ויהי מקץ שנתים ימים כו' וידבר שר המשקים את פאעה לאמר את חטאי אני מזכיר היום: (“And it was at the end of two years of days.... And the sar ha-mashqim spoke with Pharaoh to say, 'My sins I am mentioning to-day'”; XLI, 1, 9).
By the end of last week’s parasha, Yoséf’s fortunes had taken a sharp turn for the worse, as the scorned wife of his master, Potifar, accused him falsely of making advances and had him thrown into prison. There, Yoséf encountered two ministers of the court who had odd dreams which he was able to interpret accurately. Within three days of his interpretation, one of the ministers was executed, and the other, the sar ha-mashqim responsible for the drinks in the royal court, was exonerated. Yoséf took the opportunity to urge the sar ha-mashqim: כי אם זכרתני אתך כאשר ייטב לך ועשית נא עמדי חסד והזכרתני אל פרעה והוצאתני מן הבית הזה (“For if you remember me with you when [Phareaoh] will be good to you and do me a kindness and mention me to Pharaoh, you will bring me out of this house”; XL, 14). However, the sar ha-mashqim forgot about Yoséf and allowed him to cool his heels in prison for another two years.
The midrash (ילקוט שמעוני מ' קמ"ז) tells us that the sar ha-mashqim’s forgetfulness was no natural phenomenon, but was Divinely induced, and Rashi comments that מפני שתלה בו יוסף לזכרו הוזקק להיות אסור שתי שנים שנאמר "אשרי הגבר אשר שם ד' מבטחו ולא פנה אל רהבים" ולא בטח במצריים הקרויים רהבים (“because Yoséf relied on [the sar ha-mashqim] he was obliged to be imprisoned two years, for it is said: ‘Happy is the man who puts his trust in Ha-Shem and has not turned to the rëhavim’ [Psalms XL, 4], who has not trusted the Egyptians who are called rëhavim”).
Rashi’s comment, in turn, raises the question: What, precisely, did Yoséf do wrong? There is an established principle that we are not allowed to rely upon miracles, articulated by, e.g., Ramban concerning the teiva built by Noach, noting that Noach had to build a large box even though it should have been obvious that it was insufficient to contain every species of living thing on the planet למעט בנס כי כן הדרך בכל הניסים שבתורה או בנביאים לעשותם מה שביד אדם לעשות והשאר בידי שמים (“to lessen the miracle, for thus is the way of all the miracles in the Torah or in the Prophets, to do them to the extent possible by humans, and the rest is in the hands of heaven”).
This said, why should Yoséf not have exercised what appeared an opportunity for shtadlanuth (“intercession”), with a high court official who was being restored to favour? How should Yoséf have known whether or not this was the path being Divinely provided for his rescue?
B.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל in his Darash Moshe suggests that Yoséf should have understood from the beginning that the entire sequence of events in the prison was such a bizarre set of coin-cidences that it was being managed from the first for his benefit. After all, how likely was it that a disgraced foreign-born slave accused of making improper advances to his master’s wife would wind up in the same cell with two former high government officials, who would just happen to have weird dreams which Yoséf would just happen to be able to interpret correctly, such that one of the two officials, the sar ha-mashqim, would be exonerated and freed within a short time?
The sequence of events, he writes, should have been sufficiently obvious to Yoséf that he ought simply to have assumed that the sar ha-mashqim would, acting in his self-interest to curry favor with his royal master, find an apropos occasion to mention the remarkable dream-interpretation talents of the young man in the prison, and thus be the vehicle of his rescue without having to ask anything at all, and so not have to “turn to the rëhavim,” as the verse quoted above says.
Rabbi Feinstein’s take appears to have some support from the Maharal mi-Prag (though he does not mention it), who asks in his Gur Aryeh why Yoséf languished in prison for the specific period of two years. He notes that Yoséf asked the sar ha-mashqim to do two things: והזכרתני, “and you will mention me,” והוצאתני, “and you will bring me out,” and notes that the gimatriya or numerical value of the introductory words אם זכרתני, “if you remember me” (adding 2 for the two words) is 730 or 2 x 365, which is implied in the expression which opens our parasha, שנתים ימים, “two years of days” since a solar year is, of course, approximately 365 days long.
The Maharal also notes the Talmudic ruling that one who does not see an acquaintance until a period of 12 months has elapsed should make the blessing ברוך מחי' המתים, “blessed is He Who revives the dead”, לפי שאחר י"ב חודש נשכח ממנו כמת מלב, “because after twelve months one is forgotten from the heart like a dead person” (ברכות נ"ח:), pointing out that the first year in which the sar ha-mashqim forgot Yoséf was Divinely orchestrated, the second following automatically in its wake, as implied by the gimatriya of וישכחהu, “and he forgot him” in the last verse of last week’s parasha, is 355, equivalent to shana, “[one] year.”
C.
There is another midrash, however (בראשית רבה פ"ח סי' ד') which strongly suggests that Yoséf was entirely aware of the singular nature of his encounter in the prison with the Egyptian court officials. The midrash calls attention to the fact that the sar ha-mashqim, in recounting his dream, mentions Pharaoh’s cup four times, which Yoséf and the midrash understood to be a prophetic allusion to Israel’s future history and the four nations, The Babylonians, Medio-Persians, Greeks, and Romans amongst whom Israel would be exiled, and would outlive. In other words, Yoséf clearly knew that he had a future and would not meet some squalid end in a fetid hole of an Egyptian prison, and so א"ל את בשרתני בשורה טובה, אף אני אבשרך בשורה טובה (“he said to [the sar ha-mashqim], you have brought me good news, I, too, shall bring you good news”) and proceeded to describe the sar’s deliverance.
So he surely knew that “the fix was in” and that he was destined to get out of jail free. If so, why, then, did he choose to rely on the sar ha-mashqim?
D.
The key to answering the question, I think, is in considering how it was that Yoséf had ended up in prison. The fatal encounter with Mrs. Potifar is introduced as followed: ויבא הביתה לעשות מלאכתו ואין איש מאנשי הבית שם בבית (“and he came to the house to do his work, and there was no man of the men of the household there in the house”; XXXIX, 11). Now, Potifar’s house was hardly some peasant hovel; Mrs. Potifar did not do her own cooking and cleaning. There must have been an army of servants; how could it be that no one was home save the femme fatale?
The Talmud (סוטה ל"ז:) deduces from this that it was a religious holiday. As the principal priest of his cult, Potifar was officiating in the temple, and all of the rest of the common folk were there as well. Mrs. Potifar had begged off attending, feigning illness, and Yoséf, as a key member of the household, surely knew all of the above. He was quite deliberately, knowingly walking into danger. He very nearly succumbed to her blandishments; the only thing which saved him, at the last minute, wads the appearance of his father’s face before him, reminding him suddenly of who hew really was, and of whence he came.
A review of the story of Yoséf leaves a very strong impression indeed that none of it had to happen that way. The rivalry between him and his brothers could have been contained and managed, but Yoséf seems to have felt completed to rub their noses in his prophetic dreams and their assurance of his future greatness. The nature of those dreams escaped nobody, and he was nearly killed for his trouble, save that a caravan of Yishmë‘élim just happened to be passing by.....
So they sold the seventeen-year-old into slavery, still a disaster. But how likely was it that he would be bought by the most prominent citizen of On? And even then, how likely was it that Potifar would entrust him with management of all his economic and domestic affairs? Having thus once again come out on top, surely it could have happened that Yoséf would be present at Pharaoh’s court on his master’s business whilst Pharaoh told of his troubling dreams, interpreted them, and thus come to the knowledge of Pharaoh. Yet, once again, Yoséf was compelled nearly to succumb to his mistress’ charms, and ended up in prison... where he again came out on top. How likely, as we have already asked, that he would be imprisoned together with an Egyptian official about to be exonerated, and given the chance to interpret the official’s dream signaling that exoneration, when, again, Yoséf succumbs to temptation....
What was the source of these compulsive missteps?
As Yoséf himself subsequently tells his brothers (XLVIII, 5-7), he became convinced that that the whole sequence of events had been Divinely orchestrated, but it is nonetheless true that it all could have been done in a much simpler and straightforward manner, rather than zigzagging to the conclusion as it did. The fact that it was not so simple, that the story has so many zigs and so many zags, is due to what the Talmud calls השאור שבעסה, the “yeast in the dough” (ברכות י"ז.), the yétzer ha-ra‘ which is the essential flaw created by our dipartite nature, both spiritual and physical. The Yoséf story is in this sense a metaphor for all of human history, and serves to assure us that, no matter how badly and how consistently we make wrong choices, G-d still runs the world, everything is being managed for our benefit, and this final. brutal exile will also come to an end.
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