50:25). In the end, it is the power of love and forgiveness that truly matters, and Joseph’s tears serve as a reminder of the importance of maintaining familial bonds and emotional connections, even in the face of great power and success.
Rav Lichtenstein’s analysis reminds us of Rashi and Ibn Ezra’s commentary to the last verse in the book of Esther. It says that “Mordechai the Jew was second to King Ahasuerus, and was great among the Jews and well received by most of his brethren” (Est. 10:3) – “most” but not all. Rashi (quoting Megillah 16b) says that some members of the Sanhedrin were critical of him because his political involvement (his “closeness to the king”) distracted from the time he spent studying Torah. Ibn Ezra says, simply:
“It is impossible to satisfy everyone, because people are envious [of other people’s success].”
Joseph and Mordechai/Esther are supreme examples of Jews who reached positions of influence and power in non-Jewish circles. In modern times they were called Hofjuden, “court Jews,” and other Jews often held deeply ambivalent feelings about them.
But at a deeper level, Rav Lichtenstein’s remarks recall Hegel’s famous master-slave dialectic, an idea that had huge influence on nineteenth-century – especially Marxist – thought. Hegel argued that the early history of humanity was marked by a struggle for power in which some became masters, and others became slaves. On the face of it, masters rule while slaves obey. But in fact, the master is dependent on his slaves – he has leisure only because they do the work, and he is the master only because he is recognized as such by his slaves.
Meanwhile, the slave, through his work, acquires his own dignity as a producer. Thus, the slave has “inner freedom” while the master has “inner bondage.” This tension creates a dialectic – a conflict worked out through history – reaching equilibrium only when there are neither masters nor slaves, but merely human beings who treat one another not as means to an end but as ends in themselves. Thus understood, Joseph’s tears are a prelude to the master-slave drama about to be enacted in the book of Exodus between Pharaoh and the Israelites.
Rav Lichtenstein’s profound insight into the text reminds us of the extent to which Torah, Tanach, and Judaism as a whole are a sustained critique of power. Prior to the Messianic age we cannot do without it. (Consider the tragedies Jews suffered in the centuries in which they lacked it.) But power alienates. It breeds suspicion and distrust. It diminishes those it is used against, and thus diminishes those who use it.
Even Joseph, called “Yosef HaTzaddik: Joseph the Righteous” weeps when he sees the extent to which power sets him apart from his brothers. Judaism is about an alternative social order which depends not on power but on love, loyalty and the mutual responsibility created by covenant. That is why Nietzsche, who based his philosophy on “the will to power,” correctly saw Judaism as the antithesis of all he believed in.
Power may be a necessary evil, but it is an evil, and the less we have need of it, the better.