Parshah Commentary
In a recent opinion piece in The Forward, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove grappled with his feelings of defeat after the election of Zohran Mamdani. He had reason to despair. Not only had his eleventh-hour intervention failed to sway the results, but a substantial minority of Jewish voters had, in his view, betrayed their people by casting their lot with the pro-Palestine candidate. Searching for a way to articulate his faith in enduring Jewish unity and common purpose amid clear schism, he quoted a foundational biblical story: the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham. The very act that “defined Abraham as a hero of the Jewish faith,” Cosgrove explained, was so horrifying to his son that Isaac never speaks to him again. Yet Isaac, upon maturing, returns and re-digs the wells that his father dug—a metaphor that Cosgrove finds “worth meditating on.”
There is something troubling about Cosgrove’s invocation of the binding of Isaac: For Cosgrove to be Abraham, he must divest himself of moral agency. He must act like our forefather, driven beyond ethics by a dimly remembered divine command, with no regard for the voice of compassion that, in this crucial biblical moment, beseeches him to stay his hand. Meanwhile, the son who Cosgrove analogizes to leftist Jews returns to the fold with no need for his father to take accountability, or for any process of reconciliation.
Perhaps our current schism is better understood by turning to a different narrative of familial relationship in Breishit: the story of Joseph and his brothers, as it plays out in this week’s parshah, Miketz. The parallels in this story are more fruitful in a number of respects, including, to start with, the nature of the relationships. Though Cosgrove exhibits a father’s anxiety as to whether his children will follow in his ways, our present situation is really more of a sibling rivalry: a struggle over competing visions for a shared enterprise, over who will have the power to interpret an ancestral legacy. The sons of Jacob face several questions: Will we inherit together, or devolve into factions? Will leadership be shared or held by one brother alone? And—as in previous generations—will anyone get cut out?
From the perspective of his brothers, Joseph’s answers to these questions were alarming. He was more concerned with being right than with being nice to anyone—accusations leveled against many anti-Zionist Jews. So they not only banished him, but left him trapped in a well with no water. A classic midrash adds a metaphorical meaning, playing on a Rabbinic association between water and Torah: A well with no water, the midrash explains, is a well with no Torah. Joseph, cut off from his father and community, has no source of Torah. This has been the experience of many anti-Zionist Jews, including those who have lost jobs, been excluded from centers of communal life, and even been alienated from their families.
But the story of Joseph and his brothers is perhaps most relevant because of the model of reconciliation it offers—the only successful family reconciliation in the Book of Breishit. Of course, many anti-Zionists would resist the analogy on these very grounds. Who says we even want reconciliation? This “family” of mine has committed an unforgivable crime! But Joseph’s decision to keep his family together might offer us insight into the conditions required for us to make a similar choice. Crucially, Joseph saw genuine accountability and change from his brothers. Unlike Abraham, they never lay claim to divine mandate, and thus never absolve themselves of responsibility for abandoning Joseph. They face the reality of their past sins, understanding their suffering as a consequence. They also take risks to defend a family member, even one who is different and threatening to them, demonstrating that they have learned to prioritize morality over political power, allowing Joseph to recognize their honest commitment to change and make amends. Similarly, the brothers come to understand that Joseph had correctly understood the stakes of the forces against them: Joseph foresaw that bleaker times were coming, that the years of plenty and ease at the heart of empire were running out, and understood that shared survival must take precedence over sustenance of old grievances. Even while playing the stranger, he is careful with his core obligations to family, refusing payment for the bread of their subsistence. The brothers, in turn, are forced to recognize the power of his political vision, in which his family’s survival is bound up in institutions of common good.
The mistrust that Zionists harbor against their anti-Zionist siblings is that we will turn against them, that we will let them be devoured by the Jew-hating mob, while proclaiming they deserve it. But in the last act of the Book of Breishit, we find genuine rapprochement, from a majority ready to take responsibility for their sins, and a minority who chooses to stay, who neither renounces nor abandons. The brothers live side-by-side in Egypt for the rest of their lives, sharing a common fate, however dark. As our world grows bleaker, we can learn from this model of coming back together without foregoing a moral reckoning, or forgetting the disputes and pain that lie between us.
Avi Garelick is a researcher and organizer based in Washington Heights, New York.
