Vayeshev: Fortunately and Unfortunately

Back when I was a preschool teacher, I came across a wonderful children’s book called “Fortunately” by Remy Charlip. The story begins with a boy being invited to a birthday party. “Unfortunately, the party was in Florida and he was in New York. Fortunately, a friend loaned him an airplane. Unfortunately, the motor exploded. Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute.”

And so on. Each page features a stunning reversal of fate. Every “fortunately” leads to an “unfortunately” and every “unfortunately” leads to a “fortunately.”

I think of this story every year when the tale of Joseph comes back around, for Joseph is subject to just as many sudden and dramatic reversals of fate.

Let us, for a moment, track his tale in the style of Remy Charlip:

Joseph’s father sent him out to check on his brothers.

Unfortunately, he got lost on the way.

Fortunately, a man gave him directions!

Unfortunately, his brothers decided to kill him.

Fortunately, Reuben persuaded them not to kill him!

Unfortunately, they decided to throw him in a well instead.

Fortunately, they lifted him out of the well!

Unfortunately, they lifted him out just to sell him into slavery.

Fortunately, his new master took a shine to him and made him overseer of the house!

Unfortunately, his master’s wife falsely accused him of attacking her and had him sent to jail.

Fortunately, the jailer took a shine to him and made him master over the jail!

This is where our portion ends, but sure enough, more “unfortunately” and “fortunately” await on the horizon for Joseph.

At the heart of this tale is the truth that King Solomon had engraved upon a ring so that it would never be far from his sight: This too shall pass.

To the pessimist, this teaching is sorrowful. All joys will pass, all beauty will fade, and all life will wither. To the optimist, however, it is uplifting. All pain will subside, all rainclouds will part, and all wickedness will abate.

Which is the perspective of Joseph?

Later on in Genesis, Joseph will reunite with his brothers when a famine in the land brings them to Egypt to ask for food. Then he will exclaim to them: “although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.” (Genesis 50:20).

We readers, of course, know what happens after Joseph’s death. Fate reverses again, and the entire Jewish people comes to be enslaved in Egypt.

But then (fortunately) they are redeemed by Moses and brought to Mount Sinai where they receive the Torah.

But then (unfortunately) the people sin with the Golden Calf and Moses shatters the tablets of the law.

And so on and so on. Right up until this very moment, Jewish history has never ceased being a cycle of rotating Unfortunatelys and Fortunatelys.

There is something uncomfortable about this ever-constant shifting. Perhaps this is why so many Jews call the state of Israel “the first flowering of the redemption.” It is comforting to think that history is nearing its end and a final “fortunately” is approaching. Perhaps this is also why so many Jews wring their hands over Jewish continuity and other so-called “existential” threats. Doomsday predictions also offer a comfort in that they offer certainty.

It is much harder to live as Joseph does. He is, in truth, neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He is a Tzadik – a wise person—who trusts God entirely.

Later, when he returns to Canaan to bury his father, he will, according to Midrash, stop and pray at the well in which he was cast by his brothers, stating that one should always commemorate a place where a great miracle happened.

To borrow a phrase from the mystic Hildegard of Bingen, Joseph lives like “a feather on the breath of God.” He is unattached to either good or bad fortune, but rather goes with the flow, so to speak, trusting that all is unfolding as it must and as it should.

This too shall pass. Joy and sorrow. Life and death. All of it will pass. For the soul who has learned to coast on the breath of God, this fact is neither cause for celebration nor despair. It is neither fortunate nor unfortunate. It is the will of God, which is all Joseph needs to know.