Parshat Miketz

Sivan P - December 19, 2025

An abridged oral version was shared. Below is the full written text.

This week's torah portion is Miketz, which translates to "at the end." It's different from the Hebrew word "sof," which also means ending — but in the case of Miketz, the word derives from the root "katzatz" (קצץ) which means "to cut off." Miketz is the tenth parshah of Bireishit, between Vayeshev ("and he lived") and Vayigash ("and (then) he drew near"). At the end of Vayeshev, Potiphar, the captain of the Pharaoh's guard, imprisoned Joseph under false charges that he assaulted Potiphar's wife Zuleikha. (Zuleikha actually tried to seduce Joseph unsuccessfully, and then accused him of rape in retaliation.) When Joseph goes into prison, he's roughly ~17 years of age. Several years have then passed since the start of his imprisonment. Later in prison, Joseph correctly interpreted dreams that other prisoners had — namely, the Pharaoh's butler and baker — and asked the butler to make a case for Joseph when he would be released from prison. Joseph was about ~28 at this time. The butler did not keep this promise upon release; two more years then passed.

Which brings us to Miketz. To summarize Miketz, the Pharaoh starts having ~STRANGE DREAMS~ and the butler remembers Joseph — so Pharaoh summons him from prison. By this time, Joseph is 30 years old. After interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams and earning his trust, Joseph is appointed to govern Mitzrayim, and he implements a plan to deal with the current state of food (e.g. abundance) and to prepare for the forthcoming famine, as anticipated by the interpretation from the Pharaoh's ~STRANGE DREAMS~.

By the time the famine starts, the only food available in the region is in Mitzrayim. This brings Joseph's brothers — the same ones who plotted against him earlier in Bireishit, and who were ultimately responsible for Joseph's capture and subsequent imprisonment — to seek food in Mitzrayim. Joseph sees this opportunity to get back at his brothers, orchestrating an elaborate scheme to... do something. Presumably it's to get back at them for selling him into slavery years ago in the first place. To summarize the ruse, Joseph recognizes his brothers when they show up looking for food, but they don't recognize him. So he takes advantage of this — as well as his position of authority — to ultimately accuse them of a crime that they didn't commit (and not the wrong they actually did to him years ago, which was selling him to Potiphar).

I read several dvarim that sought to answer why Joseph went through with this scheme. Some point to this notion that Joseph's choices were justified because he needed to understand whether his brothers had changed their ways; he couldn't just do so by revealing himself from the beginning as their brother — could he? That part, to me, makes sense. He hadn't seen them since he was a teenager, and who knows how they would react to seeing him now, having risen to this level of power years after they ostensibly sold him off because they were spiteful of him for being favored by Yaakov and Hashem.

Otherwise, viewpoints are largely in consensus that Joseph was right to test his brothers' motivations; after all, how could the plan go awry, as Joseph was favored by Hashem? I won't get into what happens as a result of the scheme b/c that's technically in next week's Parsha (Vayigash), but things do ultimately resolve without further conflict. A very rosy and convenient, if not perhaps contrived, ending. But what I want to get at in this drash doesn't have to do with how Joseph's actions are justified because Hashem was in his corner (#teamjoseph) and therefore the reader knows that his future is bright. I want to talk about what this popular narrative really obfuscates, which is the events that predicate Joseph's behavior.

Joseph was targeted, neglected, and even arguably abused through much of his life. His brothers sold him into slavery. Then his enslaver's wife tries to seduce him, and accuses him of rape when he refuses her advances. Then he's imprisoned for this, for thirteen years. He's only freed once he's deemed useful to the Pharaoh — and once he's risen to a seat of absolute power, 2nd in Mitzrayim only to the Pharaoh himself, married to one of the daughters of his literal buyer, #madeit at 30 years old — he sees his brothers and doesn't react in a way that reflects a totally sound mind. Sure, it's reasonable to be suspicious of his brothers; they were the ones who originally sold him off. But to go through great lengths and schemes, to implement designs upon them, reminds me a lot of what people who wield power do today.

I don't argue that Hashem is with Joseph — this is what it says in the Torah, I'm not here to refute that. But I do push back on this popular narrative that Joseph's behaviors are justified, as Hashem watches over him, and ensures his favor in the long term. Instead, if there's a lesson I would take away from this, it's that through Hashem's blessing — literal divine intervention — that Joseph's machinations on his brothers didn't blow up in his face.

I'll acknowledge that there's not much in the text that backs up my framing. There are also other threads I don't tease out about Miketz that challenge Joseph's characterization as purely divine and nothing else — for example, ensuring Mitzrayim has food, but not really caring whether any other place does — but with that all said, I do implore taking away this perspective and applying it to the world we live in today. Can you think of an example where someone is in a position of power, and justifies their objectively horrible plans and actions on the basis of religious concepts? Divine absolution? Amalekh? I can think of many.