This week we start the story of Joseph. Joseph, a spoiled brat and tattletale at seventeen, gets the ire of his brothers, who sell him down the Nile into slavery after one too many dreams of superiority over them. But in Egypt, Joseph goes from being a mere slave to running the household of Potiphar the chief executioner. Unfortunately, a case of sexual harassment gets Joseph in trouble. The chief executioner’s wife wants to sleep with Joseph, who refuses. In a turnabout move, Potiphar’s wife frames him for rape, and Joseph is jailed. But even here he ends up running the prison.
Yet in the center of this weeks portion is another story, parallel to the first. Back at home, Judah's son marries a woman named Tamar. Unfortunately, his son Er dies shortly after the marriage for annoying God in some unnamed way. Judah’s 2nd son Onan is obligated to give her children. Onan spills his seed and because of this, god is angered and he dies. Judah promises his last and final son to Tamar when he grows up, but he reneges. So Tamar dresses up as a prostitute, intercepts Judah, who thinking her a prostitute, sleeps with her, and gets her pregnant. When she is found out to be pregnant, Judah, not realizing he is the father, wants her killed for harlotry. But she produces the "collateral" Judah left with her to sleep with her, his seal and staff, and realizes his mistake, stating “she is more righteous than me” [Gen. 38:26].
After last week’s piece I think the question I asked with Dinah is answered by Joseph and Tamar. Bit h are victims in some sense, though one could argue Joseph did make his own situation worse. Both are. Joseph in this portion does indeed find, even as slave in this protion, prosperity. Yet the shorter story of Tamar and Judah provides us with some answers as well.
Tamar’s situation came about thorough her husbands angering God, and dying for the offense. The rabbis maintain that the reason was the same for Er and Onan. Just like Onan spilled his seed, so too did Er, but for different motives. The rabbinic argument occurs in the Tractate of Talmud which deals with Tamar’s issue, that of levirate marriage. We read of levirate marriage
5. 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. 6. 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. [Deuteronomy 25:5]
While there is a procedure to refuse a levirate marriage, in the first recorded case in Torah, that is not used, and instead we read:
8. And Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to your brother. 9. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in to his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. 10. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; therefore he slew him also. [Genesis 38]
The tractate on levirate marriage, Yebamot, in discussing in whether a virgin can get pregnant on her fir experience with sex, uses Tamar as an example of one who does, from her Father in law Judah. Yet, it is argued she had two husbands:
But were there not Er and Onan? — Er and Onan indulged in unnatural intercourse…. [The reason for] Onan's [action] may well be understood, because he knew that the seed would not be his; but why did Er act in such a manner? — In order that she might not conceive and thus lose some of her beauty. [Yebamot 34b]
Er, we are told in midrash uses the euphemistic “plowing the roof” [Genesis R. XXXV: 4] to stand for some kind of non-vaginal intercourse. Unlike Dinah, Tamar wanted sex, but she wanted sex for procreation, as is the mitzvah given to all humanity of “be fruitful and multiply”. Neither her first or second husband gave her that, and thus by making her perform non-natural acts, Tamar can be thought of as being a victim of men as much as Dinah.
The difference here is that her victimhood did not stop her from getting what she wanted. She deceives Judah into giving her the children she wants. Note that the text notes that they never have sex again (38:26). This was about getting pregnant, not about sex. Once she got what she wanted that was enough for both of them. Tamar has twin sons, Perez and Zerah. The book of Ruth picks up the story:
18. Now these are the generations of Perez; Perez fathered Hezron, 19. And Hezron fathered Ram, and Ram fathered Amminadab, 20. And Amminadab fathered Nahshon, and Nahshon fathered Salmon, 21. And Salmon fathered Boaz, and Boaz fathered Obed, 22. And Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. [Ruth 4:18-22]
Ten generations later, including Ruth’s levirate marriage to Boaz, King David was born. The text insinuates that Judah’s last son was not going to be given to Tamar, since he did not want her to kill him too. It was up to Tamar to get what she was legally entitled to, and through her prostitute act was King David eventually born.
While I was busy looking for the answer to the halakah of the victim, I never thought to look at the aggadah, the story. The story of Tamar teaches us one answer to the question: while one should do things as legally as possible, don’t give up, and always find a way. Tamar could have gone back to her father as a widow and done many things, from feeling sorry for herself till she died to getting herself another husband far away from Judah and the rest. But she wanted to have the next generation of Judah, and eventually she did. Every step along the way, those around her tried to stop her from this goal. That God removed the stumbling-blocks of Er and Onan from the picture says volumes about How God felt about Tamar’s quest. But so does the stories of her descendants.
David, instead of crying like everyone else got up and killed the undefeatable opponent Goliath, starting his public career. It is not only King David which is directly related to Tamar however. According to Midrash [Numbers Rabbah XIII:4], The leader of the tribe of Judah during the Exodus, Nahshon, a descendant of Perez, also acted in the impossible situation, just like his great-great-great grandmother. We are told he was the first into the Sea, and it really didn’t split until he was almost over his head. He did not cry like the rest, “For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:12) He just went into the drink, and a miracle happened. It was a descendant of the Perez’s twin brother Zerah, Caleb, who as one of the twelve spies who scouted the Land of Israel said very clearly “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30) when almost everyone else was crying “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt”(Numbers 14:2) For that faith, he was only one of two men who started their lives as slaves and crossed the Jordan into Israel. When there was plague that even Aaron and Moses couldn’t stop, it is Pinchas, whose grand-mother was Nahshon’s sister (Exodus 6:23) springing into action when everyone else is weeping (Numbers 25:7). Over and over again, when there are tears but a need for action it is a descendant of Tamar who rises to the call.
In loss there is always sadness. There are many time there is disappointment in our lives, even from those times when we become a victim of someone else. Yet, I believe these stories point to a thread found in Torah, one often associated with the family of Tamar. With a deep belief in Torah and Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu, one does not sit and cry, but marches on towards the goals everyone else said is impossible. There might be scary parts, like when Tamar could have been burnt alive for harlotry, but in the end she was the mother not just of twins, but the ancestor of the Messiah. A woman, in a man’s world, ended up on top, indeed her actions were more courageous than those of the father of her children, who was too busy selling his own brother into slavery to care. In many ways what set apart the tribe of Judah from the other tribes is more an attribute of Tamar, than that of Judah.
Like Tamar, Nahshon, Caleb, and David we too can do the impossible, what others do not want us to do, or what they believe should not be ours to do. So the first lesson of Dinah’s question is not to continually cry, but to move forward towards your goal your dream, no matter what, because you might just get it.
And speaking of dreams, next week we will discuss part two of the answer, the dreamer and convicted rapist who becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt.
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