We are just about to finish Bereshit this year at Schul. For the last few weeks, I have been unable to marshal my ideas though they have been very emotional.
First I saw a possible relationship/comparison between the stories of Tamar and Judah (B38) and that of Yosef and Potiphar's wife. Both Tamar and Yosef deal with adversity and injustices against them. Tamar uses her whiles and other people’s faults to change her situation. Yosef depends on G*d. G*d gives him dreams which save him. However, I dismissed this contrast as my tendency to moralize. Judah and Yosef are brothers however and the sudden shift to the story about Judah has to have a great reason for being there.
I let that go. Yet for some reason, when I was thinking about the episode concerning pharaoh’s butler and baker I felt stirred. Having rejected Potiphar's wife, she sees that Yosef ends up in the dungeon. While there he interprets the dream of the butler and baker.
The baker later tells pharaoh "there was with us there a young man, a Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret. And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was: I was restored unto mine office, and he was hanged.": (41:12)
There seems to be no real difference between the 'crimes' of the baker and the butler. We assume that like Yosef they are probably there through no fault of their own but only because of whims of power.
Why then free only the butler? My mind suggested the idea of bread representing the corporal world and the butler (who tastes the cup) of representing the spirit. Perhaps poetically it is the change in the spirit that can free the body. Or maybe even more grandly the idea of the spirit freeing us ultimately from death as Yosef is reborn out of the dungeon. (David talks of being raised from the pit in psalms several times)
I must admit that when I came to this I thought of the story of Christ on the Cross with the two thieves. I don't believe in Jesus but in the story one thief is saved because he accepts Jesus but the other refuses. The one who refuses does so because he wants to be saved in the flesh. This confusing association arouse out of my literary minded brain. At any rate, I again dismissed the idea of writing about it.
It continued to bug me.
I decided to tie it all back to the idea of dreams. Dreams are said to be a "little death." and we rise from them like Yosef rises out to the pit. It is also dreams that lead to his brothers selling him. The butler, the baker, and pharaoh also have dreams.
I wondered what the Torah teaches about dreams. I found that there are said to be only ten dreams in the Torah and all in Bereshit.
Torah Subject
Bereshit 20:3 Avimelech and Sarah.
Bereshit 28:12 Jacob’s ladder.
Bereshit 31:10 Jacob’s speckled sheep.
Bereshit 31:2 Lavan told to leave Jacob alone.
Bereshit 37:5 Yosef and the sheaves.
Bereshit 37:9 Yosef and the sun, moon, and stars.
Bereshit 40:9 Yosef and the cupbearer.
Bereshit 40:16 Yosef and the baker.
Bereshit 41:1 Paro and the cows.
Bereshit 41:5 Paro and the sheaves.
Hum? Then I found a teaching that speculated that Israel's going down into Egypt parallels the decent of the spirit into matter. This of course would mean that G*d's redemption of the people from Egypt parallels the accent of the spirit. As Israel had the dream of the ladder. (And the ladder is gematria to Sinai) Well that about covers it.
So why was it so overwhelming to me? Why did these little ideas refuse to be drowned out?
I realized that since college, since Leibniz, I had rejected a duality of spirit and matter. I was certain that everything is energy, spiritual, and that the entire world was like the Eastern Sages declare and "illusion." Of course at the time, for me that cleared up neatly a lot of problems I had with the cosmos as I had learned it from Church. There is no problem of evil. It is all an illusion.
Yet it was so painful to live in this world considering it but an illusion. For if it is an illusion then we have explain everything in reference only to a greater reality beyond it. How could we ever understand or comprehend that greater reality?
I concluded as a young man that there was a G*d but that 'he' was unreachable.
Then he reached to me through the Torah. His holiness and the wisdom of the Torah is the light. Life can be as hard to interpret as a dream. It can seem to have no meaning. When this is the case we must seek more light. Somethings maybe hidden from our sight as individuals, and as mankind but G*d is always present and therefore nothing is without meaning.
"And Yosef answered Pharaoh, saying: 'It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace." B41:16
