Our office is closed this week, so there is no Shabbat Reading List today. Below you can find this week’s parshah commentary.

Parshat Vayigash

In the opening verse of our parshah, Joseph—now Pharaoh’s second-in-command—is approached by his brother Judah, who doesn’t recognize the brother he and his siblings sold into slavery years earlier. Judah has come to plead for the release of their youngest brother Benjamin, whom Joseph has threatened to enslave. “Please, my lord,” Judah begs Joseph. “Let your servant speak to my lord, and do not be impatient with your servant, for you are like Pharaoh.” As the medieval commentator Rashi explains, “the literal meaning” of Judah’s comparison is “you are as important in my eyes as a king”—that is, Judah is flattering Joseph to save the younger brother he has promised to protect. But, Rashi continues, the assertion can also be read as a biting insult: Joseph is guilty of misconduct that parallels Pharaoh’s future harmful deeds.

While Rashi, drawing upon an earlier midrash, cites examples of Joseph’s poor behavior in the moment, we can find a clear example of Joseph’s wrongdoing in a later section of our parshah. Joseph, after revealing his identity to his brothers, is joined in Egypt by his extended family. The famine that had brought the brothers to Egypt in the first place worsens, and, because of Joseph’s prior vision of impending famine and foresight to stockpile food in advance, he is the one charged with managing food distribution to a starving Egyptian population. He begins by selling rations to the people and delivering the money to Pharaoh, but before long he has acquired the entirety of Egypt’s silverstock; there is no coinage left with which the hungry Egyptians can buy food. When the people lament that they are starving and will soon perish, Joseph agrees to let them exchange their livestock for food rations. But after a year, their supplies of sheep and cattle also dry up. At this point, Joseph “took possession of all of the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, as all the Egyptians had sold their fields because the famine was too great for them; thus the land became Pharaoh’s.” He then carries out a population transfer, making it easier to enact his stipulation that 20% of everything grown on the land will belong to Pharaoh as well.

Many commentators describe these actions as praiseworthy—proof of Joseph’s acuity and wisdom in implementing innovative solutions. The Torah itself claims that the Egyptians are appreciative, exclaiming, “You have saved our lives! We are grateful to my lord, and we shall be slaves to Pharaoh.” Yet it is hard to imagine that these newly landless Egyptians actually felt much joy in the loss of their livelihoods. Indeed, Joseph’s actions seem to plainly violate the Torah’s vision for the world, which severely limits debt slavery and the permanent transference of land. In short, his actions are deeply troubling: Rather than generously distribute food to those in need, Joseph uses it as an opportunity for “disaster capitalism,” amassing wealth and consolidating Pharaoh’s power under the cover of the present catastrophe.

Judah’s comparison of Joseph to Pharaoh thus takes on a new meaning. Joseph is “like Pharaoh” in that he also exploits those who are vulnerable. But perhaps, we might venture, Joseph is also likened to Pharaoh because he helps make the Egyptian sovereign who he becomes: Pharaoh only acquires all the land of Egypt because Joseph schemes for such a takeover; these material gains soon shore up power for the regime that will enslave the Israelites after Joseph’s death. As a result, Joseph’s pharaonic behavior may benefit his family in the short term, but it ultimately leads to their exploitation and abuse. Joseph chose to accumulate wealth and power—and to bolster a hierarchical system—rather than advance egalitarian solidarity. Such a choice, the Torah teaches us, is bound to backfire; in a society based upon the exploitation of whoever is weakest, the oppressor eventually becomes the oppressed.

In light of the grave harm Joseph facilitates—both to the Egyptians and eventually to his own people—Judah’s remarks to his brother at the opening of our parshah become a warning of sorts: It is possible to become like Pharaoh. As Jews, we rightly give attention to the directive found in the Mishnah, and made famous by its inclusion in the Passover Haggadah, that “in every generation, a person must see themselves as if they left Egypt.” But perhaps we ought to imagine ourselves not only as slaves but also as tyrants. I am reminded of a story I heard years ago about Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, the rebbe of the Sanz-Klausenburg Hasidic dynasty, who lost his wife and 11 children in the Holocaust. He once remarked to his students that the Holocaust could have been worse; shocked, they asked what he meant. “We could have been the Nazis,” he replied. This account highlights the horror of such acts of imagination, but also points toward their value: We must not ignore the possibility that we too can be “like Pharaoh.” Perhaps it is only by seeing ourselves in his image that we can avoid inflicting future suffering—and begin to work toward repair for what we’ve already wrought.

Maya Rosen is the Israel/Palestine fellow at Jewish Currents.