We finish Genesis noticing that darkness frames this book. We also knows what lies ahead for the Israelites. Michael (MichaelStrassfeld.com)
mjstrassfeld@gmail.com
The book of Bereishit/Genesis begins and ends in darkness. In the beginning, the world is described as “darkness over the deep/hoshekh al pnei hatahom.” The book ends with the death of Joseph as his body is placed in a coffin—va-yisem be-aron be-mitzrayim, an ending in darkness that is itself a dark foreshadowing of the experience of Israelite slavery in Egypt in the book of Exodus.
Ever since creation we live in a world of light and darkness, but it is light and darkness mixed together, and with the two together we have a world of shadows. In such a world it can be hard to see clearly. Our eyes are deceived by the ever-changing mixture of light, dark and shadows. Light itself is a flickering flame, restless, seemingly searching this way and that, never standing still, ever changing. This world then is one of seeing and not seeing, of the hidden and revealed.
How then to see in a world of shadows? Some people sharply divide the world into light and darkness and label things accordingly. However, to see the world that way is to deny its reality. For the light and darkness are ever changing, just as every 24-hour period turns from night into day and back into night.
His brothers call Joseph ba’al hakhalomot/ master of dreams. Joseph is someone with vision, who is able to see clearly the interplay between light and darkness, who despite the blackest dark can find his way. Unlike every other character in his story—his brothers, his father, or Potiphar, he cannot be deceived. Who better to interpret dreams, the place of the intersection of the conscious and the unconscious in which everything is covered with a veil of confusing shadows?
That vision allows him to forgive his brothers by seeing everything that has happened to him as part of his life. It is Joseph’s story we are to carry with us from Genesis, perhaps even more than that of the patriarchs. Theirs is a narrow vision that causes them to divide the world into white and black, into chosen and unchosen. Like his coat, Joseph lives in technicolor and thus embraces all of his brothers.
The very end of the book of Genesis ends with Joseph being placed in an aron/coffin. The Jewish people are about to enter long years of darkness without seeing any possible hope. It is not only a new Pharaoh who forgets Joseph (Ex. 1:8), but the Israelites forget him as well. They have forgotten to dream and to search for their inner light. Moses, another assimilated Jew who grew up in the palace, turns aside to see the light of a burning bush that is on fire and yet not consumed. Moses will bring the light of a promised land to the Israelites. When they leave, they will take with them the aron/coffin of Joseph. On the journey, they will transform darkness to light by building an aron/ark to hold the tablets containing the Ten Commandments.
