to wait without despair. Something extraordinary happens between last week's Parish and this week's.

It's almost as if the pause of a week between them were itself part of the story. Recall last

week's Parisha about the childhood of Joseph, focusing not on what happened but on who made it happen.

Throughout the entire roller coaster ride of Joseph's early

life, he's described as passive, not active, the done to, not the doer, the object, not the subject

of verbs. It was his father who loved him and gave him the richly embroidered cloak. It was his

brothers who envied and hated him. He had dreams,

but we don't dream because we want to, but because in some mysterious way they come unbidden

into our sleeping mind. His brothers tended in their flocks far from home, plotted to kill him.

They threw him into a pit. He was sold as a slave. In Pot ofver's house he rose to a position of seniority, but the text goes out of its way to say that this wasn't because of Joseph himself, but because of God. God was with Joseph, and he became a successful man. He was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that God was with

him and that God caused all that he did to prosper in his hands. Potifers' wife tried to

seduce him and failed. But here too, Joseph was passive, not active. He didn't seek her. She

sought him. Eventually we read, she caught hold of his garment

saying, lie with me, but he left his garment in her hand and fled and ran outside. Using the

garment as evidence, she had him imprisoned on a totally false charge. There was nothing Joseph could do

to establish his innocence. In prison, again, he became a

leader, a manager, but again, the terror goes out of its way to attribute this, not to Joseph,

but to divine intervention. God was with Joseph and showed him kindness. He gave him favor in the

sight of the chief jailer. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.

The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph's care because God was with him.

And whatever he did, God made it prosper. There he met Pharaoh's chief butler and Baker.

There had dreams. Joseph interpreted them. But he insisted that it was God,

...