The HOPE Cyber Library

The Academy of Jerusalem, New Israel Genesis Exegesis

Commentary to Parashat va’Yeshev (Gen. 37:1 – 40:23)

By Dr. Yitzhak Hayut-Man and Tirtsah Arzi

Overview

1. The Brothers’ Envy of Yoseph and his claim for the Seniority

Appendix ‘B’: Yoseph and his Brothers –

the Twelve, the Ten, the Two and the Hidden Messiahship.

Appendix ‘C’: Yoseph as Archetype for Hidden Redemptive-Orders.

Overview

“Va’Yeshev Ya’aqov – And Ya’aqov would dwell [1]”. The motif of this Parashah is the Yeshivah – a Hebrew word meaning, literally “sitting”, as well as “dwelling”. It can be used, colloquially for “sitting” in prison, being incarcerated. Yoshev – sitting down – is in contrast with Omed – standing up.

Three “sittings” are treated in this Parashah: 1) the dwelling of Ya’aqov be’Erets Megurei Aviv, be’Erets Kena’an – “in the Land of the dwelling – megurim – of his father, the Land of Canaan”. This dwelling was under conditions of Magor – namely terror or dreads – and submission, like one who “sits” incarcerated. 2) Such a “Sitting” – Yeshivah – is the sitting of Yoseph-Joseph in prison, down to which he would be brought in Egypt. 3) Between the two, there is still another “sitting”, both of Yoseph, who was brought down to the pit at Dotan, and meanwhile his ten brothers sat down to eat bread (37:25).

But there is not just sitting down, but also descent that accompany us right in the beginning of each one of the seven parts of the Parashah. (These parts are the eight traditional sections of each Parashah for its reading aloud on Shabbat, made of seven division and then a last – maftir – which repeats the end of the seventh section) and only in the end, the maftir, comes a raising or ascent.

Part 1: (which deals with the dreams of Yoseph, the envy of his brothers and with the covert struggle for seniority among the brothers) starts with “And Ya’aqov dwelled (or would dwell) in the land his father had sojourned (or was terrorized), in the land of Kena’an” (37:1).

Part 2: (which deals with the lowering of Yoseph into the pit by his brothers, and the test of the seniority of Re’uven) starts with “And his brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shekhem” (37:12), the going that brought them to commit the crime against their brother.

Part 3: (the sale of Yoseph and the passing of the seniority to Judah) “And it came to pass, when Yoseph was come to his brethren, that they stripped him of his coat, the long sleeved coat that was on him. And they took him, and cast him into a pit” (37:23).

Part 4: (Interlude: the descent of Judah from his brothers to Adulam, the affairs of Tamar and of Judah’s sons). “And it came to pass at that time that Yehudah went down from his brothers, and turned in to a certain ‘Adullamite… “ (38: 1).

Part 5: (the descent of Yoseph to Egypt and his rise at the house of Potiphar). “And Yoseph was brought own to Mitsrayim, and Potiphar, the chamberlain of Par’oh… bought him.. “ (39:1).

Part 6: (the seductions of Potiphar’s wife – Yoseph cast down to the royal prison pit and there rises to eminence). “And it came to pass after these things, that his master’s wife cast eyes upon Yoseph; and she said, Lie with me” (39:7).

Part 7: (Yoseph interprets the dreams of the king’s butler and his baker). “And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Mitsrayim, and his baker, offended their lord the king of Mitsrayim” (40:1).

Maftir: “And it came to pass on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants; and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants. And he restored – vayashev – the chief butler to his butlership again” (40:20-21).

So towards the end of the Parashah, in the section called Maftir in the weekly Torah reading, there returns the word root with which the Parashah started, vaYeshev, in a different sense – vayashev – from hashavah and shivah, namely “Return”. Par’oh returns the butler to his erstwhile job. In the sequel, we shall relate this section to the issues of the descent to the underworld – She’ol – and of the reason for the descent of the souls to This Word.

In the course of the Parashah, we shall relate to a spiritual-geometrical description of descents, ascents and settling in social and spiritual status: the deeper that Yoseph goes, and gets transformed from a beloved and spoiled child first to a slave and then to a prisoner for life, the higher rises and builds his potential to become the governor of “the whole land of Mitsrayim-Egypt”.

In terms of Kabbalah, the Parashah deals with the two lower Sefirot: Sefirat Yesod (Foundation) represented by the virtuous Yoseph, and Sefirat Malkhut (Kingship) that Judah descends to and in which is destined to settle the scion of Judah. Characteristic of these Sefirot is that through them it is possible both to descend and to ascend, much as the angels in Ya’aqov’s dream.

Beneath the surface, the word vaYeshev has an additional meaning of lishbot Shevi – “to take captives”. The hero of the Parashah is not Ya‘aqov but Yoseph, who descends to Egypt (as a symbol of the soul of the universal Man that descends to this world) in order to capture twelve tribes[2] for the future Israel.

The intense drama that becomes revealed to us here is the solution to the problem that already started with Kayin-Cain and Hevel-Abel and repeated between Yishma’el and Yitzhaq, and between Esav and Ya’aqov: the casting out of one son because of the other son, who is favoured, for whatever reason, by God, the father or the mother (generally from considerations of inheritance). But this time we shall reach, through the last four Parashot of Genesis, to the solution of this problem.

We have shown in Parashat vaYetse that the twelve sons of Ya’aqov constitute a whole vessel, which can contain the rivalries among the brothers. But in this Parashah and its sequels, we observe the more detailed anatomy of this vessel, how it withholds the natural pressures of the brothers’ envy and rivalry.

The Parashah starts by emphasizing the envy of the brothers of Yoseph. IT is natural that there was rivalry between the sons of Le’ah and of Rahel, as the envy between the two mothers was already well known. It is also evident that Yoseph shepherded with “the sons of the maidservants” because the sons of Le’ah, the mistress, preferred to band together and reject the sons of the other mothers. But it seems that Yoseph did everything to make himself hated by them all, and his father only assisted in this through his open favouring of Yoseph over all his brothers.

This matter finds its peak in the case of the dreams. Still before the dreams become a matter of future prophecies, they are clearly seen as veiled desires of the psyche, which are not hidden to Yoseph’s brothers: “Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?” (33:8). The contention over the kingship and the dominion over Israel, a struggle that would find expression in the passing of the kingship from King Saul-Sha’ul of the Tribe of Binyamin (brother of Yoseph as also son of Rahel) to avid from the tribe of Judah, and in the division of the one kingdom into two – the Kingdom of Israel with ten tribes (who eventually disappeared) and the Kingdom of Judah which survived longer. But the contention has not ended even with the exile of the Ten Tribes, and even Jewish tradition speaks of the appearance of “Messiah Son of Yoseph” versus “Messiah Son of David”.

The Brothers’ Envy of Yoseph and his claim for the Seniority

“And Ya’aqov dwelled (or would well) in the land his father had sojourned (or was terrorized), in the land of Kena’an” (37:1). The beginning of the Parashah is the ending of the office of Ya’aqov. The next sentence passes the sceptre to the sons: “these are the generations of Ya’aqov, Yoseph being seventeen years old….”. The seniority – bekhorah – and the decision – behirah – pass on to the sons. It is for this end that the family of Ya’aqov at last settles in the land of Kena’an-Cannan. Where does Ya’aqov choose to live? “In the land his father had sojourned (or was terrorized)” in a land of Magor-terror, marked by the fears of his fathers, the land whose sacred center is YHWH Yir’eh – “the Lord would See”, an expression meaning also Yir’ah – complete awe and fear/terror. Also, Ya’aqov said, as he rose from the divine epiphany “how dreadfull is this place” (28:17). Thus, we find that his sojourn in the land was not with settled mind. So the question arises: what were the fears/dwellings of his father Yitzhaq, and what emendations should be made in this land in order to remove the terror.

Actually, in the most frightening experience conceivable – the fright of a child whose father is about to slaughter him – Yitzhaq endured without fear, as the Bible mentions no expression of fear by Yitzhaq on the occasion of the Aqedah. When is it told, “And Yitzhaq feared an exceedingly great fright – vayeherad Yitzhaq Haradah gedolah ad me’od (27:33)? This happened when his beloved son Esav came to him, brought him dainty foods and asked him for a blessing, and Yitzhaq discovered that he had been cheated, and has already exhausted the blessing that he had prepared for Esav. That is, his fear issued from worry over the expected bitter relationships between his two sons.

Now, if Yitzhaq had worries and fears concerning the future relationship between his two sons, then conceivably Ya’aqov who had twelve sons should have had more reasons to worry about possible entanglements between them. In this Parashah, the issue of conflicts between the brothers reaches a peak, almost to a repetition of the case of Qayin and Hevel, when this time it was actually the shepherds who banded to remove the tent-dwelling brother.

There is yet another possible meaning to Erets Megure Aviv as “the Land of his father’s sojourn as stranger - Ger”, which derives from the edict “Know surely that thy seed shall be a stranger (ger yiheye zar’akha) in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them and they shall afflict them four hundred years” (15:13), and the calculation of the time of sojourn in a strange land not their own actually starts with Abraham and his sons in the land of Kena’an (before it would become “Land of Israel”). The hero of this Parashah, Yoseph, was taken down to Egypt to draw all of Israel to become there evident sojourner in a strange land – Gerim – in order to ultimately add onto Israel and assimilate in its covenant also the mixed multitudes of Egypt. It would later be Moses who would call his son “”Gershom, for he said, I have been a stranger – Ger – in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22).

“These are the generations (Toldot) of Ya’aqov, Yoseph being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers” (37:2). The story of the sons of Ya’aqov actually starts with Yoseph, who was the almost youngest of the sons of Ya’aqov. In the following, we shall see how much he was connected with Toldot, namely with fertility, as would be spelled out in Ya’aqov’s final blessing to his sons.

The expression ro’eh et Ehav – “Shepherding with his brothers” has several meanings: first he was minding the flock with them, and as the youngest, he would have to serve them, but apparently he then wanted to act as their shepherd (which is what the expression ro’eh et Ehav literally means). Now the word ro’eh is ambivalent, connected both with re’a, which is a friend, as well as with ra, which means “evil” or the opposite of good. These two meanings are implied by the command “ve’ahavta le’Re’akha kamokha”, generally translated as “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), but actually meaning both “love thy friend as thyself” and “love thy evil side as (part of) thy self”.

“And the lad was with the son of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives”. At the beginning of Yoseph’s working life, he had to serve the lower status among his bigger brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. We learn from this that there were divisions among the brothers/tribes, and the sons of Le’ah dwellet separately from the sons of Bilhah and of Zilpah. (It is reasonable to assume that the tents of these four mothers were situated to the four cardinal directions from the tent of Ya’aqov, and divided the camp into four quarters. Within such a setup, Yoseph would have had more opportunities to run into is father’s tent, as he would be running to and fro between the sons of Bilha on one hand and the sons of Zilpah on the opposite side).

About Yoseph’s character

The Midrashim take for granted that Yoseph was an exemplary virtuous man – Tsadiq – the very prototype of “the hidden Tsadiq”, and therefore assume that whatever he did was well and good. But one aught to look at the simple text to gather from the few hints a convincing psychological portrait.

From his personal status, he was almost the beloved youngest son (Ben Zequnim) apart from his younger brother Binyamin. He was Na’ar et – “a lad with” or apprentice with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, Ya’aqov’s wives, the maids of the two mistresses. So there was quite naturally a social distinction between the six sons of Le’ah, the mistress, and the four sons of the wives of the lower status. The great envy and rivalry between Le’ah and Rahel must have found an expression with the sons, and the sons of Le’ah probably did not tend to associate with the sons of Rahel, their mother’s rival.

Yoseph might have conceivably take advantage of the situation and gain the favor of his bigger brothers, in order to attain a senior status through their support. From a perspective of instrumental thinking (which would characterize the adult Yoseph), he might have risen to leadership through them. In the final arrangement of the 12 tribes, there are four from the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah and three from the Sons of Rahel – Ephrayim, Menashe and Binyamin) – versus five of the sons of Le’ah (as Levi moved to the center and gave up on estate and power).

But what, on the contrary, did Yoseph do? “And Yoseph brought to his father their evil report” (37:2). Yoseph had no sense of respect towards his bigger brothers, and especially his brothers from the maids, who were apparently of lower status. Slander is a basic vice in human relationships and especially so in relations of brothers. It is possible that all that Yoseph said about his brothers was true and the need for truthful reporting was a part of the skills he acquired for setting the administration in which he would excel in the future. But here it was entangled with the question of trust among brothers, and brought to his demise. His eventual correction was in that he had to descend in his status and become a slave and a prisoner, until he learnt to accept everything.

(In the sequel, we shall see how Yoseph sought to harm his brothers and avenge them in a sophisticated way, until Yehudah stopped him).

“And Now Yisra’el loved Yoseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat with long sleeves”. This sentence is irregular in several respects. Here, Ya’aqov is called again “Yisra’el”, the name pertaining to his higher stature. On the other hand, the tense here is in simple past, rather than the “inverted future” used throughout, which seems to indicate this was a past favoritism that would, or should, not recur. Then the sentence is not correct, as the expression “son of old age” – Ben Zequnim – is inaccurate, since Yoseph’s birth was at Haran, when Ya’aqov was still strong, and at that time, there already lived Binyamin, who was much younger. It is possible to say that this arbitrary preference of the father recalls the preference by God of Hevel-Abel over Qayin-Cain – a favoritism that brought to hatred and revenge. In the case of the first brothers, the revenge happened after the event, “And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Qayin rose up against Hevel his brother, and slew him” (4:8), whereas also in the case of Yoseph, we shall soon see that the revenge came later, in the field.

“And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him”. In contrast to the relative weakness of Yoseph versus his brothers, whom he was supposed to serve, their father Ya’aqov showed clear favoritism towards Yoseph over his brothers in public, enough to cause them to hate him. All his brothers hated him. Not only the oldest one, who might perhaps had concern about losing the seniority to the more loved son, but all of them to the last one, the sons of Le’ah along with the sons of Bilhah and of Zilpah, hated him. The envy of Yoseph was common to them all, and it arose further upon hearing Yoseph dreams, which he proudly ran to tell them.

“And Yoseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren; and they hated him yet the more”. This is the first mention of Yoseph’s special skill concerning dreams – first having them, then ability to interpret them. This seems like an inherited ability. Already Ya’aqov was noted for his special dreams, first about the ladder and the angels then about the insemination of the sheep, both mixing cosmology with practical messages. Ya’aqov’s favorite son Yoseph excelled in dreams of grandeur and in interpreting the dreams of the great. The four dreams in this Parashah, his couple of dreams and the twin dreams of Par’oh’s servants would prepare him to deal with the twin dreams of Par’oh. (See extension about “Yoseph the Master of Dreams” towards the end of the Parashah).

“For behold we were binding sheaves in the field ..” What delighted Yitzhaq about his son who he thought was Esav? It was the smell of the field – “See, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed” (27:27). Ya’aqov tried to keep his beloved son in the camp, that he would be “a dweller of tents” like him, but in his dream, the arena where Yoseph confronted his brothers was the wheat field, and eventually, Yoseph’s brothers banded on him in the shepherds field, in Esav’s lot.

“And lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves stood round about, and bowed down to my sheaf”. In the dream of Par’oh, which Yoseph would eventually solve, first there appeared ears of corn. In Yoseph’s first dream that he told to his brothers, they were all gathering sheaves of corn, and lo and behold, their sheaves became animated, his sheaf rose and stood upright, and the brothers’ sheaves surrounded it, and bowed to it. Yoseph clearly identified the dominant sheaf as his “and (they) bowed to my sheaf”. In addition to the clear message of the dream that was immediately grasped by the brothers, there was here already a sign for Yoseph’s future role as provider of grain. Nowadays there is spreading the phenomenon of the “Corn Circles”, where patterns appear mysteriously in cereal fields, which many interpret as messages from other worlds (or from the Adamah, the living earth), and this adds contemporary interest to Yoseph’s dream.

“And his brothers said to him, shalt thou indeed reign over us?” His brothers immediately interpreted that this had to do with kingship and dominion, and this was the first time that the possibility of kingship was raised in the house of Ya’aqov. The brothers took this to their heart – would the future kings of Israel rise from the tribe of Yoseph?

Ya-aqov-Yisra’el represents, as we saw, the Sefirah Tif’eret. Along with its positive aspects, this Sefirah also has its negative or inferior aspect – pride and boasting – hitpa’arut. Yoseph, who would connect the promise of Israel with the world of Action, is very inclined to savor of the quality of hitpa’arut, and will have to pass still a demanding training course in order to get rid of it.

“Behold, I have again dreamed a dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me”. In its manifestation in Yoseph’s second dream, his hidden ambition received cosmic dimensions. This time what bowed were the sun and moon and eleven stars – and not to his sheaf or monument, but to him himself. And again, Yoseph did not keep this in his heart, but ran to tell it to his father and brothers.

Yoseph was thus the first to dream the dream about the Kingdom of Israel, as a cosmic ego-trip, characteristic of his puerile state. His hidden quest for dominion was not denied, and we shall see how he eventually became the most important ruler in the whole Middle East (which was the main settled world in his times). But Yoseph had to make a great rectification (Tiqun), in order to reach the throne, and this Tiqun had to do with the difficulty of relating to his brothers. His willingness to seriously entertain thoughts of kingship brought upon him complete alienation from his brothers, their hatred of him and intention to kill him, his abduction and plotting to sell him (for a potage or whatever the Ishma’elites would give for him), slavery and years of imprisonment.

2. The Trek Towards the Brothers and the Encounter with Them

“And his brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shekhem. And Yisra’el said to Yoseph, Do not thy brothers feed the flock in Shekhem? Come, and I will send thee to them”. The place where the dreadful encounter between Yoseph and his brothers took place is not at the environs of Hevron, but near Shekhem – not in the future domain of Judah, but at the future domain of Ephraim, son of Yoseph, and the center of the future kingdom of Israel. Is it only a coincidence that Shekhem was mentioned? This is the same city destroyed by the fanaticism of Shim’on and Levi with their “instruments of cruelty” (Hamas, 49:5) the very same name of the fanatical Moslem terror organization), and this was precisely where Yoseph was sent to look for his brothers. We find that the connection is not coincidental, because the Bible Later tells us (Joshu’a 24:32) that Shekhem became the burial place of Yoseph. That is where Yoseph went and almost found his death.

From the identity of the place, we can get the hinted meaning, that the adventures of Yoseph in Egypt were destined to become also a correction for the violent acts of Shime’on and Levi in Shekhem. They could have converted a whole city to the Lord, but prevented it; whereas Yoseph was brought down to Egypt to collect there converts, until when the children of Israel would leave Egypt, they would be numbered 600,000 men and more people.

“And he said to him, Here I am (hineni). And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brothers and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the valley of Hevron, and he came to Shekhem”. The answer “here I am” – hineni – is complete response, just like the response of Abraham to God at the Aqedah. Without his knowing, Ya’aqov would be repeating the story of the Aqedah and sacrifice his son, through the request to inquire the welfare of his brothers. The repetition – that first Ya’aqov announced to Yoseph his intention to send him, and after Yoseph answered hineni, he expressly gave him the mission with all its stipulations – this means that Ya’aqov made his some take an oath before he went to inquire the welfare of his brothers. In this highly symbolic mission, he had to leave Hevron (about which it is said that “it makes all Yisra’el Haverim – friends”) to the place of the cruelest struggle – Shekhem. In Ya’aqov’s private blessing to Yoseph (48:23), he would be telling his son, “Moreover, I have given thee Shekhem ehad al ahekha”, which literally means “one shoulder over thy brothers”, and pragmatically “one portion more than thy brothers”, but the word game hints to the event that happened at Shekhem “which I took out of the hand of the Emory with my sword and with my bow”. But eventually, the word Shekkhem would be mentioned with a meaning of amity, “(together as) one shoulder” in the vision of the prophet Zephaniah (3:9) “For then I will convert the peoples to a purer language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him to serve him Shekhem Ehad – with one consent”.

“I seek my brothers – et Ehay ani mevaqesh - tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flock?”. That is what Yoseph said when he talked in the field with an unknown man. The term mevaqesh – “seeking” – has a double meaning in the Bible: The beloved in the song of songs is seeking her lover, while king Saul, on the other hand, was seeking – mevaqesh – to kill David.

“And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him”. Even if Yoseph intended to reconcile them, he could not, as the past had already determined their attitude, and when they saw him from afar off, without being able to perceive finer hints, they already spoke and conspired to slay him. “And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer comes”. The instinctive hatred of the ignorant brothers to “the dreamer” brought to the horrid idea to perform an experiment “let us slay him, and cast him into some pit… and we will see what will become (of) his dreams” (literally, “what will be his dreams then”).

These words were actually prophetic. Because really, after the brothers cast Yoseph into the pit, and after Potiphar did this again, we would see the dreams that Yoseph solved, and because of which he rose to that very prominence about which he dreamt his annoying dreams.

3. The Sale of Yoseph

The process of conspiring to slay Yoseph was somewhat complicated, and its execution a bit incompetent, at least enough to release the brothers of the guilt of actually selling their brother into slavery. “And Re’uven heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him” (37:21). Re’uven heard about the scheme, which means that he did not initiate it, and that the idea was first discussed like in committees before it was brought to the full assembly. When the idea was brought to Re’uven’s attention, it was already with the standing of a social decision, that Re’uven did not find in himself the power to oppose it openly and cancel it, but he found a way to change it: “Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him”, this he proposed with a hidden aim “that he might save him out of their hand, to deliver him back to his father”. All the ten brothers then cooperated, and together did three things: first they stripped Yoseph of his striped coat that their father had given him and which raised their envy; secondly, they cast him into a pit; and thirdly, they went to another place to eat their bread in quite and not attend in case he would plead for them to save him.

“And the pit was empty, there was no water in it”. The first pit, the one that the brothers cast Yoseph into, was empty without water – without the aspect of Hesed-Grace; the second “pit” that Yoseph was cast into at Potiphar’s command, was the pit of Egypt that basks in the water of the Nile, and he got there because of Potiphar’s wife, who sought to bring him into her own well.

“And they sat down to eat bread”. In Parashat Miqets, the brothers converse between them and mention that eating: “Truly, we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear” (42:21). That is, they conducted their meeting while in the background of their conversing they could hear the pleadings of their brother from the pit.

This sitting is actually the hidden motif of the Parashah.

The ten brothers cast Yoseph into the pit, and then set nearby to eat bread.

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we mention (at the Musaf prayer) the case of the Ten Martyrs, including Rabbi Aqiva, who were killed during the time of the Bar Kokhva Revolt. The prayer recalls a legend, according to which the Roman ruler had them executed with the charge that this is the punishment that becomes the Jews for the selling of Yoseph: “And he started with ‘And these are the judgments which you shall set before them’ (Exodus 21:1), plotting to bring ‘And he who steals a man, and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death’ (Exodus 21:16)”. This dire events happened during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, who tried to uproot Judaism, forbade the circumcision, deported the Jews from Jerusalem which he destroyed and built in its place the city of Iliya Capitolina with the Jupiter Temple complex on the Temple Mount.

It is possible to draw parallels between Yoseph and the emperor Hadrian as among the greatest rulers in the ancient world. Hadrian strove much to integrate all the religions of the Roman Empire into one system, and built throughout the empire systems of temples for the integration of the religions. In Rome, he built the Pantheon, and the twelve major Gods that he selected were placed in a system where they face each other[3].

Rabbi Aqiva (who actually was “son of Yoseph”) contrary to him did not believe in the twelve and did not believe that the Ten Tribes are likely to return (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 110b).

The choice of precisely ten martyrs was apparently not happenstance but symbolic. At that period, the Jews were already known as praying in “Minyan” (literally “counting”) based on ten. The ruler intended to show the Jews the full extent of their destruction. In that he took upon himself, not fully aware, to be the avenger of Yoseph from his brothers, he took upon himself a load of historical entanglements, which brought eventually to the conversion of the religions he tried to nurture to Christianity.

Rabbi Aqiva gave up his life to uphold the command of “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). And his soul departed in the “One” of the Qri’at Shema (Deut. 6:4). Both Hadrian and Aqiva intended to perform unification, but Aqiva would recognize only the Divine Unity of YHWH.

“And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Yishma’elites came from Gil’ad” (37:25). Interestingly, it was the sight of a company of Yishma’elites that brought them the idea to change their plan. It is possible that the memory of Yishma’el who was cast out came to them. There is no need to kill the brother who threatens to take the seniority, enough to deport him to the desert.

“And Yehudah said to his brothers, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Yishma’elites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brothers hearkened to him”. This way, the seniority and leadership passed from Re’uven to Yehudah who said “What profit is it if we slay our brother… for he is our brother and our flesh”. Even before the moral consideration, Yehudah poses the practical calculation of profit and loss. But without adding the moral consideration there would have been left only the greed, as attributed by Christians to the Jews, and reached its peak in drawing the characters of Judas and Sheilock.

But it seems from the strange circumstances written that the brothers did not get the chance to perform their scheme and make a financial profit from their abduction of their brother, when “then there passed by Midyanim, merchants” who did not waste a minute and drew Yoseph from the pit and immediately sold him to those same Yishma’elites for twenty pieces of silver. This exonerated the sons of Ya’aqov exonerated from the guilt of selling Yoseph, as the Midyanim overtook them. Also the Yishma’elites, descendents of Abraham, did not carry guilt for the selling of Yoseph, as they bought him on good faith and honest price, as was common those days. Thus there was already formed a connection between Yoseph and the sons of Yishma’el, and in the Qur’an Yoseph is regarded among the greatest prophets and virtuous people (Sura 12, and see Appendix ‘C’).

“And Re’uven returned to the pit; and, behold, Yoseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned to his brothers, and said, The child is not; and I, where shall I go?”. It is evident from Re’uven’s behavior that he did not know about the scheme of the rest of his brothers, and thus that he had already lost his leadership. Twice is mentioned here the word vaYashov – “returned” – which is much like the name of the Parashah – vaYeshev – both in leaving the circle of the plotters and in returning to them.

“And they took Yoseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood. And they sent the coat of long sleeves, and they brought it to their father; and said, This we have found; know now whether it be thy son's coat or no”. Here Ya’aqov suffered a terrible punishment, aimed a measure for measure to what he had done to his brother Esav. Just as Ya’aqov had slaughtered a kid of the goats, put his fur on his hands and put on his brother’s clothes in order to deceive his father, likewise the sons of Ya’aqov slaughtered a kid of the goats to mark thereby their brother’s cloth, in order to deceive their own father. Ya’aqov was still unconscious of what his favoritism towards Yoseph caused, and even in his mourning showed his absolute preference to Yoseph “but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down to my mourning into She’ol”.

The Ten – Minyan – and the Twelve

The count of Ten – Minyan – is a state of exile: from the day that the Temple was destroyed and the prayer was instituted as surrogate for the Temple sacrifices, a Minyan of ten male Jews perform the public Amidah (standing prayer) of the eighteen benedictions. Twelve is the state of being settled in the land, that is how the people of Israel were counted when they entered the land and in the days of the unified kingdom. Thus, rabbi Hayim Vital writes the words of the ARI that the tribes “thought… to be ten Sefirot in order to complete the Or Yashar (straight Light)… which is a well-known mistake, because the tribes are not in the pattern of the Ten Sefirot, but are “the twelve edges of the (Sefirah of) Malkhut, like the twelve bulls[4]” (Liqute Torah).

The Kingdom of the Twelve Tribes, which was constituted by David and Shelomoh, was rent again into two and ten, and the Ten Tribes were the first to go on exile, and until today their place and identity were not ascertained. (This is also the fable of Plato: the ancient city of Atlantis, based on the principle of the Ten, perished from the face of the earth, whereas the future ideal city (which he called Magnesia), would restore society and last).

It was with much pain that the family of Ya’aqov, whose favorite wife was barren for many years, attained the ideal pattern of the twelve. From the moment that Yoseph was taken down to Egypt the ideal was shuttered, and the family of Ya’aqov was left in between the Twelve and the Ten. At times, it was left as a family of ten (when Yehudah turned away from his brothers, when Shime’on was left a prisoner in Egypt), in longing for the reunion – but the lack of the Dozen led them to the exile.

In spite of the reunion in Egypt, the family did not attain the twelve-fold pattern, until its return to their land (the joining of the two tribes of Yoseph brought the family into a thirteen-fold structure, and only the withdrawal of the tribe of Levi from inheriting an estate, and their dispersion among the different tribes brought the situation back to the whole pattern).

See further treatment of the theme of the Twelve and the Ten in Appendix ‘B’

4. Yehudah and Tamar, the Descent and the Fertility

“And it came to pass at that time, that Yehudah went down from his brothers, and turned in to a certain Adulamite, whose name was Hirah” (38:1). Here is brought as an interlude, the strange affair of Yehudah and Tamar. The Adulamite (a native of the town of Adulam, at the Judean foothills) is Yehudah’s mate for affairs that, apparently, brought no honor to the family. He is the one who would bring the harlot’s wages on Yehudah’s behalf. On the whole, the word root NTH, used here in vaYet – “turned in to” – points at some shady issue; yet “Adulam” also contains in it a promise – Ad Olam – namely “For ever”.

“And Yehudah saw there a daughter of a certain Kena’anite, whose name was Shu’a” (38:2). Yehudah went down from his brothers, and there his passions arose up. It seems that eventually, all the sons of Ya’aqov (apart from Yoseph) married Kena’anite women, and Yoseph an Egyptian woman (as Abraham did with Hagar) – but Yehudah was their pioneer in this. All we know of Yehudah’s wife is her father’s name – Shu’a (which happens to be the stem of the name Yeshu’a (son of Yoseph), the Jew who would become the Christian Messiah).

“And Yehudah took a wife for ‘Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar” (38:6). The name Tamar means “a date Palm”, but it also has to do with Temurah, that is, Transformation, for Yehudah. It is worth noting how appropriate was the name Tamar for Yehudah’s rectification. Tamar is the cause for Hatmarah, for a decisive change of quality, in Yehudah’s seed. Instead of the seed or ‘Er and ‘Onan, there returns the seed of Yehudah. The story is a precursor of the Story of Ruth, when the seed of Mahalon and Kilyon, which mean illness and perishing, is lost, but their continuation comes from the seed of Bo’az, meaning “In him (bo) courage (Oz) and power”.

“And Yehudah said to Onan, Go in to thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of a brother in law, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in to his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother”. The father asked “to raise up the seed” for his dead son, and for this end, Onan was requested to give from his seed, and he, in effect, refused. It is evident that the struggle among brothers – the main motif of the Book of Genesis - and the selfishness endured even after the death of the older brother.

The request for giving of seed is like the request for sacrifice; it is the means to connect beyond death, tying the newborn body with the soul and spirit, namely the name and identity, of the father[5]. Onan was ready to enjoy coitus with his brother’s wife, but not to contribute of his seed in order to preserve the memory of his brother alive and preferred to spill it on the ground. Onan thus behaved contrary to nature and withdrew his penetration before the performance of the natural aim.

“Then said Yehudah to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown; for he said, Lest perchance he die also, as his brothers did. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house”. Yehudah did not deal honestly with Tamar. He promised and did not mean to keep his promise because of his worry about his one remaining son, and she took initiative to get the matters between them straight by her own cheating: “And she took off her widow's garments, and covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given to him for his wife”.

“When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a harlot; because she had covered her face. And he turned to her by the way…”. Here returns the word “Vayet” – “turned by the way” once more, turning away from the straight path. Yehudah would be chastised for the gap between his private behavior when away from his brothers and his public behavior. He has no compunction to go to a harlot, but is ready to get his daughter in law burnt alive if she prostituted. But Tamar knew how to put him on the spot.

“…And Judah said, Bring her out, and let her be burned. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in-law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child; and she said, Discern, I beg you, whose are these, the signet, and the cord, and the staff”. These were Yehudah’s signs of status and distinction as respected public figure and the first among his brothers. Yoseph had his long sleeve coat as his mark of distinction over his brothers – and his brothers removed it from him and then passed it to his father as testimony. Here Tamar stripped Yehudah of his marks of distinction and passed them as testimony.

This story, which begins with the descent of Yehudah, is brought in the Parashah as parallel to the story of the descent of Yoseph to Egypt and of handing him to Potiphar, the chamberlain (or eunuch) of Par’oh. The motif of the clothing serves as further interesting parallel between them: Yehudah left with Tamar his insignia, and later, when she showed them, he confessed, “she has been more righteous than I”. Yoseph, when he avoided sexual entanglement with his master’s wife, left his garment in her hand, and she used it later as apparent evidence for his guilt (The Qur’an adds more details for the evidence of the garment here, see below). The term Beged – garment – is used not only as clothing, but also in its other Hebrew meaning of “betrayal”, and thus used in a role in proving faith. Three times in this Parashah is garment used to describe different stages of betrayal.

“And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She has been more righteous than I; because I did not give her to Shelah my son”. Here Yehudah modeh – confesses – that what he did was not honest. The name Yehudah is not only from Todah-hodayah (“Now I will praise the Lord” – Odeh et YHWH – 29:35), but also from Hoda’ah – confession/admission. In this instance Yehudah comes at last to identify with the name that his mother gave him and with his soul essence – namely with his immortal and unique Neshamah (in the word Neshamah, there are the letters of Shem – namely “Name”, and Mah – “What”, from the sense of Mahut – essence).

Yehudah stands, in fact, to trial, and confesses – modeh - “(She) has been more righteous than I” (38:25). “She” means the unconscious, the passionate and the suppressed part in me, she was more right than I, than my respectable figure of the leader, which covers an ordinary person.

The confession by Yehudah of his illegal parenthood is also an admission of the scriptural editors in the “racially impure” origin of King David, the Messiah. Tamar, like Ruth the Moabite, engaged in the genetic improvement of the Jewish soul through hybridization[6].

“And he knew her again no more” – velo yasaf od. Here, in Yehudah’s restraint in relation to Tamar, is hinted the name of Yoseph, who became a symbol of sexual restraint in the parallel story. In any case, there appeared thus a bit of incest in the royal family of Yehudah – and in the sequel even more than a bit – when Bo’az of the family of Peretz, married Ruth the Moabite, of the tribe that formed from the daughter of Lot who laid with her father. There is much similarity in the sexual initiatives of Tamar and of Ruth.

“And it came to pass in the time of her labor, that, behold, twins were in her womb”. The birth of Yehudah’s twin sons from his daughter-in-law parallels the birth of Ya’aqov and Esav, where the second held the heel of the first, but was even more extreme, where the one behind pushes his brother and emerges before him. An event of the change of the order of birth of twins is so unusual and biologically unlikely, that it is evidently included as having much significance. In the birth of the sons of Yehudah, from whom would eventually emerge the kings of Israel, David and Shlomoh, the order of seniority is completely reversed. Ya’aqov bought seniority from his older brother, Ephrayim was placed as senior to his older brother by his grandfather Ya’aqov, whereas Peretz took care of this affair right from the womb, managed to emerge the first and to grab the crown.

5. Yoseph’s Descent to Egypt and his exploits at Potiphar’s House.

“And the Midianites sold him to Mitsrayim (Egypt) to Potiphar, an officer of Par’oh's, and captain of the guard” (37:36). This way ends the report about the attempted sale of Yoseph by his brothers, before the story of Yehudah and Tamar. But when the narrative returns to tell of Yoseph’s exploits in Egypt, the version is somewhat different: “And Yoseph was brought down to Mitsrayim; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, a Mitsrian (Egyptian), bought him from the hands of the Yishma’elites, who had brought him down there” (39:1). In the former story, about the brothers, it is actually written that he was brought down by the “Mdanim” rather than the usual spelling of “Midyanim”, and Mdanim literally mean “quarrels” – so it was the quarrels among the brothers that really brought him down there. Now, in the next version, in the context of Yoseph’s interactions with people of Egypt, we learn that the “Yishma’elites” brought him to Egypt, perhaps because Hagar, Yishma’el’s mother was an Egyptian.

In any case, in both versions, the name of the officer who buys him is “Potiphar”. A rather similar Egyptian name would appear at the peak of Yoseph’s success in Egypt. There he would marry with “Asenat the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On” (41:45). There are interpreters who identify Yoseph’s future wife with the daughter of his first Egyptian master, but it does not seem likely that Potiphar, also called Saris Par’oh – Par’oh’s Eunuch” was the father of a girl, or that the captain of the guard was the priest of On, the center of the Egyptian priesthood. There is a certain connection between these two figures, but it is a more covert one. Yoseph, who was “brought down” to Egypt, started then to climb up the social ladder of the Egyptian regime: from being the slave and the house manager of “the officer, captain of the guard” (and in a more literal translation “the eunuch, master of the cooks”, a translation allowing the interpretation we present in section 9), through the prisoner who is in charge of all the king’s prisoners, and up to being the king’s viceroy and the son-in-law of the high priest of Egypt. From each venue he acquires the arts of government: at his master’s house, in prison, in the house of Par’oh, and perhaps also in the temples of Egypt.

The name “Potiphar” recalls the Hebrew word “Par”, namely Bull, and the blessing of Piryon, namely fertility. The fertility (and eroticism) goddess of Egypt was Hathor, who had a cow’s head. (Also in Israel, the calf had special cult significance, e.g. the Golden Calf and the Calves placed at the Temples at Bet-El and Dan).

“And the Lord was with Yoseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Mitsrian” (39:2). The expression “the Lord to be with” – vayehi YHWH et – shows great intimacy with the Lord. Yoseph in his acts embodies the very divine Being (YHWH), and the masters of Kabbalah (Mequbalim) explain that he became the vehicle of the divine attribute of Sefirah of Yesod – Foundation.

“And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Yoseph found favor in his sight, and he served him; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand”. The clear sign that the divine Being dwelling upon a person is that that person finds favor – Hen - in every one’s eyes. About No’ah it was said “But Noah found favor (or grace – Hen) in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen, 6:8) and also “Noah was a just man and perfect” – Tsadiq tamim (6:9). So in rarallel to Noah, Yoseph’s finding favor – Hen is an evidence for his being a Tsadiq. In the Kabbalah, it is used to see a connection between “Tsadiq” and the Sefirah of Yesod, noting the verse “the righteous – Tsadiq – is an everlasting foundation” (Proverbs 10:25). This way, Yoseph came to represent the Sefirah of Yesod.

6. Yoseph and Potiphar’s Wife

“And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Yoseph; and she said, Lie with me.” Yoseph was brought down to Egypt, but he might have descended still lower. Potiphar’s wife “nas’a eyneha el Yoseph”, literally “cast up here eyes towards Yoseph”, which means that in a certain sense she was on a level below his, and tried to lower him onto her, and even to bury his seed inside her.

“Behold, my master knows not what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand; There is none greater in this house than I; neither has he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife”. The test is a loyalty test to the master. The Midrashim, and following them the Qur’an, have emphasized the great temptation that Yoseph faced and the praise that he deserved. Yet, not only that Yoseph did not receive his due recompense, but also he was punished for a false accusation.

The Biblical interest in the details of the sexual adventures of Yehudah and his sons finds its parallel in the story of Yoseph in Potiphar’s house. Yehudah was tested through Tamar and Yoseph through Potiphar’s wife. Onan tried to solve and severe the connection between the enjoyment of sex and the commitment to procreation, whereas Potiphar’s wife continued, after Yoseph’s refusal, to nag and implore him each day “to lie by her or to be with her” (which the interpreters claimed meant to lie by here even without a sexual act).

In this competition for chastity and social morality, Yoseph won over Yehudah, and gained from the sages the title of “Tsadiq”. Later interpreters claimed that the temptations that Yoseph faced seem to them a much harder trial from all the trials that the patriarchs underwent.

“The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought to us, came in to me to mock me; And it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled out.” It is worth noting the language in which she slandered him: first, “See, he has brought in a Hebrew to us to mock us; he came in to me to lie with me”, and then “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought to us, came in to me to mock me”. The eunuch husband, who brought the handsome slave into his home, might be especially sensitive about being mocked for sexual matters. There seem to be here a “measure for measure” with the case of Yitzhaq who was metsaheq – “sporting with Rivqah his wife” (26:8) under the eyes of Abimelekh the king of Gerar.

7. Of the Pattern of the Sexual Trials of the Leaders of Israel.

The case of Yoseph and Potiphar’s wife appear after the account of Yehudah’s sexual trials with Tamar. If we look into the matter, we find a systematic motif. Yehudah and Yoseph are candidates for leadership among the tribes. An additional, natural, candidate is Re’uven - the firstborn. When we come to the ideal arrangement of the Tribes, as they camp around the Tent of Meeting, we find there four tribal standard-bearers: Standard (Degel) of the Camp of Yehudah, Standard of the Camp of Ephrayim (namely – Camp of Yoseph), Standard of the Camp of Re’uven and Standard of the Camp of Dan. There then are the four who have the characteristics and destiny of leadership.

The misadventure of Re’uven with his father’s concubine is mentioned at the last Parashah: “And it came to pass, when Israel lived in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Israel heard it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve” (35:22). This will keep affecting the relationship of the son with his father, reaching its peak in Ya’aqov’s “blessing” for his sons, where Ya’aqov actually cursed his firstborn because of this misdeed. Yoseph, on the other hand, was blessed by Ya’aqov a somewhat enigmatic blessing, generally translated as “Yoseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall”, but the Hebrew Ben Porat Yoseph, ben Porat ale Ayin, Banot tsa’ada ale shur can be read, more literally, as “A son of Fertility is Yoseph, like the fertility by a water spring, young women walk to look at him” (49:22). That is, his father was proud of the fertility of his beloved son and of the adoration of young women that he received (this accords with the account about Yoseph in the Midrash and the Qur’an). We do not learn directly of the sexual trials of Dan, but the most notorious representative of Dan, Samson-Shimshon the Judge (who is possibly already hinted at Ya’aqov’s blessing), gets often entangled with women all through his years of leadership, and particularly non-Israelite women: he married a Philistine-Palestinian, to his parents displeasure, from her he went to a Philistine-Palestinian harlot, and in the end he was betrayed by his Philistine lover (The Book of Judges, from chapter 14 onwards).

We have here thus an outstanding pattern: we do not know anything about the wives of any one else of the sons of Ya’aqov-Yisra’el, who apparently married respectable Canaanite women, who had the approval of their father. The leaders of the camps, though, had affairs, or stood trials, with wives of “the uncircumcised”, generally married women, and were distinguished by their strong sexual urge, as the sages said, “whoever is greater than his friend, his urge (Yetser) is greater” (Bavli, Sukkah 52a). It seems that for the purpose of leadership, a man must contend with his urges, with the women without and his feminine side within. Moreover, the Israelite religion regards dual partnership, sex (heterosexual) and fertility with the outmost importance. Thus, Shimshon-Samson “the monk” (Nazir) was characterized by active sexual life, in contrast with Christian monasticism.

We have already discussed the case of “the kings who reigned in the Land of Edom before there reigned any king over the Children of Yisra’el” – where only the eighth of then, Hadar, is mentioned as one who had a wife. We noted there that the woman was the distinction and rectification of this king, about whom no death was mentioned.

8. Yoseph the “Master of Dreams”.

“And Yoseph's master took him, and put him in the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound; and he was there in the prison”. Parashat vaYeshev, which opens with “sitting” in a land of fear and gore, ends with the “sitting” of Yoseph in the prison. In this settlement[7], in which he spent quite a few years, Yoseph likely set there and studied the arts of government in the most truthful way. Not a books study, but practical learning through confrontations with the most difficult elements that the regime found. And Yoseph’s most characteristic ability was in giving explanations and solutions to the meanings of dreams.

According to the Lurianic system of the Kabbalah, the fact that the dreams of the two officers who were held in the prison, the reason that the dreams of the two officials who were kept in prison (chief of the butlers and chief of the bakers) were both of threefold pattern (three tendrils on the vine and three baskets) is that they pertain to the three chiefs with whom Yoseph dealt (chief of butlers, chief of the bakers and Potiphar Sar haTabahim, here in the literal meaning of “chief of cooks”), who symbolize the three brains (or intelligences) that a man has (according to the Kabbalah:) of Wisdom-Hokhmah, of Knowledge-Da’at and of Understanding-Binah. These three brains control the body, as they descend through the neck by three pipes or Metsarim (straights): the trachea, the gullet (esophagus), and the carotid artery. The ARI’zl demonstrates with painstaking detail that the incarceration of Yoseph in the prison was his own Mitsrayim (Hebrew for Egypt, and literally “Twin straights”). Not a descent to the geographic Mitsrayim-Egypt, but to Mitsrayim to the narrows Metsarim – of the throat, to the state of choked throat which we all know.

The descent of Yoseph “to Mitsrayim” is thus a descent to the depth, to the subconscious of the nation. From here to the interpretation of dreams, the way is clear. Freud, the prophet of the therapeutic use of dreams, said that “dreams are the royal road to the unconscious” [check!]. As he was interpreting their dreams to “the chief of butlers and the chief of bakers”, Yoseph was also conducting an analysis of himself, and the ARI (Luria) treated with great detail the saying of the Zohar that “As the sages said that Yoseph knew and became very glad, a he was hearing these dreams, as they all indicated the occurrences to him in his being sold and exiled, and his rise to the kingship”

There is no other Biblical figure so identified with dreams as Yoseph. When we discussed the Garden of Eden and the issue of the Tree of Knowledge, we have compared between the imagining (medame) Adam; the experiencing (Hovah) Havah; and the guessing (menahesh) serpent-Nahash. The dream is a phenomenon of imagination rather than guesswork. Guessing is made from the consciousness of self-interest, while the dream comes from the sub-conscious where there operates the whole pattern of the human soul (the divine likeness), and it raises aspects that may heal and complete the limited situation that is recognized consciously. There are even Kabbalah and Hasidic sources that mark Yoseph as a prototypical messianic figure and “a serpent of holiness” (Nahash shebiQedushah), that rectifies what was wronged by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Yoseph’s fate is of rectifying that which appeared in dream. The dreams about the sheaves of his brothers bowing to his sheaf and the sun and moon and stars bowing to him, in fact became fulfilled, but not necessarily in the sense of the “Ego Trip” that they seemed to symbolize. Yoseph attained the status of ruler, in order to become the helper of his brothers and their rescuer.

Yoseph’s brothers showed clearly the deadening influence of society towards the creative and inspired individual: “Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and throw him into some pit… and we shall see what will become of his dreams”. Yoseph was cast to the pit and from that to prison, but also there not only indeed “we shall see what will become of his dreams”, but that he would become an accepted expert in matters of dreams, who interprets the meaning of their dreams for the important persons he serves. By virtue of this talent, to bring the understanding of the hidden world that is hinted at through dreams for his service and for the service of others, Yoseph arrived to Par’oh, to become his selected and senior adviser. Yoseph was capable better than all his brothers to connect the life of action with the potential in the hidden spiritual worlds. Yoseph brought to realization that which was given only to imagination or guessing. The brothers, who walked the ways (halakhot) of the Land of Kena’an, would not have attained to the Kingdom if it were not for him.

9. The descent of Yoseph to Mitsrayim and the Descent of the Souls to This World

In Parashat Bereshit we showed the approach of the Kabbalah (the Zohar) that the seven days of creation correspond to the seven lower Sefirot (Sefirot haBinyan – “the Sefirot of Building”), and then we showed in the sequel that a similar process of emanation occurs with the Patriarchs (“behibar’am – beAbraham”) and that the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Yitzhaq and Ya’aqov correspond to the Sefirot of Hesed, Gevurah and Tif’eret. The process of Creation, and in parallel of the emanation of the Sefirot, in Parashat Bereshit reaches its conclusion in the Day of the Shabbat (in which God desisted/rested from his work – shavat). In Parashat vaYeshev (the two words are closely related in Hebrew), we are approaching the parallel aim when Yoseph continues the chain and corresponds with the Sefirah below them – the Sefirah Yesod.

According to the Kabbalah, the eternal soul – the Neshamah, which is an immortal “part of the superior God” (Heleq Eloha mima’al) at the divine “world of Atzilut” where there is no separation – is “hewn” and separated into an individual soul and descends at birth to dwell in the human body and connect it to the three distinct Worlds of Beri’ah, Yetsirah and Assiyah.

Therefore, the Neshamah descends to the world of Beri’ah-Creation (which is an unlimited world, just as thought in unlimited), and descends further to the worlds of Yetsirah-Formation and Assiyah-Action (which, according to the Kabbalah, are the components of “This World” - Olam haZeh). Thus is made a chain of “Neshamah (Divine Soul), Ru’ah (Spirit) and Nefesh (Soul)”. The World of Yetsirah, in which operates the Ru’ah-Spirit, is a world of limitations in time and form. The Neshamah descends further, to the lower and extremely limiting World of Assiyah-Action. In this world, the Neshamah may appear as Divine Nefesh (Nefesh Elohit) that controls the natural-instinctive “Animal Soul” (Nefesh Behemit). This double descent of the Neshamah a “Descent to Egypt” – Yeridah l’Mitsrayim – in the sense of there being two straights – Metsarim – two tightenings and kinds of troubles – Tsarot – that threaten to severe this soul-chain.

In terms of form, the form of Mitzrayim - “twin Straights” – is a pupae-like rounded one formed of a cylinder or ball with two narrow waists – like the straights of the neck and of neck in a human-like form. A good example of this is the form that repeats 32 times in the pattern on the ceiling of the Dome of the Rock. In this form, which is anthropomorphic (to the extent that it is possible to represent an anthropomorphic form in the non-figurative Moslem art) there are three parts. The upper part – head like – symbolizes the Neshamah; the middle part – reminiscent of the chest – symbolizes thus the Ru’ah-Spirit; and the lower part – reminiscent of the belly – symbolizes the Nefesh.

[The pattern at the Dome of the Rock, with one of the 32 figures enlarged]

In the language of the Kabbalah, the term “GaR” (acronym of Gimel – three; Rishonot – initials ones) denotes the three upper Sefirot of Keter (Crown), Hokhmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding), from which the Neshamah (Eternal, Divine Soul) derives. The descending Neshamah becomes (just like Yoseph) a Ger be’Erets Nokhriyah – “Stranger in a strange land”. The six Sefirot below these three are the characteristics of the Ru’ah, and they are among the attributes of Olam haYetsirah. The lowest of these six Sefirot is that of Yesod, also called “The Tsadiq” (The Righteous One”), and it – like Yoseph the Tsadiq who represents this Sefirah – injects the GaR further, to the lower World of Action-Assiyah. Yoseph was lowered twice to the bottom pit, and managed not to sink in there, but to emerge strengthened from the pit.

In connecting Yoseph with the Sefirat Yesod, the Kabbalah exegesis also connects him with Ever haBrit – “the organ of Covenant” – namely the male organ. This organ is the means of the male to cleave to the female, in order to return and find his completion: “that is why a man leaves his father and mother, and cleaves to his wife; and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Of the whole body, this one organ seems as if to leave the body in order to go down, to penetrate and to unite with the other body.

As already noted, Parashat vaYeshev is full of “non Kosher” sex – masturbation, visiting a harlot, an attempted seduction by a married woman. Yoseph, symbolized by “the organ of Covenant”, remained pure, and upheld.

The story of Yoseph which starts at this Parashah, is the story of bringing all the Children of Israel down to Egypt, like the entry of the male seed cells into the female womb, in order to beget offsprings from there. The descent to Egypt was designed for the growth of the People of Israel, until it would have the capability to conquer the land – which probably could not happen if they dwelled in the populated Land of Kena’an (which the sin of Shim’on and Levi closed for them). Esav preferred to leave the land and “went to another country away from his brother Ya’aqov” (36:6), but apparently also because in Mount Se’ir, his tribes could reach independence quickly. Yoseph left, not of his own choosing, as a pioneer before the camp, and that organ that inseminates symbolizes him.

Yoseph’s protracted activity in This World of woe was in the occult action, in thoughts that precedes action. Yoseph’s brothers did not know that their lost brother was working for them as a self-appointed (or appointed by YHWH God of the Hebrews) secret agent, until he became the ruler of Egypt; and Par’oh did not know that while Yoseph was turning the whole population of Egypt into slaves of Par’oh, he was seeding social unrest, which would eventually flare up in the form of the escape of a whole population from the land of Egypt.

Appendix ‘A’ - Lessons from Parashat vaYeshev for our Own Times.

Our recurrent claim is that the Book of Genesis is a prophetic book, which aimed to guide us in these days. We shall treat these lessons at length in the “Summary and Conclusions” chapter, but meanwhile, we shall indicate here what, in principle, do Parashat vaYeshev and the story of Yoseph add and innovate to us.

The possible contemporary lesson from the story of Yoseph is that the banished tribes are destined to return. Even though the brothers, led by Yehudah, assumed that Yoseph died or became completely absorbed among the gentiles, the Bible tells that Yoseph, and with him the additional family he raised and the convert he made in Egypt, were destined to return. The book of Genesis tells us today, through the allegory of Yoseph and his brothers and the revelation that “Yoseph” is destined to return, that the future Israel will be not just “Yehudah” and traditional Judaism, but will be added – yivaseph – to it multitudes of people that our parents have not imagined.

There are various aspects to the present identity of “The House of Yoseph”, of the banished brother. It is evidently possible to draw a whole list of potential “tribes” that were rejected from our traditional Jewish definition of “Yisra’el” – and consequently banished from our Zionist definition of the “State of Israel” as “The Jewish State”: from Samaritans and Christians and Kara’ites to the contemporary Palestinians. Thus, for example, the second president of the State of Israel, Yitzhaq ben Tsevi, wrote two research books: “The Exiled and the Redeemed” and “She’ar Yashuv” that survey various tribes around the world, including even Jewish remnants among the Arabs of the Land of Israel/Palestine. Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail wrote an updated book on “The Tribes of Israel – the Lost and the Dispersed”[8] and nowadays endeavors to examine and arouse such tribes from all over the world. But another approach, whose followers use past works of “The British Israelites” and current books by Ya’ir Davidi[9], see the offspring of the Ten Tribes in the nations of Western Europe and especially in Britain and the USA. There is a large cult that originated in the USA – the Mormon religion (“Church of the Latter Days Saints”) that cunt over ten millions adherents – who see themselves expressly as The Tribe of Ephraim, namely of the House of Yoseph. There are still other churches that regard the whole population of the USA as Ephraim and see Britain as Menashe.

All this means that there are, and are likely to appear more, “Yosephs” – additions (Tosephet) to the Jewish Israel – and they might gather under the flag of the House of Joseph. The issue of the struggle for supremacy among the tribes of Israel may also rise anew, and may already exist in the collective Jewish subconscious and is expressed by the stiff neck and heart against the inclusion of non-Jews within the framework of the contemporary State of Israel.

In the background, whether consciously or not, there is the insistence of being, as Jews, “The Chosen people”, in which gentiles have no part. Indeed, this is not polite or “politically correct” to claim so in the world of the 21^st century. Especially so after Nazism declared the Germans as chosen people who would be allowed to dispossess and destroy the other people, who were, according to Nazism, inferior in principle – and especially so the Jews. Yet inside we are believers and sons of believers in our being chosen – whereas in our public image, our appearance in the world, it seems prohibited to raise this subject in words or behavior – and the consequence of this is a severe national schizophrenia.

We might perhaps be able to solve some of this distress, if we become aware that in the Middle East alone there must be already over half a dozen “Chosen Peoples” – for example the Druz and the Alawis. They too hold to religious teachings that claim in one way or another the preference of God to them as a distinct nation. Also the two major religions, Christianity and Islam, are actually religions of the chosen “Community/ Nation of the Believers” (Christianity originally called itself “The True Israel”). It is true that their great material historical success within the conditions of this world was hardly accompanied by demonstration of their spiritual-moral superiority. In fact, this made a mockery of the possibility of their being really the choice ones – but there have always been sects in them that took their election and brought about religious schisms or to ferment within the established religions.

So even today, there exist a potential or virtual “True Israel”, in which the monomania of us being “The Chosen People” becomes sublimated into a Systemic-Messianic entity of a “Universal Israel”. This Universal Israel would accept the membership of the Jews of all denominations among “The Chosen Twelve Tribes of Israel” and would include tribes with different approaches and beliefs than ours, as a system that provides a model of complementarity for the whole world. But in order to reach such a system there is need to overcome many hatreds and prejudices – and the story of Yoseph in Egypt was designed to serve this end.

It is worth relating in this context also to the inner connection between Yoseph, the hero of the Parashah, and its name – vaYeshev. The end of the Parashah is the sitting (Yeshivah) of Yoseph in the prison, and the words “Yoseph” and “Yoshev” (namely “sitting” or “dwelling”) are phonetically very close.

Among the most severe problems of the contemporary Israel are of population addition – tosephet – and of settlement – Yishuv of the land. Many Israelis, in their yearning for peace, prefer to divide the land. Their real motive is to avoid the addition of non-Jewish population to the State of Israel. The continuation of Jewish-Zionist settlement throughout the land seems to many in Israel as adding problems, and as destined to perpetuate the contact, or entanglement, between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel. The traditional Jewish isolationism breeds the prevalent fantasy of separation between the two different peoples who live in our country, a utopian fantasy that leads, in practice, to the attempt to establish ridiculous “Bantustans” for almost half the population of the country.

Already in former Parashot where the sons of Ya’aqov figured, we have proposed a didactic exercise in which we assign the “Tribe of Yehudah” to Halakhic-Rabbinical Judaism, and the status of the six sons of Le’ah to all the “Israeli-Jews”, the majority of whom, in practice, are not Halakhah-abiding Rabbinical Jews. We have likewise proposed to equate between the four “sons of the maids” Bilhah and Zilpah in the Biblical story and the status of the Arabs – current Israeli citizens and “Palestinian” Arabs. In this spirit, let us examine the contemporary “House of Yoseph” – the Tosephet – additions – that we would like to add to this combination in order to receive the ideal whole Israel. Many among us may have the wish that the “Yosephs” that would appear would be more “Western-cultured”, but what needs to be recognized is the whole gamut of components that make “the mixed multitudes” (Erev Rav) that in fact comprises the population of our country, including the Arabs and the foreign workers, and to recognize the mutual balances between them.

Let us compare our present situation to the situation of the tribes at the days of Ya’aqov. They were already, potentially, “the Children of Yisra’el”, yet in practice, their own father has not yet realized his “Yisra’el Potential”, and the Bible keeps calling him “Ya’aqov” also after he passed over Penu’el limping upon his thigh. Also the tribes have not realized their potential, and that is probably why Yoseph “brought to his father their evil report” (37:2).

The inner logic of this Parashah is like that of a link in a story that leads the children of Israel to become tribes at the crucible, the womb of Mitzrayim. The twelve sons of Ya’aqov entered this vessel as a dozen of catalysts that prompt the mixed multitudes of dwellers of the narrow and dense land of the Nile to crystallize as the Twelve Tribes of Yisra’el. The relative stances of the sons of Ya’aqov with regard to Yoseph would determine much about their crystallization into tribes – not only then, but also even now, and the lessons we may derive from the Biblical story are probably relevant also to our time.

It is important to note, that in this Parashah Re’uven, the firstborn son, already loses his seniority to Yehudah, and there forms the parallel and the antagonism between Yehudah and Yoseph. In the sequel, at Parashat miQets we shall see how Re’uven lost the seniority also in his father’s eyes, and in Parashat vaYigash we shall see the next confrontation – the one between Yehudah and Yoseph, and the issue of the two future messiahs: Messiah son of Yoseph, and Messiah son of David.

Let us then observe the contention between “Yehudah” and “Yoseph” within each person in Israel, the real Israel, and the virtual one. We may pose “The Virtual Israel” as a framework for the restitution and healing for the currently split Israeli spirit – for example to the schism noted above between the Jewish point of us being the Chosen People and our universal-humanist orientation. IT is therefore proposed to utilize this Parashah as a pedagogical aid for initiation into the New Israel – whether through dramatization or another virtual role-playing game. Scenes such as of the rejected brother in the pit, pleading with his brothers for his life, while they sit and eat; and of their conducting discussions whether to kill or to sell him would add considerable dramatic flavor.

Appendix ‘B’: Yoseph and his Brothers – the Twelve, the Ten, the Two and the Hidden Messiahship.

The Ten and the Twelve

The basic conflict between the two brothers, which was expressed in the Bible through the figures of Kayin and Hevel, Yishma’el and Yitzhaq, Esav and Ya’aqov, is now mellowed in the story of the twelve sons of Ya’aqov, to become the conflict between a coalition of Ten, or a Minyan, versus the Two – and between the Ten and the full assembly of the Twelve. This conflict, about which goes the story of Yoseph and his brothers, continued in fact still in the time of writing up the bible and later, and it recurres in history right up to our times.

In Biblical times, there was the case of the division of the united kingdom of David and Shlomoh-Solomon at the times of Rahav’am and Yorov’am. The legend (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 102) relates that God offered Yorov’am a coalition: “You and I and the Son of David shall walk together”, but Yorov’am would not agree because he wanted to march in front of the Son of David. It seems that as he thought that he was the ruler of ten tribes and the Son of Davis ruled over only two tribes, then he had the seniority rights. The view implicit in the tale of the sages is that it would have been possible to maintain the two kingdoms of Israel: the Kingdom of “Yehudah” (Judea) with the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin (and in fact also the tribe of Shim’on, which was already absorbed in Yehudah) versus “Yisra’el”, or “The Kingdom of the Ten Tribes” of Shomron, which is also “The Kingdom of the House of Yoseph”, if only the autonomous tribes of te house of Yoseph would have conceded to the seniority of the House of David. Anyway, the Biblical ratio of two versus ten was preserved, even though the identification switched. In the Book of Genesis, Yehudah led the Ten Tribes versus Yoseph and Binyamin, whereas in the time of the kingdoms “The House of Yoseph” was the leader of the Ten Tribes versus the House of David that led, as noted, the “Kingdom of Yehudah” with the two tribes.

The exile of the Ten Tribes to Assyria was a replay of the story of Yoseph being brought down to Egypt, sold to slavery, and put in prison. According to the accepted tradition among “The Jewish People” till these days, the Ten Tribes are regarded as “Lost”. This means that already at the time of the prophets the Biblical story was recurring. “Yoseph” the leader of the Ten Tribes” again disappeared in exile and no one knew where he could be found. According to the prophets, the tribes of the House of Yoseph are destined to return. The prophecy of Ezekiel (37:16), for example, envisions their re-joining as of two trees joined into one tree.

The story of the division of the twelve fold whole into two, the one of which exists as “the union of ten” recurred much in history. Thus, for example, the researcher of ancient civilizations John Michell showed that the covenant if the Twelve was the ideal tribal organization pattern which was widespread all over the world from ancient times[10], and that it was broken up time and again. He interprets Plato’s myth about Atlantis and its destruction as an allegory to this story, which as we shall see is therefore parallel to the story of Yoseph and his brothers.

From a geometrical analysis of Plato’s descriptions of the corrupt city-state of Atlantis, versus the ideal city-state of Magnesia, which Plato endeavored to promote and even to found[11], the difference between the two cities was the difference between the ten and the twelve: Atlantis was based on the tenfold pattern, whereas the plan of Magnesia was to be based on the twelve fold pattern.

The idea of the Minyan, the covenant of the Ten, is a common and attractive idea. Just as we have ten fingers with which we earn to count the phenomena of the world, so we tend to see the assembly of ten – like the theory of the Ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah – as the proper way to establish a government. But in truth, these ten are but a part of the whole that is most appropriate for matters of balancing and expansion in physical or conceptual space, which is twelve-fold. This becomes apparent when we deal with three-dimensional phenomena, where almost all the five “ideal/Platonic Solids” show twelve-fold patterns (the twelve edges of the octahedron and the cube; the twelve faces of the dodecahedron; and the twelve vertices of the icosahedron).

It is amazing to discover, when contemplating history, how recurrent were the conflicts between the Ten and the Twelve. The sages must have been aware of this eventuality, which they expressed in the allegory of the two messiahs – “Messiah son of Yoseph” and “Messiah son of David”. Towards the future redemption (which might have been very far off in their times) the tribes would re-appear and there would appear “The Messiah Son of Yoseph”, who would be able to lead Israel through all the material trials, just as Yoseph had managed to save his father and brothers. Distinct from him would appear also “Messiah Son of David” who would be able to complete the redemption also from spiritual perspective.

Appendix ‘C’: Yoseph as Archetype for Hidden Redemptive-Orders.

The image of Yoseph, the hidden Tsadiq, also ties with his image as the organizer. Over the generations, there have appeared various hidden organizations that tried to perform their work of redemption in covert ways. We shall mention here very briefly only two of them which are close, also geographically, to our inquiry.

The Covert existence of “The House of Yoseph” among the Sufis

The most interesting spiritual phenomenon in the Moslem world is probably that of the Sufis. There is no certainty about the origin of this appellation, and the fact the letters (in Hebrew and Arabic) of the names “Yoseph-Yusuf” and of “Sufi” are quite similar begs attention. In a different way, it is possible to claim the name “Sufi” from the word “Sophia” which is the word for “Wisdom” in Greek (which became the language of Christianity and Gnosticism in the Hellenic Middle East). There are certain parallels between the character of Sufi orders and the manner of life of the Biblical (and Qur’anic) Yoseph-Yusuf. Even though the Sufi movement grew in the Moslem world, there are many who claim that it is a persistent re-organization of wisdom-orders (Gnosis), which existed long before the appearance of the prophet Mohammed. It is well accepted among the Sufis to masquerade and adapt to the rulers of the land while maintaining the inner tradition, but without fixation on accepted, and perhaps ossified, outer forms.

There are some theories (such as of researcher professor Robert Eisenmann) according to which the origin of Islam is in covert Gnostic circles of the original Jerusalem Church of Jesus. The Qur’an recognized Jesus as a major prophet, but rejects the Christian claims of Jesus’ divinity, and even of the traditions about his crucifixion and resurrection, which are at the base of the Christian creed. It seems that this Moslem regard for Jesus could have been informed neither by rabbinical-Jewish sources (who called the Christian Messiah by the acronym meaning “Let his name and memory be erased” and erased his name wherever possible), nor by ordinary Christians – but through remnants of the original Christian Jerusalem Church whose leader – Ya’aqov (James) the brother of Jesus, could not have regarded his own blood brother as either God who was born of a virgin birth or the creator of the universe. The Church of Rome persecuted as heretic this original church, which emphasized the twelve-fold restoration of Israel, and its remnants flew to hide in the deserts.

We can find a testimony to the attempt to establish in Islam the ideal kingdom of the Twelve Tribes in the original city-plan of Baghdad, with its twelve gates and quarters, as well as in the plan of the Dome of the Rock. According to Idris Shah (in his book “The Sufis”) the designers of the Dome of the Rock were a brotherhood of “Sufi Freemasons” (Shah’s term) who dwelled by the Ka’aba in Mecca until Jerusalem was liberated by Islam, and then moved to Jerusalem even before Islam turned to build its shrine on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, namely the Dome of the Rock – and then participated in its building. It is clear that in the design of this shrine there are many Gnostic and Sufi elements (and I can discern in the design an exegesis of Sefer Yetsira – the root text of the Kabbalah). The twelve pillars that surround the Rock at the Temple Mount may well represent the Twelve Tribes that camp around the Temple, and the pattern of this shrine apparently served as source for the pattern of “The Knights of the Round Table” brought to Europe by the Knight Templars.

The Knights Templar and Western Secret Orders

Christianity, which was founded upon the Torah of Israel, brought to the situation that the Bible became the basis for European civilization and the source for many myths that arose in Europe during the 2 millennia of Christianity. Many sects rose in Christian countries that have been declared as heretical, and the images of the twelve brothers-tribes and of the prodigal son “Joseph” arose through this history.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” serve still today for Arab and Neo-Nazi propaganda. The “Protocols” present the leaders of the Jews – and especially the rich among them – in the garb of a secret society with occult rituals, whose declared aim is to take over the whole world. We could see in these protocols “the shadow side” of the basic idea of the Bible – establishment of “our house” (Cosa Nostra) of “The Children of Abraham” in order to guide all humankind in the way that God desires. What is implied by the Biblical idea (at least for the simple minded reader) is that the holders of the true – and hidden – tradition of the Torah are “The Chosen People” who were destined to become the leaders for humankind. But research about the “Protocols” revealed that these texts are a forgery and turning over the Jews of protocols of non-Jewish secret societies that rose in Europe.

(Researchers of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” indicated that these protocols are not a complete fabrication, but reworking by the secret police of the Tzar of certain material of some secret society that was somehow connected with the word “Zion”, but had no connection whatsoever with the Jews. It is quite easy to show that the rituals that are attributed to these “Elders of Zion” are not Jewish at all, and no one who knows anything about the Jewish Halakhah would conceive that such rituals existed among Jews. On the other hand, such rituals did take place among gentile secret society that originated, some claim, from the order of the Temple).

Catholic Christianity regarded itself as “the True Israel” and the legitimate heir of the Biblical authority and mission, and so almost every sect of reformation or renewal in Christianity saw itself as the heir of “The True Israel” and because of the rule of the governing and close-minded establishment became a secret cult. So in a certain manner, were and are within Christianity elements of “Yoseph” who do their work covertly under the rule of “Pharaoh”, and strives to maintain the secret traditions of “Ancient Israel” – and they work so covertly, deep within Christianity, till their Jewish brothers could not recognize them.

In recent years there rose the interest in the Templar Order as the possible founders of the orders of Freemasonry, which still exist and flourish. This order of “The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon” carried the weight of fighting of the Crusaders and eventually became the main financiers of all of Europe (a distinguished “Yoseph” type role). In the end they were suppressed by the Catholic Church, the Inquisition extracted from them confessions of heresy, their leaders were burnt at the stake and their property was confiscated. Ever since, the figure of this hidden order serves as “a dark mirror” through which Christian Europe gazes at its collective unconscious and extracts the hidden intentions that acted at the foundation of Christianity, before it became “The Kingdom of Edom” of the Roman Church. From this risen recent interest in the Templars there grew many myths about them, among them:

As if the Templars were led by an occult “Priory of Zion” that exists for over a thousand years and is guided by the senior scientists and artists of Europe through the generation, and that this hidden order continued to breed aditional secret societies, such as the Rosicrucians and perhaps even the British Royal Society, the pioneer of modern science.
That the largest secret society of our times, the Freemasons, is a progeny of the Templars.
That behind the whole subject of the hidden “Priory of Zion” there is an ancient desire to return Christianity to its sources in the original Church of Jerusalem, and perhaps even to coronate a “Son of David” scion of Jesus over all Europe and over Jerusalem.
That the Templars were indeed “The Knights of the Temple of Solomon”, since their secret aim was indeed to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, and therefore their progeny of the Freemasons justifiably see themselves as the heirs of the builders of Solomon’s Temple.

There is here therefore a renewed-tradition of some Gnostic hidden “Yoseph” of the West that recalls the leadership of the “Sufi” orders of the East. And indeed a new and persistent Templar myth is:

That the Templars, who ruled over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem were in touch with secret cults in Islam and perhaps were even sent to the orient (by the patron of their order, Saint Bernard of Clairvoux especially in order to gather the hidden original treasures of Christianity[12].

What issues from all these is a poetical possibility that a hidden “House of Yoseph” acted within “The Exiles of Edom and of Ishma’el” and even reached great achievements and positions of immense influence, but their Jewish brothers did not recognize them. The alienation between them has not yet been removed. What would have characterized such as adherents of “zion-Tsion” is their search for excellence – metsuyanut – whether in science, art of worship. What makes them into “Yoseph” is the covert mode of operation, as sect of people wishing “to walk humbly with your God” (Mikhah 6:8).

But at the moment that we conceive of the goal of “Israel” not as a Jewish goal but as a universal goal, then the figure of the hidden Yoseph starts appearing and becoming clear. A new Universal Israel, as the old-new goal of the Bible, will certainly include the Jews, but bring them in a coalition with the whole gamut of schools for recovery for all humankind. (Recall that Nazism, for example, that fought equally against Jews and freemasons, objected to both communism-Marxism and to psychoanalysis (and in fact to Christianity altogether) as to “Jewish influences” on European culture). “Yoseph”, the addition for the ideal Israel will appear to the extent that “Yehudah” will be less self-absorbed and more carrier of universal mission. It is possible that on a meta-mythological level, the best of the “West” are waiting for “Light of the East” that would call them to their messianic role, and the sensible place to look for that “East” is in the “Near East”. A part f the anger felt among many in Europe against the Jewish State of Israel can be explained by the frustration that Israel does not take a moral leadership stance, that it is absorbed in itself and its Jewish problems, alienates the people of the land, the Palestinian Arab and oppresses them. This closed image of Israel closes the heart of this potential “Yoseph” towards “Yehudah”.

Translated by . Yitzhak Hayut-Ma’n

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[1] As explained in the introduction, the original Hebrew text is actually written in a special future tense, indicating that the events reported are prophetic no less than past historical. They are ever recurring, but of special timely significance to our present period.

[2] In Hebrew, “Tribe” is Shevet, whereas “to clone” is le-Shabet.

[3] Architect Tuvia Sagiv has recently shown that the circle of the foundations of the outer colonade of the Dome of the Rock is congruent with the foundations of the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, and it is therefore likely that Hadrian’s temple complex at the Jerusalem Temple Mount included a similar Pantheon, upon the foundations of which was eventually erected the Dome of the Rock.

[4] The twelve brass bulls that supported the “sea of Brass” of Solomon’s Temple, a symbol of Sefirat Malkhut.

[5] According to the belief of the Kabbalah, the source of the male seed is in the brain of the father, and it passes through the spine to the penis, which corresponds to the Sefirah of Yesod (“Foundation”), which is also called Tsadiq. The sexual union is called “union of Yesod in Yesod” (of the mother).

[6] The performance of the sexual duties of the brother in law to maintain his brother’s family is called “Yibum”. The Mekubalim call the spiritual improvement of the soul “The Secret of the Yibum”, in which a soul integrates, or is inseminated by, additional souls of great merit and becomes their living agent.

[7] In Hebrew Yeshivah, which means literally “sitting” is also a religious academy, where students study all day long.

[8] A newer version was published in Hebrew and is being prepared in English and French. Avalable from Rabbi E. Avichail, 3b Epstein St. Jerusalem 93748. Tel (972) 2 642-4606.

[10] John Michell and Christine Rhone: “Twelve-Tribe Nations and the Science of Enchanting the Landscape”. London, Thames and Hudson, 1991.

[11] John Michell: “The Dimensions of Paradise”. London, Thames and Hudson, 1988.

[12] It is known, for example, that the Templars were in relations and agreements with the heretic Isma’ily-Moslem sect of “the Assassins”. The Sufi leader Idris Shah regarded the designers of the Dome of the Rock as a sect of “Sufi Freemasons”. If the Templars were indee sent to search for the secrets of the orient, they need not have even left the Temple Mount in order to search for the hiden secrets of “The Temple of Solomon”, but to invite to them the sect of the designers of the Dome of the Rock.