miketz: nothing
sholem aleixem,
Apologies for the lateness! I was traveling for Chanukah, and just didn’t have time to write (also, I didn’t have a book I needed for reference with me).
After Par’oh dreams, the chief cupbearer remembers Yosef, and begins to recount the story to Par’oh:
פַּרְעֹ֖ה קָצַ֣ף עַל־עֲבָדָ֑יו וַיִּתֵּ֨ן אֹתִ֜י בְּמִשְׁמַ֗ר בֵּ֚ית שַׂ֣ר הַטַּבָּחִ֔ים אֹתִ֕י וְאֵ֖ת שַׂ֥ר הָאֹפִֽים
Par’oh had been angry with his servants. He put me in prison, in the house of the chief of the guards — me, with the chief baker.
There’s a repetition of words here, one that’s further emphasized by the trope:
He put me in prison […] me with the chief baker
The Torah wants to emphasize that there is no difference between the chief cupbearer and the chief baker — at least, until Par’oh restores the cupbearer and executes the baker.
After all, they sinned against Par’oh together. He became angry with both of them at the same time, and put them both in the same prison.
As Da’as Zkenim teaches in the name of HaRav Yehudah haKohen:
כל הימים היינו אני ושר האופים ביחד
[the cupbearer is saying] “I and the chief baker” were as one for all days.
So why is one free, and the other dead?
Last week I wrote:
Asking why some days are more pleasant than others presumes that there is an answer. But life runs and returns. There are better days and worse days, because there must be better and worse days.
brin solomon, longtime friend of the newsletter, responded by quoting Laia Asieo Odo’s Prison Letters:
We each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.
The baker did not deserve death. The cupbearer did not earn life. Neither of them deserved prison or earned freedom, and so also with Yosef.
And so also with us.
But if we earn nothing, if we deserve nothing, what do we have? Buddhists say we have our actions, only. Shevek teaches:
You have nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.
And my teacher Laynie Soloman quotes Rabbi Aharon Samuel Tamares:
All the while, true freedom (explains the Mishnah, which has penetrated deeply into the matter) is a man’s inner freedom. True freedom rests in man’s own hands. That is to say, when a man’s eyes are opened to recognize his own essence and self, he is already free, and he needs no further declaration of independence or formal emancipation from others. “Self awareness” is, therefore, not the mere preparation for freedom but the very freedom itself
We have our selves, we have our actions, we have what we give.
Unearned. Undeserved.
shavua tov,
ada
p.s. Odo and Shevek’s quotes are in fact from The Disposessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. Pages 334 and 280, respectively, in the 50th Anniversary Edition.