IN THE DARK (VAYESHEV)
The mysterious unnamed man
is always a messenger
sent to keep our story moving
in the right direction.
The appropriate answer
is always hineni, here I am
ready for whatever pitch
is up God's sleeve.
Into the pit, out of the pit
from slavery into service:
descent always contains
the seeds of ascent.
He had to be enslaved
in order to be accused
had to be accused
in order to be imprisoned
had to be imprisoned
in order to hear the dreams
of the cupbearer and the baker
which "surely God can interpret"
had to interpret dreams
in order to sire Freud
a few hundred generations
down the ancestral line.
But the cupbearer forgets
leaving Joseph in the dark
as the longest night of the year
threatens to swallow us whole.
Since last winter, I've been writing Torah poems -- poems which arise out of the weekly Torah portion -- and posting each week's poem to Velveteen Rabbi. (I plan to collect these into a manuscript; if you're a publisher who might dig a collection of midrashic poems, do let me know.) This week we're in the Torah portion called Vayeshev, the beginning of the "Joseph novella" -- one of my favorite sections of the Hebrew scriptures.
The Joseph story has everything: scheming brothers, prophetic dreams rife with poetic symbolism, mysterious strangers, descent into pits both literal and metaphoric. There's that multicolored tunic, famed in song and story (and symbolic in its own right: think of how clothing can disguise as well as reveal.) Plus there's the story of Judah and Tamar, an interlude which mirrors the Joseph story's themes of identity, disguise, and "descent in order to ascend," a classical Hasidic notion. And then there's Potiphar and his lecherous wife, and Joseph's imprisonment which sets the stage for his redemption, just as the eventual enslavement of the Israelites will set the stage for their -- our -- redemption writ large.
This year we're reading Vayeshev as the days tick down to the solstice, which gives the tale added poignancy. The days are getting darker, but a turn is coming which will hook our sonnet in a new direction.
Poem cross-posted, with different commentary, to Velveteen Rabbi.
