The way we learn not to commit evil is to experience an event from the perspective of the victim. –Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Consider, Gentle Reader that the ‘Joseph Story’ resolves the tensions that exist within sibling rivalry. Moreover, the Book of Genesis teaches us about failure and about learning from failure – discovering that we can, indeed, transform. Jacob discovers this after his long night of wrestling with the ‘angel.’ Jacob’s sons discover it after a long period of fear and challenge. The learning: The defeat of tragedy in the name of hope. Remember, Gentle Reader that the Greek Tragedies ended, not in hope, but in tragedy. The ‘hope’ engendered by Genesis also replaces the ‘rage’ residing in ‘tragedy’ with the hope AND the experience that we can transform.
What is one of the tap roots that nurtures transformation? Consider: Role Reversal. A fundamental reality about consciousness is that one cannot feel the other’s pain. One is only able to feel his/her own pain.
This limitation is a major reason why we humans have a tendency (or is it a compulsion) to divide the world into brothers and others, into kin and non-kin, into friends and strangers, into ‘We’ and ‘Them’ and into those who belong and to those who do not belong. Consider: The covenantal family, the children of Israel, began their life as a nation in Egypt as slaves. Why? They needed to experience from the inside what it felt like to be ‘on the other side.’
In the ‘Joseph Story’ that is what Joseph is striving to get his siblings to do. He is striving to educate them in ‘otherness’ via ‘Role Reversal.’ Joseph’s brothers must experience what he experienced – becoming a slave in a foreign land; a land far from home. Now, Gentle Reader, this is not revenge. Joseph has no desire for revenge. It is, however, the only way his brothers will have an opportunity to understand what evil feels like from the side of the victim. This experience, this opportunity, is needed for it is the prelude to repentance. Repentance is one of the most compelling proofs that we are truly free to choose – in this case, to choose to transform as a sign of repentance.
Cain was able to kill his brother, Abel, because he was not able to feel Abel’s pain and hence he focused on his own pain – the pain of being rejected. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us: ‘The way we learn not to commit evil is to experience an event from the perspective of the victim.’ In the ‘Joseph Story’ Judah’s repentance – his transformation – demonstrates that he is, indeed, his brother Benjamin’s keeper and thus he is able to redeem his earlier sin of betraying his brother Joseph.
Consider that the central question of Genesis is: Are we human beings friends or strangers, brothers or others? This question has been lingering with us since Cain and Abel. Genesis is about recognition and non-recognition in the deepest sense, about our willingness to accord dignity to the other rather than to see the other as a threat. Genesis is a sustained exploration of recognition and estrangement, closeness and distance, acceptance and rejection.
Genesis reminds us (or teaches us) that if only we were to listen closely to the voice of the ‘other’ then we might find that beneath the ‘skin’ we ARE, indeed, brothers and sisters and that God is truly the God of us all.
When others are transformed into brothers and conflict is transformed into conciliation THEN we have taken a few steps on the journey to repentance and reconciliation and to becoming the global-family that God wishes us to become. All of this, of course begins with ‘ME’ and not with thee.
Become the change you want to see in the world. –Gandhi
Searcher-Seeker 