Lent Day Six


Continuing Genesis 37

Joseph is a foolish youth... narcissistic, not aware of the "inner worlds" or other people. (see Zornberg 253 "Joseph behaves with the narcissism of youth, with a dangerous unawareness of the inner worlds of others.")

Exile and slavery are the immediate consequences for Joseph. The family is to follow him at a later time.

"The midrash presents human beings as participants in a drama of God's devising. Though ultimately not malicious, God's intents are inexorable, and human beings are for the most part unconscious actors in His plot." (255)

this then questions the freedom, autonomy and responsibility of the actors. It may be that God said: 'I shall draw his son down before him, and he will go down after him, unawares..' (midrash quoted in Zornberg 256)

So, the youth is stripped by his brothers, thrown into a pit, rescued from death and sold into slavery. As a slave he enters into the processes of "remembering and forgetting" (274)

Lent is a time of remembering, of re-membering the dismembered; putting the pieces together into a whole...