With the birth of Yakov?s twelve sons, we have the first serious contest of succession for Jewish leadership. While Yishamel and Esav both bitterly contested their brothers? succession, from a Jewish point of view, it was really no contest. With the sons of Yakov, however, each one was righteous and each one had enough leadership potential to be the progenitor of a semi-autonomous tribe.
Nonetheless, only three of the twelve actually attempted to take on the national leadership: Reuven, Yehudah and Yosef. Notwithstanding that both Reuven and Yosef are first-born sons, it is the fourth-born son, Yehudah, who emerged victorious. In seeking paradigms of proper Jewish leadership, it is worthwhile to examine the qualities that kept Yosef and Reuven back and those that brought Yehudah to the fore.*
Of the three, Yosef makes the boldest and most flamboyant moves in claiming the leadership. On one level, Yosef has a legitimate birth-claim to the leadership. Since Rachel was meant to be Yakov?s first wife and Yosef was her first-born, he could well have built his case on being Yakov?s true first-born son. His claim seems further validated by his G-d-given looks and abilities. Of the twelve brothers, it is only Yosef who could have become viceroy in Egypt. The other brothers simply didn?t have the "right stuff." In spite of his having all of the qualities we would expect from a leader, however, Yosef is rejected by his brothers. This rejection comes early on and is never truly reversed. In spite of the lavish blessing given to Yosef, Yakov himself confirms his other sons? decision by reserving the leadership for Yehudah alone.
To understand Yosef?s rejection, we have to examine his political career more carefully. To begin with, we have to explain why Yosef insisted on telling his dreams to his brothers when he saw the negative response they always elicited. One answer is that Yosef wanted to alert his public to his aspirations. In typically political fashion, he must have felt that you can?t win the race if you don?t run. Yosef does what is normally necessary to attain leadership ? he campaigns. Whereas other Jewish leaders might have been embarrassed by such dreams, Yosef saw nothing wrong with publicizing the signs that confirmed his intuitive aspirations.
The text (Bereshit 37:2) gives us an additional hint to Yosef?s early political behavior by mentioning a seemingly unimportant fact ? that he would spend his time with the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. While Rashi gives a purely altruistic reason for this association, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch provides us with another possibility: Could it not be that Yosef preferred to be with the children of maidservants, because they viewed themselves as his social inferiors? When he was with them, there was no contest for leadership and he could pursue his calling. This, without engendering the bitterness of Leah?s children, who might have viewed their young brother?s ambition with great suspicion.
To round out the picture, Rashi himself brings down midrashim telling us how Yosef would expend unusual effort on his personal grooming. It is well known that a Jewish king has a halachic obligation to cut his hair every day (Ta?anit 17a). At a young age, Yosef seems to have felt the need to publicly prepare for his destiny and dress the part of royalty.
Yosef?s brothers and his father seem to view Yosef?s political antics with disdain. His machinations seem to grate against the spirit of Yakov and his family. Interestingly, when the brothers act against Yosef, it is the dreams that they evoke and not the potentially more damaging tale-bearing (37:19-20). Apparently more than anything else, it is Yosef?s political behavior that eventually brings Yosef to exile, where, among strangers, his politicking finds a more receptive response.
In Egypt, Yosef becomes a tremendous success. In jail, he becomes even more popular than Aryeh Deri. In charismatic fashion, he proceeds to make a monumental political comeback, reaching the highest office possible. To the world at large, he was the second most powerful man in the entire world ? on some level, the most powerful man.
His leadership in Egypt, however, is typically functional - it is not the leadership of Jewish inspiration. Rather, it is the leadership of Noachide administration. If you will, it is the leadership of a Bill Clinton. While privately the opposite of a Bill Clinton, Yosef?s success, like that of Bill Clinton, is built on his ability to get things done, both as a campaigner and as an administrator, and in the Noachide world, that?s all that is needed. Although positive in context, Yosef?s leadership is not what it takes to become Yakov?s successor.
We may get further insight into Yosef from an unusual source: An interesting point is made by the Re?em and further developed in other Achronim (see Meam Loez). The Re?em asks a strong question concerning Chazal?s explanation about the talebearing the Torah tells us Yosef said about his brothers. According to Chazal, one of the three things Yosef reported was that they ate flesh from a living animal, something forbidden even by Noachide law. The Re?em questions the plausibility of Yosef?s brothers straying so far from the path of their father Yakov. Based on this question, and the Re?em?s rather technical answer, later scholars come up with an ingenious answer to this problem - that the brothers were following Torah law, whereas Yosef held them accountable to Noachide law, which in this case is actually stricter. (This, at a time of lack of clarity about their status as halachic Jews. If, as Chazal claim, the Avot were able to intuit Torah law, were they actually bound by it and not by Noachide law? The answer to this question is not clear.) While this answer to the Re?em?s question is obviously speculative, it may be no coincidence that Yosef is viewed as the defender of the Noachide code, whereas his brothers insist on Torah law. In the Noachide world at large, a natural leader like Yosef is expected to pursue leadership. From a Jewish point of view, however, Yosef?s approach to leadership is foreign to the type of personality the Torah would try to create.
The idea of Yosef following a Noachide approach in his leadership is further vindicated by an interesting phrase (42:7), wherein we are told that Yosef was "yitnacher" to his brothers. The simple meaning is that he did not reveal his identity. Yet more than one commentator (see for example Ibn Ezra) understand it to mean that Yosef pretended to be a nocri or a non-Jew. As in the previous discussion about eating a limb from a live animal, I believe that the Jewish people has long been aware that Yosef straddled both the Jewish and Noachide worlds, whereas his brothers did not. According to this approach, Yosef?s dual identity is formalized by his being given an additional Egyptian name, something unparalleled in the foreign residence of any other personage in the Torah.
It could thus be that the "right stuff" needed to be viceroy of Egypt was precisely what prevented Yosef from becoming the leader over his brothers and the Jewish people. In looking at classical Jewish leadership from Moshe to Shaul to David, one finds a trait common to them all that is missing in Yosef: All three of these great Jewish leader did not seek out leadership; on the contrary, they avoided it. Such a tendency is most concretely expressed by the Midrash Tanchuma on Shmuel I 17:22, explaining that the true leader is the one who, like Shaul, runs away from it. This is not from feelings of inadequacy, but from a realization of the ultimate distortion presented by human leadership.
Even as we are commanded to imitate G-d?s ways, we should be wary of imitating His trait of leadership. Even in as seemingly innocuous an office as shaliach tzibur, the Talmud (Berachot 34a) points out the impropriety of being overly eager to accept the task. One problem with leadership is the need to decide what is right for others, something which only G-d Himself can truly know. As such, having to make these types of judgments gives the impression of the leader having superhuman abilities.
Another problem with formalized leadership is that it requires coercive power. As with G-d Himself, leadership can only properly function when it has the power to coerce the recalcitrant. This is what is referred to as police powers or law enforcement. Investing a man with these powers creates obvious difficulties. The refined Jewish personality is hesitant to be put into such a situation, even while he must eventually accept it when it becomes clear that his leadership is needed. Ideal Jewish leadership is what was seen during the time of the Shoftim, wherein human leaders only arose to meet a specific need - if and when the need passed, they went back into private life. While not clear from the Biblical text, there are many who understand the Jewish desire for a formal leader during the days of Shmuel as moving away from the Jewish ideal. Correspondingly, it was against this call for the power of formalized leadership that Shmuel cried out so vigorously.
In the Jewish worldview, the person best qualified to take on a task does it without fanfare, without drawing attention to himself. On the contrary, while prepared to lead, the Jewish leader does not want to be thought of as a leader, a title that has intrinsically problematic associations. This is Yehudah, who, in the story of Tamar, subjects himself to public disgrace in order to do what needs to be done. In marked contrast to Yosef, who seems to be very concerned with what others think of him, Yehudah shows little interest in his public image.
The Talmud (Sota 36) compares the greatness of Yosef to that of Yehudah, stating that they both were able to make a kiddush Hashem. At the same time, the Talmud states that Yehudah was greater: Whereas Yosef?s kiddush Hashem of pushing off the advances of Potiphar?s wife was done in private, the Talmud points out that Yehudah?s stand with Tamar occurred in public. On the face of it, the comparison seems unfair. After all, Yosef?s stand could only have been in private. Even as this is true, Yehudah?s stand did not have to be public. Tamar gave Yehudah the option to do what we would expect any savvy politician to do ? take care of his debt to her privately.
While we know of the scandals that are sometimes created by politicians? attempts to cover up their unseemly behavior, it is inevitably the road chosen by the Noachide politician. In Noachide politics, personal image is everything and so must be saved at all costs. Yehudah, as per the Gemara, is more interested in the public teaching of honesty, even at the cost of personal embarrassment. He went out of his way to make a private issue public, so that people could learn from his story. Yehudah embodies the prototype of a Jewish leader, which is to be concerned about the content of his leadership and not with his own persona. Picking up on this, the Targum Yonathan (49:8) explicitly makes the connection between Yehudah being elected as the Jewish leader and his (public) admission of guilt with Tamar.
In comparing Yosef with Yehudah, we should not be too harsh in our treatment of Yosef. It is important to note that Yosef was not only the viceroy of Egypt. His more important function was that of defender and sustainer of the Jewish people at the beginning of their first galut. It is Yosef who saves the Jewish people from famine, serving as the archetype of Jewish leadership in the galut. The classical Jewish leadership of Yehudah would not be successful in the galut. The truly Jewish politician who aims to provide moral leadership cannot succeed in the world at large (and it has been suggested that Yosef?s namesake, Joe Lieberman, is floundering in his campaign precisely because he is offering an overly moralistic and Yehudah-like approach to American politics). It is only within the Jewish nation that such leadership will be sufficiently appreciated to work. In our sojourns in the galut, we need Yosefs to protect us from our historical vulnerability.
Just as Yehudah will not succeed in exile, however, Yosef will not succeed in Eretz Yisrael. The disastrous consequences of applying the functional Noachide leadership model to Eretz Yisrael is clearly shown, when Yosef?s descendants attempt to reassert their ancestral claim to leadership. When Yerovam starts the northern kingdom of Israel, ripping away all the tribes from Yehuda (with the ironic exception of Binyamin), it harbingers one disaster after another. The political decisions of Yerovam and his successors are based on the political considerations of the Noachide world. It is political considerations that move Yerovam to build alternatives to the Beit haMikdash in his own territory and to change the traditional calendar. His intentions were clearly to sever his subjects? connection to the rival leadership in Jerusalem (Kings I 12:26-33). While this would be doable in Egypt, such an approach is a disaster for a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
As elaborated upon by the Ramban, Eretz Yisrael is a place where one has to live according to the ideal and not just the functional. In modern Israel as well, religious parties have an obligation to present the type of leadership represented by Yehudah, and not simply Yosefs wearing kippot or hats. We have good reason to believe that the Jewish people have the capacity to respond to the inspiration represented by the Yehudah model .
In summary, G-d gave us two types of leaders ? a Yosef and a Yehudah. While the Jewish people need both, we look to Yehudah for our ideal. Even as we sometimes need to be Yosef, we should want to be Yehudah. Moreover, in recreating a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, we have to revert to the ideal. This is true in all realms, but especially so in choosing our leaders.
-------
* For a discussion of Reuven and Yehudah, see Ideas 22 at www.tzemachdovid.org/ideas/idea22.html.
Nonetheless, only three of the twelve actually attempted to take on the national leadership: Reuven, Yehudah and Yosef. Notwithstanding that both Reuven and Yosef are first-born sons, it is the fourth-born son, Yehudah, who emerged victorious. In seeking paradigms of proper Jewish leadership, it is worthwhile to examine the qualities that kept Yosef and Reuven back and those that brought Yehudah to the fore.*
Of the three, Yosef makes the boldest and most flamboyant moves in claiming the leadership. On one level, Yosef has a legitimate birth-claim to the leadership. Since Rachel was meant to be Yakov?s first wife and Yosef was her first-born, he could well have built his case on being Yakov?s true first-born son. His claim seems further validated by his G-d-given looks and abilities. Of the twelve brothers, it is only Yosef who could have become viceroy in Egypt. The other brothers simply didn?t have the "right stuff." In spite of his having all of the qualities we would expect from a leader, however, Yosef is rejected by his brothers. This rejection comes early on and is never truly reversed. In spite of the lavish blessing given to Yosef, Yakov himself confirms his other sons? decision by reserving the leadership for Yehudah alone.
To understand Yosef?s rejection, we have to examine his political career more carefully. To begin with, we have to explain why Yosef insisted on telling his dreams to his brothers when he saw the negative response they always elicited. One answer is that Yosef wanted to alert his public to his aspirations. In typically political fashion, he must have felt that you can?t win the race if you don?t run. Yosef does what is normally necessary to attain leadership ? he campaigns. Whereas other Jewish leaders might have been embarrassed by such dreams, Yosef saw nothing wrong with publicizing the signs that confirmed his intuitive aspirations.
The text (Bereshit 37:2) gives us an additional hint to Yosef?s early political behavior by mentioning a seemingly unimportant fact ? that he would spend his time with the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. While Rashi gives a purely altruistic reason for this association, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch provides us with another possibility: Could it not be that Yosef preferred to be with the children of maidservants, because they viewed themselves as his social inferiors? When he was with them, there was no contest for leadership and he could pursue his calling. This, without engendering the bitterness of Leah?s children, who might have viewed their young brother?s ambition with great suspicion.
To round out the picture, Rashi himself brings down midrashim telling us how Yosef would expend unusual effort on his personal grooming. It is well known that a Jewish king has a halachic obligation to cut his hair every day (Ta?anit 17a). At a young age, Yosef seems to have felt the need to publicly prepare for his destiny and dress the part of royalty.
Yosef?s brothers and his father seem to view Yosef?s political antics with disdain. His machinations seem to grate against the spirit of Yakov and his family. Interestingly, when the brothers act against Yosef, it is the dreams that they evoke and not the potentially more damaging tale-bearing (37:19-20). Apparently more than anything else, it is Yosef?s political behavior that eventually brings Yosef to exile, where, among strangers, his politicking finds a more receptive response.
In Egypt, Yosef becomes a tremendous success. In jail, he becomes even more popular than Aryeh Deri. In charismatic fashion, he proceeds to make a monumental political comeback, reaching the highest office possible. To the world at large, he was the second most powerful man in the entire world ? on some level, the most powerful man.
His leadership in Egypt, however, is typically functional - it is not the leadership of Jewish inspiration. Rather, it is the leadership of Noachide administration. If you will, it is the leadership of a Bill Clinton. While privately the opposite of a Bill Clinton, Yosef?s success, like that of Bill Clinton, is built on his ability to get things done, both as a campaigner and as an administrator, and in the Noachide world, that?s all that is needed. Although positive in context, Yosef?s leadership is not what it takes to become Yakov?s successor.
We may get further insight into Yosef from an unusual source: An interesting point is made by the Re?em and further developed in other Achronim (see Meam Loez). The Re?em asks a strong question concerning Chazal?s explanation about the talebearing the Torah tells us Yosef said about his brothers. According to Chazal, one of the three things Yosef reported was that they ate flesh from a living animal, something forbidden even by Noachide law. The Re?em questions the plausibility of Yosef?s brothers straying so far from the path of their father Yakov. Based on this question, and the Re?em?s rather technical answer, later scholars come up with an ingenious answer to this problem - that the brothers were following Torah law, whereas Yosef held them accountable to Noachide law, which in this case is actually stricter. (This, at a time of lack of clarity about their status as halachic Jews. If, as Chazal claim, the Avot were able to intuit Torah law, were they actually bound by it and not by Noachide law? The answer to this question is not clear.) While this answer to the Re?em?s question is obviously speculative, it may be no coincidence that Yosef is viewed as the defender of the Noachide code, whereas his brothers insist on Torah law. In the Noachide world at large, a natural leader like Yosef is expected to pursue leadership. From a Jewish point of view, however, Yosef?s approach to leadership is foreign to the type of personality the Torah would try to create.
The idea of Yosef following a Noachide approach in his leadership is further vindicated by an interesting phrase (42:7), wherein we are told that Yosef was "yitnacher" to his brothers. The simple meaning is that he did not reveal his identity. Yet more than one commentator (see for example Ibn Ezra) understand it to mean that Yosef pretended to be a nocri or a non-Jew. As in the previous discussion about eating a limb from a live animal, I believe that the Jewish people has long been aware that Yosef straddled both the Jewish and Noachide worlds, whereas his brothers did not. According to this approach, Yosef?s dual identity is formalized by his being given an additional Egyptian name, something unparalleled in the foreign residence of any other personage in the Torah.
It could thus be that the "right stuff" needed to be viceroy of Egypt was precisely what prevented Yosef from becoming the leader over his brothers and the Jewish people. In looking at classical Jewish leadership from Moshe to Shaul to David, one finds a trait common to them all that is missing in Yosef: All three of these great Jewish leader did not seek out leadership; on the contrary, they avoided it. Such a tendency is most concretely expressed by the Midrash Tanchuma on Shmuel I 17:22, explaining that the true leader is the one who, like Shaul, runs away from it. This is not from feelings of inadequacy, but from a realization of the ultimate distortion presented by human leadership.
Even as we are commanded to imitate G-d?s ways, we should be wary of imitating His trait of leadership. Even in as seemingly innocuous an office as shaliach tzibur, the Talmud (Berachot 34a) points out the impropriety of being overly eager to accept the task. One problem with leadership is the need to decide what is right for others, something which only G-d Himself can truly know. As such, having to make these types of judgments gives the impression of the leader having superhuman abilities.
Another problem with formalized leadership is that it requires coercive power. As with G-d Himself, leadership can only properly function when it has the power to coerce the recalcitrant. This is what is referred to as police powers or law enforcement. Investing a man with these powers creates obvious difficulties. The refined Jewish personality is hesitant to be put into such a situation, even while he must eventually accept it when it becomes clear that his leadership is needed. Ideal Jewish leadership is what was seen during the time of the Shoftim, wherein human leaders only arose to meet a specific need - if and when the need passed, they went back into private life. While not clear from the Biblical text, there are many who understand the Jewish desire for a formal leader during the days of Shmuel as moving away from the Jewish ideal. Correspondingly, it was against this call for the power of formalized leadership that Shmuel cried out so vigorously.
In the Jewish worldview, the person best qualified to take on a task does it without fanfare, without drawing attention to himself. On the contrary, while prepared to lead, the Jewish leader does not want to be thought of as a leader, a title that has intrinsically problematic associations. This is Yehudah, who, in the story of Tamar, subjects himself to public disgrace in order to do what needs to be done. In marked contrast to Yosef, who seems to be very concerned with what others think of him, Yehudah shows little interest in his public image.
The Talmud (Sota 36) compares the greatness of Yosef to that of Yehudah, stating that they both were able to make a kiddush Hashem. At the same time, the Talmud states that Yehudah was greater: Whereas Yosef?s kiddush Hashem of pushing off the advances of Potiphar?s wife was done in private, the Talmud points out that Yehudah?s stand with Tamar occurred in public. On the face of it, the comparison seems unfair. After all, Yosef?s stand could only have been in private. Even as this is true, Yehudah?s stand did not have to be public. Tamar gave Yehudah the option to do what we would expect any savvy politician to do ? take care of his debt to her privately.
While we know of the scandals that are sometimes created by politicians? attempts to cover up their unseemly behavior, it is inevitably the road chosen by the Noachide politician. In Noachide politics, personal image is everything and so must be saved at all costs. Yehudah, as per the Gemara, is more interested in the public teaching of honesty, even at the cost of personal embarrassment. He went out of his way to make a private issue public, so that people could learn from his story. Yehudah embodies the prototype of a Jewish leader, which is to be concerned about the content of his leadership and not with his own persona. Picking up on this, the Targum Yonathan (49:8) explicitly makes the connection between Yehudah being elected as the Jewish leader and his (public) admission of guilt with Tamar.
In comparing Yosef with Yehudah, we should not be too harsh in our treatment of Yosef. It is important to note that Yosef was not only the viceroy of Egypt. His more important function was that of defender and sustainer of the Jewish people at the beginning of their first galut. It is Yosef who saves the Jewish people from famine, serving as the archetype of Jewish leadership in the galut. The classical Jewish leadership of Yehudah would not be successful in the galut. The truly Jewish politician who aims to provide moral leadership cannot succeed in the world at large (and it has been suggested that Yosef?s namesake, Joe Lieberman, is floundering in his campaign precisely because he is offering an overly moralistic and Yehudah-like approach to American politics). It is only within the Jewish nation that such leadership will be sufficiently appreciated to work. In our sojourns in the galut, we need Yosefs to protect us from our historical vulnerability.
Just as Yehudah will not succeed in exile, however, Yosef will not succeed in Eretz Yisrael. The disastrous consequences of applying the functional Noachide leadership model to Eretz Yisrael is clearly shown, when Yosef?s descendants attempt to reassert their ancestral claim to leadership. When Yerovam starts the northern kingdom of Israel, ripping away all the tribes from Yehuda (with the ironic exception of Binyamin), it harbingers one disaster after another. The political decisions of Yerovam and his successors are based on the political considerations of the Noachide world. It is political considerations that move Yerovam to build alternatives to the Beit haMikdash in his own territory and to change the traditional calendar. His intentions were clearly to sever his subjects? connection to the rival leadership in Jerusalem (Kings I 12:26-33). While this would be doable in Egypt, such an approach is a disaster for a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
As elaborated upon by the Ramban, Eretz Yisrael is a place where one has to live according to the ideal and not just the functional. In modern Israel as well, religious parties have an obligation to present the type of leadership represented by Yehudah, and not simply Yosefs wearing kippot or hats. We have good reason to believe that the Jewish people have the capacity to respond to the inspiration represented by the Yehudah model .
In summary, G-d gave us two types of leaders ? a Yosef and a Yehudah. While the Jewish people need both, we look to Yehudah for our ideal. Even as we sometimes need to be Yosef, we should want to be Yehudah. Moreover, in recreating a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, we have to revert to the ideal. This is true in all realms, but especially so in choosing our leaders.
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* For a discussion of Reuven and Yehudah, see Ideas 22 at www.tzemachdovid.org/ideas/idea22.html.