How much meaning do we ascribe to suffering, ours or others’? This week’s parshah, which takes us almost to the climax of the story of Joseph and his brothers, provides rich material for exploring that question.
Joseph’s brothers do not recognize that the powerful official detaining them is the brother they sold into slavery many years ago. That grand reveal does not happen until next week.
But the irony of the situation is not lost on the brothers:
“Alas, we are being punished on account of our brother, because we looked on at his anguish, yet paid no heed as he pleaded with us. That is why this distress has come upon us.” (Genesis 42:21)
The dramatic irony of the moment means that Joseph can shape every detail so that the brothers experience a punishment perfectly in line with their past sins. Malbim, the 19th century Eastern European commentator, notes the many correlations and writes:
Joseph intended to cause them pain so that they would receive a tit for tat punishment for their sin. Just as they suspected him of being a spy when he brought reports to Jacob, he accused them of being spies against Egypt. Just as Shimon threw him in a pit with the agreement of the rest of the brothers, Joseph put them all in jail and then bound Shimon alone. Just as they sold him for twenty silver coins, he caused them fear by returning their money to their bags, and just as they sold him to slavery, they recognized that they were his servants, and Judah was prepared to become his slave.
Aside from providing incredible literary detail, does the punishment push the brothers toward repentance? Radak (12th-13th c.) uses this story to teach us that we should find lessons in our own suffering:
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When troubles come to someone, it is fitting for them to sift through their behavior to find the wicked deed they did so that they will regret it, confess before God, and ask for forgiveness.
This belief that suffering in this world is punishment for our sins may seem old-fashioned to us, but it has a long Jewish history. One extended passage (Berachot 5a-b) begins with a call to examine one’s deeds and ends with a story of Rav Huna, who experiences a large financial loss when his barrel of wine turns to vinegar. He believes that his actions were pure, but his students point out his unfair treatment of workers. After Rav Huna repents, a miracle occurs that allows him to recoup his loss. Unlike in the Joseph story, here the punishment is causally unrelated to the misdeed. As with Joseph’s brothers, though, repentance brings full redemption.
The emotional heart of the passage, however, expresses a different attitude towards suffering. Rabbi Yochanan protests against the idea that we should find redemptive meaning in suffering, through both healing those who are deathly ill and publicly mourning the death of his children. Even if the suffering can bring reward in the next world, Rabbi Yochanan wants none of it. David Kraemer argues that even though the passage ends with the story of Rav Huna, the claim that we should connect our misfortunes to our misdeeds appears vapid next to the moral clarity of Rabbi Yochanan’s resistance to suffering. (Reading the Rabbis, 140-141)
Returning to the brothers’ predicament, Reuven takes this moment to chastise the others, saying, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do no wrong to the boy’? But you paid no heed. Now comes the reckoning for his blood.” (Genesis 42:22) Reuven’s response shows that even with a theology that sees suffering as just punishment for wicked deeds, people won’t always take full responsibility for their actions. If we are supposed to learn lessons from suffering, it is too easy to learn the wrong lessons and use our suffering as a cudgel against others. Reuven may have moderated his brothers’ murderous instincts, but he is not innocent.
The brothers ultimately prove that they completed a process of true teshuvah, but should we see the measure for measure punishment as the primary motivation for their repentance, or is it simply a literary flourish in a rich narrative? The language the brothers use when describing Joseph, as well as the immediacy with which they recognize their captivity as divine punishment, implies that they already came to regret their actions. Like Rabbi Yochanan, we should resist the idea that immense suffering is primarily supposed to teach us lessons or seed some sort of future reward. This is also true when we cross over from the realm of spiritual/theological meaning to the realm of the political.
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Our capacity for empathy means that suffering should draw our attention, but if we give inherent political meaning to suffering, then we become more likely to let our political analysis overpower our empathy. As we continue to watch the unfolding events in the war in Gaza, we need to distinguish between suffering and accountability. The level of physical and psychological suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians is too much to bear. While empathy should push us to provide care and urgently support a swift path towards calm, we should be careful in how we glean political meaning from the increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.
We must continue to explore and debate how decades of policies and failed geopolitical processes led to this moment and continue to exacerbate the core problems. Understanding the past and finding a casual chain to current events, however, should never condone the suffering of either Israeli victims of terror attacks and their families or Palestinian civilians. A just peace will require difficult work of reconciliation and accountability, and any path forward will inevitably include unspeakable suffering. Like Rabbi Yochanan, we should resist the idea that the suffering itself is a source of political meaning. When we see suffering as the inherent instructor, we risk learning the wrong lessons.
Rabbi Philip Gibbs was in the inaugural class of T’ruah Israel Fellows. Since his ordination from JTS in 2017, Rabbi Gibbs has served Har El, a congregation in Vancouver.