For a Pair of Shoes

By Rabbi Ari Kahn

As Yosef approaches his bothers, he does not know that they have been plotting his downfall. For his part, he earnestly seeks his brothers. This feeling is not reciprocated and soon Yosef is thrown into a pit, where he remains until the opportunity to permanently solve the “Yosef Problem” presents itself. Thankfully, the messy business of murder is avoided, rejected in favor of a more profitable arrangement. Once the decision is formulated to sell Yosef to the Ishmaelites, a second group is introduced, the Midianites, and the sale forges ahead:

Then there passed by Midianite merchants; and they drew and lifted up Yosef out from the pit, and sold Yosef to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver; and they brought Yosef to Egypt. (Bereishit 37:28)

The reference to the Midianites is unclear; Rashi suggests that Yosef was sold more than once, while the Ibn Ezra says that both names refer to the same caravan. There are, however, commentaries who suggest that the brothers did not actually sell Yosef: While the brothers were still discussing the idea, the Midianites rode by, and hearing Yosef’s bloodcurdling screams, they “rescued” him from the pit, only to in turn sell him to the band of Ishmaelites the brothers had seen approaching. The Rashbam, who advocates this position, theorizes that the brothers, not wishing to ruin their repast, had positioned themselves at some distance from the pit into which they had thrown Yosef and from his cries for help. The Hizkuni goes even further and suggests that the brothers were unaware that the Midianites had sold Yosef to the Ishmaelites, a theory borne out by Reuven’s futile attempt to save Yosef from the pit – after he was sold: If, in fact, the brothers had been party to the sale, Reuven’s behavior would be inexplicable.

These opinions seem to contradict the brothers’ own admission of guilt: When they unknowingly stand before Yosef in Egypt, they admit that they had indeed heard Yosef’s cries, and ignored his pleas. Yosef himself would surely have mentioned any mitigating facts or circumstances when he consoled his brothers and attempted to make peace with them years later, but he does not seem to be aware of any such factors. If the Rashbam and the Hizkuni were correct, we would expect Yosef to have said something to them along the lines of, “it wasn’t you who sold me” or “you did not know that I had been sold”. Instead, he says “I am Yosef whom you sold…”

Indeed, it seems difficult to argue that the brothers were not guilty of this act of perfidy. Jewish tradition refers to the sale of Yosef as a stain on the collective conscience of the entire nation – a stain that much of Jewish practice and Jewish history is geared toward cleansing. The Rambam notes that a goat is always brought as a sin offering on holidays, and ties this offering directly with the goat’s blood with which Yosef’s coat of many colors was stained by the brothers. The goat is a symbol of the treachery which continues to haunt the collective, a blot on the integrity and unity of the entire nation. On holidays, when we gather as a family, we bring the sin offering with the blood of the goat in order to attempt to bring about healing for the sale of Yosef at his brothers’ hands.

In fact, our sages associate some of the most cataclysmic events in Jewish history with our collective guilt for the sale of Yosef: The martyrdom of Judaism’s ten greatest scholars, retold in the Yom Kippur liturgy each year, is said to be a tikkun for the sale of Yosef. It seems an inescapable conclusion that Jewish theology considers the brothers guilty of the sale, and senses the repercussions of that episode throughout our history.

When one considers the portion traditionally read as the Haftorah associated with this parsha it leads to an inescapable conclusion of guilt.

Thus says the Almighty; ‘For three transgressions of Israel I will turn away punishment, but for the fourth I will not turn away its punishment; because they sold the righteous one for silver, and the poor man for a pair of shoes. (Amos 2:6)

Yosef, as distinct from all the other Patriarchs, is known as “The righteous one”, and the words of the Prophet Amos supply information that is lacking in the verses of our parsha: Tradition teaches that the money they “earned” from the sale of Yosef was used by the brothers to purchase shoes. The Torah recounts only that twenty pieces of silver changed hands in the exchange; there is not a word to indicate what was done with the money, nor any mention of shoes. This seems altogether fitting: the use made of this “blood money” does not seem relevant to the real issues of the parsha, and to the long-term effects of the brothers’ actions. In other words, why do we have a tradition about this? Is the fact that the brothers bought shoes with this money really a salient fact worth recording? The very fact that they sold their brother seems enough of an outrage. What difference does it make what they did with their ill-gotten profit? As we shall see, the seemingly-irrelevant information that the Prophet preserves and transmits will help reveal other important facets and aspects of the sale.

Shoes appear in the Torah in several contexts. The first is when Moshe is told to remove his shoes in deference to the holy ground on which he stands:

And Moshe said, ‘I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Almighty saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, ‘Moshe, Moshe.’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ And He said, ‘Do not come any closer; take off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground. (Sh’mot 3:3-5)

In this context, removing one’s shoes indicates an awareness of holiness. On the other hand, when the Jews prepared to leave Egypt, they were told to put on their shoes:

And thus shall you eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste; it is the Pesach for the Almighty. (Sh’mot 12:11)

While it might seem that the commandment to put on shoes is purely pragmatic, preparing the Jews for the long walk on which they will soon embark, the deeper significance may be learned from the third context in which shoes appear: There is one halachic section of the Torah, one Torah law, in which a shoe is a significant element. When a man refuses to marry his deceased brother’s childless wife, a unique ceremony is carried out:

If brothers live together, and one of them dies, and has no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry outside to a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her to him for a wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And it shall be, that the firstborn which she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate to the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to raise to his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform his duty as my husband’s brother.’ Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak to him; and if he persists, and says, ‘I do not wish to take her’; Then shall his brother’s wife come to him in the presence of the elders, and pull his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to that man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ And his name shall be called in Israel, “The house of him who has his shoe pulled off.” (Dvarim 25:5-10)

The ritual performed when a man refuses to marry his brother’s widow and carry on his late brother’s name and family line, is called haliza. One central part of this ritual is the removal of the man’s shoe.  Alternatively, if the living brother chooses to marry his brother’s widow and build the family, the term used to describe the ceremony is yibum. In fact, the first appearance of yibumin the Torah is found in the verses that immediately follow the sale of Yosef, when Yehuda’s surviving sons are responsible for the yibum of Tamar. Unfortunately, they were not interested in continuing their brother’s legacy and they frustrated the natural yibum process.

And Yehuda said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to your brother.’ And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in to his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, rather than give seed to his brother. And his behavior was wicked in God’s eyes and (Onan), too, was put to death. (Breishit 38:8-10)

The tragic story of Yehuda’s sons must, necessarily, be seen in light of Yehuda’s callous call to sell his brother Yosef in the preceding verses. Yosef is their flesh and blood, and yet he speaks of profit, of personal benefit, of manipulating the law by avoiding murder while capitalizing on the situation for personal gain:

And Yehuda said to his brothers: ‘What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh.’

Apparently, Yehuda’s children learned a lesson in fraternal relations and responsibilities from their father. They learned that their brother is not their concern; a pair of shoes is preferable to a brother. It is surely no coincidence that when the Torah teaches the law regarding a man who refuses to build his brother’s home, the rejected widow is instructed to remove a shoe from the indifferent brother’s foot. When he fails to recognize his brother’s holiness and the sanctity of the family he is charged to preserve, his shoe is removed as a reminder (as it was for Moshe) or as a symbol of his callousness (as when the brothers purchased shoes with “blood money”).

The sale of Yosef began as the brothers callously broke bread while Yosef cried out to them from the pit. That meal, the symbol of a family divided, was interrupted by a passing caravan that soon provided shoes for the brothers, eventually took the brothers themselves to Egypt. They thought they had found a convenient way to dispose of their annoying brother; they thought they were selling him as a slave. Instead, they and their descendants became slaves. And when the time arrives for their descendents to finally to leave Egypt and begin their journey back to the Land of Israel, they are commanded to sit and have a meal together – as families, whole and reunited. At that meal, they are finally ready to put shoes back on their feet and begin the long trip back to Israel. This is a healing meal, a celebration in which each recognizes the holiness of the others; finally, they become one family, united.

Kahn, Ari. "For a Pair of Shoes." M'oray Ha'Aish. (Viewed on November 23, 2013). http://www.aish.com/tp/i/moha/For-a-Pair-of-Shoes.html

Dvar Tzedek

By Sigal Samuel

Anu Mokal was four months pregnant the night policemen brutally assaulted her at a bus stop in Satara, India. They beat her so severely that she suffered a miscarriage. When she later filed a complaint against them, no investigation took place, despite the presence of witnesses. Why? Because she was a sex worker, and the policemen—who had charged her with soliciting clients at the bus stop—were just ‘doing their job.’

Anu’s story is disturbingly familiar: Today, millions of sex workers across the globe suffer abuse and discrimination from law enforcement officials as well as the general public. The fact that their work is criminalized increases their susceptibility to violence and gives them no way to seek legal redress. While many people view sex work as immoral exploitation of women or insist that all sex workers must be victims of sex slavery or trafficking, the reality is that in many cases, women choose this work because it is the best of a severely limited range of economic options allowing them to support themselves and their children. Indeed, sex work is the means by which many resourceful women manage to build homes and pay school fees.

I suspect that Tamar, in Parashat Vayeshev, would empathize with these women. Tamar is left financially vulnerable after the death of her husband when her father-in-law Judah fails to offer her security through levirate marriage to his remaining son, Shelah. Her social standing ruined, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute to trick Judah into sleeping with her. She becomes pregnant and Judah, not realizing that he himself is the father, condemns her to death. But then Tamar presents Judah’s seal, cord and staff, saying, “I am pregnant by the man who owns these items.” Aghast, Judah recognizes his belongings and is forced to take responsibility for his actions. “Tzadkah mimeni,” he admits. “She is more in the right than I.”

In this story, Tamar leverages the only two things left at her disposal—her wits and her sexuality—to regain her social standing. When she takes Judah to task in this way, her story plays out according to what scholars of biblical and rabbinic literature call “the trickster motif.” “Tricksters” are “characters of low status who improve their situation through use of their wit and cunning” and who “can lay claim to their reproductive power only through tricksterism, camouflage and seduction.” I believe, as scholar Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert has argued, that this motif is so endemic to biblical and rabbinic narrative traditions because the patriarchal world of the Bible often made it so. Tamar’s was a world in which women, with few material resources and little power, needed to leverage their wits and sexuality in order to gain the upper hand. Thousands of years later, this is—in many ways—still the world we live in. Indeed, like the “tricksters” of the Bible, modern-day women who use their wits and sexuality to take care of themselves often do so in response to a society that undercuts their power.

Today, sex workers face flawed legislation that is more concerned with criminalizing their work than protecting their rights, their health and their safety. Ugandan law, for example, targets the sex worker rather than the client. While the sex worker may be punished with up to seven years in prison, the client goes free. Worse, the criminal status of sex workers encourages their societies to stigmatize them, leading to the erosion of their basic rights and freedoms and to their exclusion from basic services like medical care, screening for sexually transmitted diseases and protection by the police from violence. Discrimination also prevents sex workers’ efforts to seek other economic opportunities that might enable them to find a new line of work: for example, in 2010, Uganda’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity blocked a sex workers’ conference, even though its aim was simply “to build the skills of sex workers—in leadership, economic empowerment, personal development and entrepreneurship.”

Fortunately, many grassroots organizations are fighting to defend sex workers’ rights. For example, AJWS grantee WONETHA-Uganda, itself spearheaded by sex workers, documents and exposes cases of discrimination and stigmatization in the community. The organization also helps women access health care services, from which they are often barred, as they are perceived as vectors of disease.

By supporting organizations like these, we can stand in solidarity with women today who, like Tamar, use their sexuality and their wits to improve their situations. We can also bring about the second meaning of Judah’s “tzadkah mimeni.” While these words are typically translated as “she is more in the right than I,” they can also translate as “she is right; this [her situation] is from me [the result of my wrongdoing].” To amplify the voices of sex workers who speak, struggle and lobby on their own behalf is to promote an understanding that, if millions of women are forced to engage in sex work to survive, the fault does not lie with them but with a systemic injustice that will only begin to be rectified when we implicate ourselves, issuing our own collective “tzadkah mimeni.”

Samuel, Sigal. "Parashah Vayeshev 5774." Dvar Tzedek. American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on November 22, 2013). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/vayeshev.html