Boulder Aish Kodesh

In Yosef’s early life, we get a deep sense of destiny.  Though his brothers  reject his dreams as mere reflections of his daytime aspirations to rule over, in his own eyes, Yosef was destined for greatness.   When his brothers throw him into a pit, that sense of destiny is momentarily dislocated.  A sense of cosmic disorientation ensues.  About this moment, Aviva Gottlieb-Zornberg writes, “In memory Joseph cannot relate the moment to what came before.”  There is a real and sudden break between his perceived destiny and his actual destiny.

Conversely, Yehuda’s life does not betray any outward sense of destiny.  His life is not yet remarkable – his comment “What profit will there be in our killing him?” is the first we hear from him.  Still, when we find that “Yehuda descended from among his brother…” (38:1), when he connects with a local merchant and marries a nameless woman, we get a sense of lack of direction in Yehuda’s life.  It does not feel like this is part of his destiny, whatever that may be.

Perceived destiny may be compared to a sort of compass.  One who senses destiny chooses one’s actions based on the macrocosmic navigational questions: “Is this who I am?  Will this make me who I need to be?  Will this get me into Yale?”   But what happens when magnetic north is lost?  What happens when the sky is cloudy and the North Star is no longer visible – when a life has no clear path to navigate?   At that moment, a different compass is used.

In watching Yosef and Yehuda as their path takes a step away from destiny, we find that, though neither of them can see from their vantage points any clear line of destiny, both are forced to make decisions that relate only to local moral moments, without any sense of the cosmic.  Though Yosef cannot and does not accept his life in Egypt as a part of destiny (“I was kidnapped…[40:15]) he still retains his moral bearings and makes decisions accordingly.  When presented with the temptation of his master’s wife, he relocates his moral compass amidst his rejection of her: “Behold, my master doesn’t even know what is in the house like I do.  And he has given everything over into my hands.  There is no one in this house greater than I, and you are the only thing he has withheld from me, seeing as you are his wife.  And how could do this evil act, and sin against

G-d?”  Though lost in terms of destiny, he retains a general sense of right and wrong.  Thus, his life still has direction.

By Yehuda, as well, we find his moral compass guiding him through a cloudy situation.  Though he continues to exercise poor judgment by cohabiting with a prostitute, he still makes good on his pledge to send her a goat.  Further, when the veil is lifted and now-pregnant Tamar is revealed to have been the prostitute, Yehuda confesses, resisting the much more tempting urge to deny it.  It is this very act that shows all of those missteps in his life to have been a part of his destiny – to be the forebear of King David.

Though life takes its turns and leaves us lost, though our path may be obscured, there is another path, deeper and more elemental, that must be followed.  Though that inner path does not suggest any destiny per se, it is often the bridge that spans the unbearable gap between one peak of destiny and another.  Our true destiny, as Yosef and Yehuda both find, consists of an alternating pulse between inner and outer.  As the outer compass pursues its goal with great vigor, as the stakes in one’s destiny become larger and impact more and more people, the inner compass must be aligned.  If the person does not fit the destiny, then destiny will drop him.