In Genesis 42 and 43 we encounter Joseph at the height of his majesty as vizier in Egypt. He receives his brothers, sent by Jacob in his desperation to seek food amid a great famine. From them he hides his identity, speaking only in the language of Egypt through a translator. He imprisons them for three days, but in the end sends them back to Canaan bearing the food they need and hidden bags of silver. He retains Simeon, the main tormentor of his youth as surety, demanding that his half-brothers not appear in Egypt again without Benjamin, his full brother and the only other son of Rachel.
But for all his regal power, for all the wealth and status he has acquired, the heroism and cruelty which have become synonymous with his name in Egypt and for all of his assimilation, inside of Joseph beats the heart of a wounded Israelite son and brother. He is in some ways the archetypal example, in all of literature, of the survivor of childhood trauma. Different from his brothers from the beginning, he was alienated, physically assaulted and left for dead. Now, encountering his familial abusers anew, and with no warning, his response is automatic.
Modern behavioral medicine understands that severe childhood abuse can result in a kind of threat-sensitivity disorder, in which instinctual defensive behaviors (re-)activate in the presence of the source of old trauma. The specific behaviors involved are fight, flight and freeze. (Some add other reactions to the list but these three seem to be universally accepted.) As described above, Joseph’s initial response is certainly fight. But elements of freeze and flight are also present in the narrative, if one looks for them.
Evidence of freeze is discernible in the structure of this story itself. Miketz is the longest (in terms of characters) Parshah in all of Torah. The story of Joseph and his brothers is likewise the longest continuous episode in all of Torah, spanning three parshiot. It’s length is a function of Joseph’s indecision — his inability to act decisively toward his family. It would have been far less complicated and indeed quite easy for Joseph to dispense with his brothers at once — to ignore them, to dispatch them back to Canaan empty-handed, or perhaps to simply kill them. Any of these responses would have cut everything short, minimizing the awkward and ambiguous interactions which characterize these chapters. Instead, he does the opposite, sinking his hooks into the lives of his brothers and father at every opportunity by creating the obligations/crimes of the sliver bags and the golden goblet, and imprisoning one of them. The effect of all of these games is to elongate and complicate the episode. The story is frozen in a kind of loop which Joseph seems unable bring himself to break.
And yet a significant change happens when his brothers return a second time in search of more food relief, this time with Benjamin. Jacob is very worried about the outcome of this mission, but eventually approves, issuing these instructions to his sons before their departure:
ויאמר אלהם ישראל אביהם אם־כן אפוא זאת עשו קחו מזמרת הארץ בכליכם והורידו לאיש מנחה מעט צרי ומעט דבש נכאת ולט בטנים ושקדים
Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, do this: take some of the choice products of the land in your baggage, and carry them down as a gift for the man—some balm and some honey, gum, ladanum, pistachio nuts, and almonds.
Upon arrival in Egypt, the brothers engage in a kind of ritualistic delivery of this tribute, but it is the presence of Benjamin which at last causes Joseph to flee.
וישא עיניו וירא את־בנימין אחיו בן־אמו ויאמר הזה אחיכם הקטן אשר אמרתם אלי ויאמר אלהים יחנך בני וימהר יוסף כי־נכמרו רחמיו אל־אחיו ויבקש לבכות ויבא החדרה ויבך שמה
Looking about, he saw his brother Benjamin, his mother’s son, and asked, “Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me?” And he went on, “May God be gracious to you, my boy.” With that, Joseph hurried out, for he was overcome with feeling toward his brother and was on the verge of tears; he went into a room and wept there.
This episode completes the trio of Joseph’s traumatic responses — fight, flight and freeze. But I have always intuited that this final episode is not fully explainable by trauma alone, for there is something of love in his response. It is this element of love intermixed with trauma that particularly sparks my imagination.
When Jacob sends his boys on their second mission, he commands them them to bring זמרת הארץ, or “produce of the earth.” The word זמרת means bounty but also “melody” or “music.” Read in this way, I imagine that Jacob’s gifts include a song.
I am intensely curious about this song. Whose song was it? Why did Jacob send it? Could it have been Joseph’s own song?
I allow myself to imagine the the young Joseph, wearing his כתנת פסים (ketonet passim — the genderbending coat that began it all), wandering in the wilds of Canaan surrounded by a boredom of sheep, playing a sad, high tune on a wooden shepherd’s flute. In my mind he plays to no more than himself, the hills, and the animals that surround him. This is his own song … and it is also the song of the land of his people — a people with whom his name will someday become synonymous. Through how many layers of adulthood — gold, power, death, tax, family, responsibility, guilt, scheming, cruelty and trauma of his current life — would the Vizier Joseph need to dig in order to remember this sound? Could he even recall it at all?
But now his brothers approach for the second time, bringing forth Benjamin amidst the emblems of Canaan: balm, honey, gum, ladanum, pistachio nuts, and almonds. I imagine something stirring within Joseph, some faint echo, or proto-tune. He feels this stirring. A lump forms in his throat. Benjamin was a youth of great beauty and the spitting image of Rachel, their common mother, or so we read in the Zohar (I 202b.) As Joseph looks at Benjamin’s face, he sees himself in mirror of time. Benjamin’s features are those not only of Rachel but also of the adolescent Joseph, the face of a queer Canaanite shepherd boy yet to be touched by ruin and violence.
I allow myself to imagine Benjamin drawing forth from one of his deep pockets a simple wooden flute. Maybe it was Joseph’s own flute, left behind long before. I imagine him raising the instrument to his lips, the courtiers of Egypt all around. He draws in a deep breath, and he begins the first, high, lonely line of Joseph’s song. It echos around the stone court in the heat of the noonday sun, silencing the gathered crowd.
Even in my imagination this does not resolve the matter, for this is not the story’s climax — there is violence and conflict and worry still to come. Joseph himself will soon victimize Benjamin by accusing him of theft. Jacob, too, is not yet in Egypt, nor does he know that his son still lives. But for this one sacred moment, this astonishing terrible frozen piece of time, the song obliterates the great viceroy, and Joseph the shepherd boy flees from that place.
This is the way of families, especially for those children that the family rejects. There is always love and pain, fear and hurt. Deep damage and deep love. And there is often a key, some unimagined, forgotten but very real זמרת הארץ that holds within it the power to unlock the seeds of our origins, to remind us of who we were and are and have been all along.