{"id":39299,"date":"2018-09-03T23:09:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T20:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=39299"},"modified":"2022-03-28T22:32:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T19:32:05","slug":"becoming-his-brothers-keeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/becoming-his-brothers-keeper\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming His Brother’s Keeper"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[568,412],"acf":{"old_id":"39299","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":39167,"related_cahpter":"38","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Judah was the first person in the entire Tanakh to admit he was wrong\u2026","content":"

[Judah] sells his brother into slavery and deceives his father into thinking his son is dead. But Judah will <\/span>actually<\/span><\/em> lose not one, but two sons, in quick succession, in the very next chapter. We\u2019re told that Judah\u2019s eldest Er is \u201cevil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord slew him\u201d (Gen. 38:7); next Onan, asked by his father to \u201craise up seed to his brother\u201d refused to act as a brother should \u2026”and the Lord and he slew him also\u201d (Gen. 38:9\u201310).<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, we have an increasingly intensified measure-for-measure scenario. Onan\u2019s failure to serve as brother is very like the failure of his father, Judah, to act as a true brother, which in turn, was like his own father, Jacob\u2019s failure to treat his own brother in a brotherly way. Indeed, thus far in Genesis, from the time of the very first set of brothers, Cain and Abel, we have found no individual even remotely willing to serve as a \u201cbrother\u2019s keeper.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But what is remarkable within Judah is that change\u2014genuine human change\u2014takes place. Judah redeems himself. And with Judah, the book of Genesis moves from being primarily a narrative of human beings in relation to God to becoming a narrative of human beings in relation to one another. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the great patriarchs; Judah becomes a great human being\u2014not only the forefather but the archetype of his nearly larger-than-life descendant, David.<\/span><\/p>\n

From being the man who masterminded the sale of his brother into slavery, Judah becomes the ideal of a \u201cbrother\u2019s keeper.\u201d The great transformation in him begins with a life-changing encounter with his resourceful daughter-in-law, Tamar. Robert Alter has demonstrated the resonance of the word \u201crecognition\u201d in the narratives of Joseph and his brothers and Judah and Tamar (<\/span>The Art of Biblical Narrative<\/span><\/em>). <\/span>Haker-na<\/span><\/em> \/ \u201cPlease recognize the coat,\u201d the brothers demand of their father (Gen. 37:32): <\/span>haker-na<\/span><\/em> \/ \u201cRecognize to whom this seal cord and staff belong,\u201d asks Tamar, who has been impregnated by Judah when she\u2019s disguised herself as a harlot by the side of the road (Gen. 38:25)\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTake her and burn her,\u201d he says when he learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant. But when she shows him the \u201cseal-cord and staff\u201d of the \u201cman by whom\u201d she \u201chas conceived,\u201d he changes his position (Gen. 38:25). Interestingly, the text in Hebrew says simply <\/span>vayikar yehudah<\/em> <\/span>\/ \u201cand Judah recognized\u201d (Gen. 38:26); the verb here lacks a direct object. Of course, one possible meaning is that he recognized the staff and seal cord, but another is that\u2014seeing his own staff and signet ring out of context, in the hands of the pregnant woman he would so readily have had burned\u2014\u201che recognized\u201d his flawed self. It\u2019s that \u201crecognition\u201d of his own flaws that enables him to become the true \u201cflesh\u201d of his brother, and, in doing so, the true \u201cflesh\u201d (as opposed to spiritual) hero of Genesis.<\/span><\/p>\n

The words that follow are remarkable: <\/span>tzadkah mememi<\/span><\/em> \/ \u201cShe\u2019s more righteous than I.\u201d Here we have, in Genesis 38, the first instance in the Bible of a person admitting he\u2019s in the wrong. All other accused people either blame someone else\u2014\u201cThat woman you gave me gave me of the tree,\u201d says Adam; \u201cthe snake deceived me,\u201d says Eve (Gen. 3:12\u201313)\u2014or ask rhetorical questions, like Cain\u2019s \u201cam I my brother\u2019s keeper?\u201d (Gen. 4:9).<\/span><\/p>\n

(Excerpted and reprinted with permission from the essay \u201c’That We May Live and Not Die’: Judah as Life Force of Genesis,” by Jaqueline Osherow, in:<\/span> Reading Genesis Beginnings<\/span><\/a><\/em>,<\/em> Beth Kissileff, editor, Bloomsbury, 2016, pp.<\/span>
\n<\/span>224-226).<\/span><\/p>\n

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