We shift gears and move on from Jacob/Israel and enter the final set of stories in Genesis and these last four parsha therein: the story of Joseph, biblical chuuni1.
The portion opens with us immediately establishing that Joseph is Israel's favorite, that he gave him a beautiful coat of many colors2, he spent much time as his right hand, and that his brothers hated him. Joseph, being the kind of guy who he is, receives two dreams in which his brothers and his brothers and parents symbolically bow down to him, and immediately tells them all about it. Israel rebukes him during the second one, theoretically to take some heat off of Joseph, but unsurprisingly his brothers are not so easily dissuaded from hating him. This is all followed his brothers hatching a plan to murder him; deciding to keep him alive instead; deciding that they may as well make a buck off of this and selling him into slavery; and finally faking his death using the blood of a goat and his coat. Israel, on learning of Joseph's "death", proceeds to mourn a normal amount of time3.
Interestingly, at this point we are treated to a brief interlude about Judah and his kids. His eldest marries a Caananite named Tamar but dies because G-d doesn't like him; his next eldest marries her but invents onanism4 instead, so G-d kills him too; and his next youngest is too young, so he promises him to her and then fails to deliver. This leads to a series of hijinks on the part of Tamar that culminate in her tricking Judah (her father-in-law) into fucking her and getting her pregnant, getting his staff and signet, and then asking him "is this you?" when he tried to figure out who the father was and she showed him his various signs of identity. This incident appears to have been seen as overall virtuous on the part of Tamar by the sages, and is suggested as setting up a sort of parallel with the antics of Potiphar's wife in the next bit.
Speaking of, Joseph gets sold to a top advisor to the Pharaoh, Potiphar, and so wows him that he's put in charge of all his affairs. Potiphar's wife then proceeds to attempt everything within her power to fuck him, and failing, instead frames him for crimes and has him imprisoned. The jailer finds Joseph to be a good sort thanks to G-d, though, and in short order he's basically running the prison. This is when we return to the topic of dream interpretation- two of the Pharaoh's men are thrown in with him, and have dreams indicating that one will be saved and the other will be executed. This proceeds as indicated, and the cupbearer who lived promptly forgets about Joseph for two years.
End the portion.
We had a very small group tonight, so we didn't get too in depth with the analysis, though it is interesting to note the presence of dream interpretation here which is one of a handful of sanctioned divinatory techniques in Judaism, as well as the story of Tamar which is usually excluded when talking about Joseph. We see favoritism again rend families, and discuss how something is going on with the way beauty and handsomeness is discussed with referents to women and feminine categories.
We also talk a lot about the Gemara. Speaking of, here's a shoutout to our IBS warriors in berakhot 55a and a discussion of whether it's good to extend your time during things such as meals, or perhaps the bathroom
The votes against involve a lot of discussion about the various causes of hemorrhoids, but the merits eventually lead to this exchange about how spending time in bathrooms makes you beautiful, actually
We also discuss the nature of dream interpretation; it is proposed that interpreting a dream causes it to move towards fulfillment; Ibn Ezra disagrees elsewhere because G-d is going to do what G-d is going to do regardless of how you interpret things
We also see, based on Joseph's dreams, that there's a general rabbinical principle that even prophetic dreams must inherently involve elements of nonsensical bullshit
Finally, a note from Rashi. This is from the verse discussing how beautiful Joseph is, which occurs immediately before Potiphar's wife attempts to fuck his brains out. The language used, however, is. something.
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the technicolor dream coat, as it were
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22 years, give or take
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Onan, cumming on the ground instead of in his dead brother's wife, set the precedence for a lot of people to get weird about jerking it down the road