef was acting like the British POWs in WWII who insisted upon shaving and regular personal hygiene to maintain their own human dignity. The SMS states that with the long and dark galut experience just beginning, Yosef was teaching us a coping mechanism, to never lose a concern with self appearance and self image.

In other words, far from being removed from reality, Yosef was actually much more a part of the cosmopolitan world scene than were his countryfolk brothers out in the hinterlands of Canaan. Yehuda had to actually seek out the experience that Yosef already had, whether he liked it or not. Yosef, however, less blinded by the lights, knew what was really beneath the shining exterior of Egyptian society, having literally inhabited its darkest deepest situation. Yosef, less interested in acquiescence, was teaching us that the only way to stand up to an overpowering hegemonic culture is to take care of your own truth, to actively make it more beautiful and meaningful. His response to the fragmenting pull of other cultures was to strengthen the truth, and make it beautiful. Perhaps, I submit, that is the meaning of the blessing in Bereishit 49:22 - He was so attractive that the women all climbed the gates to see him. Even within the multiplicity of options, within the temptation of temptations, if one decides to see and present the beauty of one's own identity, of one's history and truth, then it will be "attractive" and worthy of seeking out.