The LA Times columnist, LZ Granderson, questions his own attraction to the HBO series Succession despite the extraordinary levels of dysfunction, cruelty, and sheer greed displayed by the media mogul Roy family. It’s marked by an unceasing barrage of familial abuse and capitalist excess that clearly is intended as satirical dark comedy. It seems that nothing is new under the sun. Granderson’s ambivalence over this modern drama could easily be applied to the Biblical Joseph story—which may also be a form of ancient satire. An overambitious brother taunts his siblings who in turn sell him into slavery; accused of predatory sexual behavior, Joseph is sent to languish in a dungeon. A series of fortuitous events allow him to become one of the most powerful men in Egypt, but not before he destroys another witless victim. When his brothers, in desperation, seek relief from starvation, Joseph teaches them a cruel lesson by entrapping [...]

As the Biblical Jacob is about to die, he calls his son Joseph to his bedside and asks for Joseph’s sons to be brought close. He blesses them in an act still evoked today. We bless our children by saying: “May you be like Manasseh and Ephraim.” Strangely, as part of the blessing he claims his grandsons as his own offspring, essentially skipping a generation. “Now your two sons…shall be mine.” (Text here) Historians tell us that this represents an ancient memory of two tribes, the namesakes of the two boys, brought into the circle of the Israelite nation. To claim them as truly Israelite, the ancient writer imagines that Jacob formally adopted them. Interestingly, they were born to Joseph’s Egyptian wife. Contrary to later practice, the identity of the children was determined by the father in ancient times. But nonetheless, in the story, it’s clear that these boys were no [...]

In one televised version of Joseph and The Technicolor Dreamcoat, Donny Osmond played Joseph. The irony of a quintessential American non-Jew playing the role of the ancient Jewish patriarch who assumed a fully Egyptian visage, was likely lost on the millions who enjoyed the performance. Our Joseph story is distinctly not a universal story, it is particular to Jewish history. It is the story of the court Jew, subject to the whims of the powerful, forced into captivity, saved by his ingenuity and wisdom, able to rise to a position of power because of his unique skills. It is the Jew who must always look over his/her shoulder out of fear that one vengeful or resentful adversary could take away all that has been achieved. Even as this Jew assimilates into the majority society (Joseph even marries an Egyptian princess) he/she remains distinct and different. This week we are fully into [...]