How did Joseph, a lowly Hebrew slave, save mighty Egypt?

In the most famous dream interpretation in history, Joseph told Pharaoh that the

Pharaoh's dream of seven fat cows devoured by seven lean cows meant that Egypt would be blessed with seven fat years of

abundance to be followed by seven lean years of famine. Egypt, he told the Pharaoh,

must therefore store grain during the seven fat years so as to have food to eat during the seven

lean years. Pharaoh knew a leader when he met one and made Joseph

the second most powerful man in Egypt. In one moment, Joseph went from a prison to a palace.

Joseph then implemented his plan and saved the Egyptian nation. As events turned out, he also

saved his family. Because of a famine and nearby

Canaan, his brothers went to Egypt to purchase food. When they came before Joseph, they of course

didn't recognize him. They could never have imagined that the boy they left in a desert pit

20 years earlier would now be the prime minister of the most powerful nation.

After putting his brothers through a series of tests to determine whether they had grown morally,

Joseph, in one of the most famous and moving scenes in all literature, revealed who he was

to his stunned brothers.

He told them not to be afraid he would not exact

revenge because he said this whole incredible story was planned by God. The entire Hebrew clan,

the children of Israel, then settled in Egypt. And that is where the book of Genesis ends.

The second book of the Torah, Exodus, begins many years later, when there arose to the

throne a new pharaoh, who, as the Torah puts it, knew not Joseph. Joseph, the man who saved Egypt

from mass starvation, was forgotten. How's that for typical human behavior, people forgetting the good that has been

done to them? The theme of ingratitude occurs constantly throughout the Torah, and why? Because just as

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