In the end there was no other way. God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a land not their own, and I had to play my part. My dreams had told me I would be a great man, that my brothers and my parents and even the sun and the moon would bow low in my presence. When after so much suffering my star finally rose in Egypt, when I became Pharaoh's highest and most trusted officer, when I rescued millions from bitter and hungry death, I imagined I had at last fulfilled my destiny.

In the end that wasn't true. Feeding Egypt was beside the point. It was only my family I was meant to sustain. It was only my family I was meant to offer easy wealth and effortless privilege in the valleys of Egypt. It was only my family I was meant to bring into slavery.

In the end there was no other way. My brothers had sold me into slavery, and I in turn would entrust their descendants to the taskmasters of Egypt. Abraham's prophecy would be fulfilled, and generations later God would show His power by splitting the Sea and drowning the hosts of Pharaoh. Such are the ways of the Eternal.

But that is in the end. Let me begin at the beginning.

I am Joseph, and I was seventeen the day I died - that is, the day my father ripped his tunic, laid ashes upon his head, and turned away the sons and daughters who sought to comfort him. He had loved me best, a dubious honor I had at times cherished and at times hated - cherished when he held me close and whispered tales of the great love with which he had treasured my mother Rachel, and his own dreams, of a ladder on which angels climbed from earth to heaven. But there were times I detested his favoritism - when my jealous brothers laughed at the colored coat my father's uncertain hands had worked so hard to craft for me, when my father made me stay inside like a delicate girl while my brothers grew strong and bronzed tending the sheep and the fields. It is not easy to be the chosen, the anointed. My brothers never understood. But their children would.

The day I died I was sitting in a corner of the tent, twisting the fringes of my colored coat around my fingers. Outside I heard my father approach, his footsteps slow and weary, though it was only midday and the sunlight usually filled him with vigor. When his voice called my name, I jumped up eagerly and ran to greet him.

As always his arms stretched out to meet me, but when I fell into his embrace he clung to me tightly, almost squeezing the breath from me. He caressed my back and whispered my name, and when he finally released me to look into my face his cheeks were stained with tears. "I am here, Father," I said to him, frightened at his expression. "Has something happened?"

A shudder ran from his body to mine. "No, my son, nothing has yet happened." He turned his face toward the heavens, and something like anger flashed in his eyes before he returned his gaze to my face. "Your brothers are shepherding the flocks in Shechem," he said softly. "I will send you to them." Excitement filled me for a moment, followed by confusion and fear. This was the moment I had longed for, to join my brothers in their duties, to leave the confines of my father's tents and feel my skin burning in the noonday sun. But to go alone? To meet the brothers who hated me - and how well my father, who dried my tears when their jeering words wounded me like swords, knew of their hatred! - so far from home, so far from those who might shield me from their resentment? And why did he send me to Shechem, when days ago I had heard Simeon complaining to Reuben that it was time to find a new place to pasture their lambs?

Questions rose to my lips, but as my father continued to stare at me, his face too full of fear, I silenced them. I said only, "I will go."

"Bring me back word," he said, though he knew that I would never return alive to his home, and he turned away.

My father's handmaids prepared my meals, and I set out to find my brothers in Shechem. The way was not hard, and despite my days spent indoors with the women and infants, my eyes were keen and my legs strong. But when I arrived in Shechem, none of the shepherds and none of the flocks was familiar. I wandered through the fields, growing more and more bewildered as my brothers' faces eluded me. Why had my father sent me here; how could he not know that his sons had moved on? I could not imagine where they might be, nor how to locate them. Perplexity and exertion drained the stamina from my . body, and I had at last determined to return to my father, when a strange man approached.

He looked like any other shepherd, from far away, but he had no sheep and no staff, and in his eyes there was a light from which I could not turn away. "What do you seek?" he asked me, intimately, and his voice was like honey and pomegranate.

"I seek my brothers," I told him, and before I could describe Reuben's cold darting eyes, Simeon's quick temper, or Asher's plump belly, he answered, "Your brothers have gone from here.

"How do you know of which shepherds I speak?" asked in confusion, but he replied with certainty and assurance. "I heard them say, `Let us go to Dotan.

A moment before I had resolved to return to my father; but on the word of this stranger I found myself venturing farther, deeper into the pastures, following the shadows of my brothers and their flocks toward Dotan. This was, after all, the way things were meant to unfold.

Only later would I understand that my father had known quite well where my brothers had taken his flocks, that the Eternal had commanded him quite clearly to send me to Dotan. My father was no fool; he understood that my journey to Dotan would be my undoing, that my brothers would exact their cruel revenge upon me as I came defenseless into their midst. But did he know the further consequences of my arrival in Dotan? Or had God spared him the knowledge that if he sent me to Dotan, he was also sending tens of thousands of his descendants to Egypt in chains? Even on his deathbed, this my father would not confide in me. But this I know: his sending me to Shechem was his courageous and defiant attempt to save me from my brothers, and - perhaps - to save his forebears from Egyptian bondage. But the Eternal is not easily dissuaded; if my father intended to dispatch me to Shechem in order to keep me from my destiny, God would dispatch an angel to set things right.

So the angel had spoken, and so I continued toward my brothers in Dotan. Our meeting, of course, has become the stuff of legends: my approach, their whispered scheme, the search for a pit empty of water and food, the hurried cruelty with which they stripped me, threw me into the ground, then sat down to the afternoon meal. I was seventeen, but I wept like a child of seven, for my father, my mother, even for Reuben and Judah, who had rocked me on their knees when my mother Rachel died. But I wept most of all for my youngest brother, Benjamin, safe at home in our father's tent, too small to join his elder siblings on their tasks in the fields. I wept for Benjamin, who had loved me fully, without envy or enmity, and in whose eyes I saw reflected the courage and the beauty of our mother.

I could not know then that my brothers would not kill me. So when the caravan of Ishmaelites drew near, bearing spices so fragrant I could taste cardamom and zatar on my tongue, a painful hope began to swell within me, and I wondered if my life might rest with these sun-blistered men who cursed their camels to move faster along the craggy road. I heard Judah's voice, clear and strong, rise above the cacophony of Simeon's snarl and Zebulun's soft entreaty, and I listened as the procession of merchants came to a halt. There was a spirited exchange, the harsh and guttural language of traders and Judah's self-conscious articulation, then laughter and the rattling of coins passed from hand to hand. I learned later that my life was worth twenty pieces of silver - just enough to purchase a new pair of shoes for each of my brothers.

I am not ashamed that I screamed as I was hauled from the pit and loaded onto the camels, and that I cried as the caravan moved along the road to Egypt, and that I turned to watch as my brothers grew smaller and smaller, till even their shadows disappeared against the horizon. Only Judah met my gaze as I was dragged away, and I saw my tears mirrored in his; I took solace then in the thought that he wept from regret, but he confessed to me later that he had seen the enslavement of his heirs reflected in my eyes.

My adventures in Egypt are well recounted: my success in the household of the steward Potiphar; my betrayal and imprisonment at the hands of Potiphar's lustful wife; my interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh's captive servants, then of Pharaoh himself; and my rise to power and glory in Pharaoh's court. I wed the daughter of an Egyptian priestess, who practiced secret rites to deities who had faces, and limbs, and who - like the God I worshipped - at times demanded loyalty at the price of life. But when my wife bore our own sons, I taught them of my beloved parents and my dearest brother Benjamin, and of my own faith, and of the land I had left so long ago.

There were seven years of plenty, and seven of famine. And in those latter years my brothers came before me to be fed. And that was the end of the beginning.

I had not faced my brothers in twenty years, and when next they came before me their faces were still hidden. They had bowed low to the ground in my presence, as was the custom, and their mouths were pressed to the dust of Egypt. I recognized their forms immediately; one does not forget those who are bound by blood, or worse.

I recognized my brothers, but they were like strangers to me, these gnarled men whom I had once taunted but secretly admired, whom had once yearned to accompany on errands now so far beneath me. Anger filled me as I remembered the day they had watched me disappear into the western horizon, a captive slave. Yet felt pity too; of what consequence had their lives become? Who would remember Issachar's love of hard work, Zebulun's affinity for ships, Gads sly smile? They had rid themselves of the most beloved son, but it had not availed them. They were no more handsome, no more cherished, no more remarkable than they had been before I left their midst.

When I opened my mouth, however, it was haughtiness that emerged. I accused them of being spies, and demanded they bring my precious Benjamin to behold my face in Egypt. My arrogance grew as they cowered before me, and the fear that had filled me in the pit twenty years ago turned to vindictiveness and to vengeance. Capriciously I had them imprisoned for three days.

On the third day I had them brought again before me, dirty and terrified, and I repeated my command. One of my brothers must remain in Egypt while the others returned to the Holy Land to retrieve for me Benjamin. They turned to each other with fierce and frightened whispers, and I heard Reuben's anguished voice rise above the others. "This trial," he said, "is the reckoning for Joseph's blood."

Where my story is written in the Torah you will read that I understood Reuben's lament only after an interpreter translated it for me. That is true, and not true. Of course I had not forgotten the dialect of my birthplace, the beautiful and melancholy language with which my mother had named me. I knew precisely what Reuben meant to say. But at the moment he uttered those words, I also knew the meaning that lay beneath them.

I am not called a prophet but a dreamer, and an interpreter of dreams. But not all dreams, and not all understandings, are saved for the nighttime hours. When Reuben spoke, I knew that he spoke the truth, a deep and a dreadful truth that would touch not only him, and me, but all of our generations that would follow. And that truth was this:

God had promised my great-grandfather Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a land not theirs. But his descendants had never left the Holy Land for long, nor wished to. Yet here I stood, a ruler of Egypt, refusing to let Abraham's great-grandchildren depart in peace, demanding that they return to their home only long enough to bring my brother Benjamin back to me. This was the reckoning for my blood: My brothers had sold me into slavery, and I had become the instrument through which their children would one day be placed in captivity.

When my father had discerned the will of the Eternal in the command to send me to Dotan, he had sought to avert God's decree by sending me to Shechem. He had failed, and now I stood precisely where God had intended for me to stand all along. But it was in my power now to undo the prophecy of Abraham, to ensure that my brothers never returned to Egypt. I could release them without revealing myself, open the storehouses and place into their waiting hands enough grain to sustain them in the Holy Land for the remaining years of famine. Then my brothers could return to my father and live out their days as a people like any other. They would not know the glory of redemption, but neither would they know the bitterness of slavery. They would not know the majesty of God's revelation, but neither would they know slaughter at the hands of God's enemies. They would not know the honor of chosenness, nor the burden of it.

It was in my power to do all of this. And I turned and I wept because I knew that I would do none of it. I wanted to see my brother Benjamin too badly. And I still had enough foolish pride to imagine that I would have another chance to save our descendants from bondage.

It was a year before my brothers returned with Benjamin, and when I laid my eyes upon him I could barely contain myself. It was so good to see my youngest brother, and the joy I felt as I beheld his face made me all the more determined to carry out my plan. I had my servants prepare a sumptuous dinner, with Benjamin receiving five times the portions given his elder brothers; but then, while my brothers, sated with meat and wine, slept, I had my steward place a silver goblet in Benjamin's sack.

The next morning my brothers left my house, and prepared to take their leave of Egypt. I sent my servant to follow them, to accuse them of theft and search their bags, then bring back to me the brother in whose bag the goblet was found. So I intended to save my older brothers and their descendants, to let them live out their days peacefully in the Holy Land; while I might keep Benjamin by my side, that my entire family not be lost to me. Surely, I thought, my descendants and Benjamin's would live in peace in Egypt; they would never grow numerous enough to enslave.

But it was not only Benjamin who returned to my home; it was all of my brothers. And I, who had resolved to remain unmoved and anonymous in the face of my brothers' fear, had not imagined that the self-centered Judah might step forward, might offer himself in Benjamin's stead, might invoke the terrible death that losing Benjamin would bring to my father. I had not imagined that after all of the suffering my brothers had brought me, after all of the careful plans I had laid to thwart the Eternal, after all of the years that had separated me from those with whom I shared blood, I would feel a rush of love that blotted out everything except the need to throw myself into my brothers' arms and weep upon their shoulders.

I sent my courtiers away, and even as I told my brothers who I was, even as I uttered my name and asked after my father, I knew that I did not have the might to change the destiny of our descendants. I was a dreamer, and an interpreter of dreams, but I was not God. The Eternal knew I would, in the end, choose forgiveness over vengeance, the brothers I had known my whole life over nameless descendants yet unborn. It was joy at my reunion with my brothers, as well as a terrible fear for our children, that drove me to sobs so loud that Pharaoh heard them in his palace.

"Draw near to me, I pray you," begged my brothers, and I swore that I held no anger toward them. This was not your will but God's, I said again and again, hoping that their descendants would understand that I, too, could act only according to the will of the Eternal. "Draw near to me, I pray you," I begged my brothers, as if by holding them close I could keep far away the hatred of enemies yet unborn. "Draw near to me, I pray you," I begged my brothers, because I could only, after all, be who I was, and do what I was meant to do.

Mine was not a forgiving tradition. After Abraham bound him on the altar and raised a knife to his throat, Isaac never spoke to his father again. Sarah and Abraham never exchanged words after he nearly slaughtered her only son in the name of the Eternal. Nor did Abraham ever call out again to God after God demanded such a terrible display of faith. And Isaac let his son, my own father Jacob, be exiled after stealing the blessing of the firstborn. What, then, was the secret of my forgiveness? How could I embrace my brothers when they came before me wet with tears and need? Perhaps it is because I am a dreamer, the son of a prophet, and I beheld God's will where others might see only meaninglessness. Perhaps it is because I knew that I, too, was not blameless, that my own actions had brought and would bring suffering and pain. Perhaps it is because my brothers were truly sorry for the terror they had visited upon me so long ago. Perhaps it is because I knew that despite everything, my soul was bound up with the souls of my brothers, and that if I did not cling to them, I could cling to no one. Perhaps it is because I knew that someday, I would want their enslaved and embittered descendants to forgive me.

It was not only for my brothers, then, that I did what I did. It was for your forefathers, and for you. It was so that your forefathers would be slaves in Egypt, and so that they would be consecrated to the Eternal at the Sea of Reeds and Mount Sinai. It was so that you would feel the blessing and the burden of being God's chosen people. It was so that your ancestors would know slaughter and redemption, persecution and deliverance, hatred and hope. It was so that you would be a nation like no other, and a light unto them. It was so that you would swear loyalty to a God whose ways are inscrutable, whose judgment is complete, and whose mercy infinite.

So I ask you now, as my brothers asked me then: Can you forgive them? And can you forgive me?

Draw near to me, I pray you.

Home