Here is a “late sermon” for this past Shabbat’s torah portion. Though, as I’ve often noticed and joked, my best sermons are usually finished well after they are (first) delivered.
I’d like to get into a cycle here where I post weekly, early in the week, like by Tuesday morning. About half of those posts would be “late sermons” (I’ve got a backlog, actually, so that is actually very exciting for me), the others would be thoughts unrelated to the Torah portion.
My original goal was that everything I posted here would be op-ed length and depth. That seems not to be working because, honestly, I haven’t had the time, energy, or sense that I have something new really worth saying. So I haven’t been posting, but I don’t like that either! So let’s see how this goes!
As always, thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting.
A climactic moment of confrontation. Joseph, unrecognizable to his brothers in his role as Viceroy of Egypt, threatens to keep his younger brother Benjamin a prisoner on false charges. Judah, who had accepted responsibility for Benjamin’s safe return, approaches Joseph to demand his release.
The rabbis of the midrash relate that as Judah stepped forward, the other brothers stood back, saying, “Two Kings are facing each other; we will not get involved.”
For the rabbis, this moment - the confrontation between two kings - is paradigmatic of the history that was to follow - the rivalry between Joseph, the eldest son of Rachel, and Judah, leader of the sons of Leah.
During the era of the First Temple, as described in the Biblical book of Kings, the Israelite Kingdom established and consolidated by Kings David and Solomon fractured into two rival factions, the Southern Kingdom led by the dynastic line of David, descended from Judah, and the Northern Kingdom based in the land of Ephraim, the lineage of Joseph.
Going back to the narrative - of the two, Josef's achievements seem more impressive than Judah’s. Starting as a kidnapped slave, soon incarcerated, Joseph rises to near-absolute power in Egypt, a world-class empire at the time. He saves the region from a devastating famine by devising an ambitious plan for food collection and storage and then mobilizing the entire country to carry it out. In the process, he completely reorganizes the economic structure of Egyptian society, centralizing Egyptian governance and vastly increasing the wealth and authority of Pharaoh. Judah never accomplishes anything on that scale.
So it may be a bit surprising that it is Judah who ultimately emerges as the dominant brother. Jacob establishes Judah’s leadership. Kings David and Solomon arise from Judah’s descendants to form the first commonwealth and build the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem. It was Judeans who returned from exile to build the second Holy Temple. Our tradition tells us that the messiah will emerge as a renewal of Judah’s dynastic line.
By contrast, Joseph’s leadership, despite his grand achievements, seems less effective in the long run. His leadership of Egypt ended with the enslavement of the Israelites - his own descendants. In fact, some rabbinic commentators suspect that Joseph’s massive reorganization of Egypt, turning the people into sharecroppers or serfs, may well have facilitated or encouraged the enslavement of the Israelites. The Northern Israelite Kingdom was decimated by the more powerful Assyrian empire and never returned. They became the ten lost tribes.
In a 1972 sermon, Rabbi Norman Lamm noted that the enduring nature of Judah’s leadership reflected his strength of personality. In particular, at critical moments Judah accepted responsibility. First, he admitted on more than one occasion when he was at fault, even at the cost of personal humiliation. Second, he put himself on the line, risking everything for the sake of Benjamin.
In contrast, throughout the narrative, Joseph never accepts responsibility, nor does he deeply consider the feelings of others. He never reflects on how his own proud, ambitious behavior as a youth may have alienated his brothers. He never apologizes to his brothers for the way he treated them when he had the upper hand, and never apologizes to his grieving father for not sending back word earlier that he was alive and well.
Similarly, the end of the portion describes how Joseph coldly and methodically forced all of Egypt to sell first their possessions, their livestock, their land, then finally themselves as slaves to Pharaoh in exchange for the food he stored for the years of famine. In other words, Joseph was so sure that his own plans were the best way to feed Egypt during the famine (while also reinforcing his own power) that he was willing to sacrifice other people’s interests to see them through. Speaking to his Manhattan congregation at the height of the Cold War, Rabbi Lamm calls Joseph’s behavior “Stalinistic.”
So our sages see the confrontation between Joseph and Judah as a contrast between two models of leadership. Joseph represents the ambitious visionary who is capable of transformative, monumental achievements. When it comes to this kind of leadership, self-doubt, hesitation, or reflection are not options.
However, the rabbinic tradition favors Judah, who represents leadership not only capable of self-doubt and empathy but defined by those traits. Judah-type leaders rise to greatness precisely because of their capacity to recognize the cost of their actions - and to bravely stand up and take responsibility for them.
Ultimately, Joseph’s leadership is solitary, while Judah’s leadership is in relationship with others. In contemporary terms, Joseph represents politics that places ideology or national goals over people, whereas Judah represents politics in which ideology takes a back seat and what people are actually experiencing takes precedence. The confident, powerful Joseph is authoritarian, whereas the empathetic, introspective Judah represents the core of what could be democracy.
The conventional wisdom is that authoritarian governments may be more efficient and able to act quickly and decisively to respond to challenges while democracies are often stymied by internal division and short-term problems. But, as Kenneth Roth notes, autocracies are shakier in the long term:
A lack of democratic procedures and institutions leaves autocrats unaccountable to the public. That makes them more likely to serve their own political interests—and those of their cronies or military supporters. Autocrats claim to deliver better results than democrats, but they usually deliver mainly for themselves.1
In the words of President Biden, “Democracy begins and grows in the open heart and the impetus to come together for a common cause, for empathy is the fuel of democracy.”
In 2022, Kausik Rajgopal, PayPal's executive vice president for people and sourcing:
I believe that the age of the authoritarian leader is over. This model of the leader as somebody who knows the answers, who is imperturbable and that's the way they inspire—that's no longer relevant. We are now in the age of the empathetic leader who can inspire by showing vulnerability and by connecting not just on successes but also on failures, not just on strengths but also on the flaws. And, in so doing, that makes them more human.2
Rajgopal may be overly optimistic. We have many Josephs today - they are leading the backsliding into authoritarianism taking place all around the world. Perhaps the message of this torah portion is that what we really need are more Judahs.
Try reading that back into the Joseph narrative!
By the way, this is quite a turn for a company that launched the careers of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk!
Funny, Rabbi Efrem Goldberg's interpretation is just the opposite. He said that when Yosef forgave his brothers, he was acting in the middah of chessed, like his mother Rochel. We certainly need chessed in klal Yisroel, but when it comes to leadership, we need Yehudah's bravery in standing up to the viceroy in order to protect Binyamin.