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A charming son is
Yosef, a son charming to the eye; [of the] women, [each one] strode along
to see him. They heaped bitterness upon him and became quarrelsome; yea,
archers despised him. (Breishis 49:22-23)
a son charming to
the eye: His charm attracts the eye that beholds him… of the] women,
[each one] strode along to see him: The women of Egypt strode out on the
wall to gaze upon his beauty… and became quarrelsome: His brothers became
his antagonists… Rashi
One thing is
abundantly clear from even a superficial review of Birchas Yaakov,
Yaakov’s Blessing to his children immediately before his death. A Brocho,
a blessing is not a general fantasy wish for another person, like, “I
hope you find a winning lottery ticket in the parking lot!”
After many years I
am convinced that the greatest gift that you can give another person is
not to import something from the outside but to show them the importance
of what’s on the inside, to show someone the power of their potential and
to help them begin to mine out their latent talents. That way they can
develop themselves and be a blessing to others, and that may just be the
biggest blessing.
Yosef is hit with
two contrasting descriptions in the first two out of three lines of
father’s “Brocho”. On the one hand he is recognized as a literal
rockstar. There’s no other way to describe the charisma and natural
energy that Yosef generated wherever he went. He was charming and
beautiful and electric. Women struggled just to get a glimpse of him. He
was awesomeness on display and naturally so.
On the other hand,
he is told in the very next verse that his brothers hated him. What’s
that about? It’s like a “good news bad news joke”.
What is he to do
with this combination of information that his father is feeding him in
the last moments of his life? Yes, Yosef was both a rockstar and he was
hated. What’s the message for Yosef and for us?
Years back we had
the Great honor and privilege to do a Rosh Hashanah program for three
years in a row with Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski. I remember him telling us
at that time that he did not write some fifty books, he wrote one book
fifty different ways. All of the books were about one subject,
“self-esteem”. I asked him, “What’s self-esteem?” He answered in a
heartbeat, “Healthy self-esteem means seeing your good points and bad
points simultaneously.”
I realized that the
operative word is “simultaneously”. If somebody only sees their good
points then they are at risk of becoming haughty, perhaps a narcissistic
personality. If they only see their bad points, then they will tend to be
depressed and give up and fail before even trying. If one sees their good
points and then their bid points alternately, then they are manic, taking
off for flight and then crashing and burning again and again. But if
somebody sees their bad points and they’re good points simultaneously
then they never get too low because they always know that they have
something special to offer and they never get too high because they
understand that they have Faults and foibles. I saw a phrase that caught
my eye and stayed with me. It goes like this, “I can be both a
masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time!”
The Maharal
explains that water is the model of Chomer – Materialism. It takes on the
shape of whatever vessel holds it. It has no form of its own. People with
lower self-esteem are fluid and are easily influenced by their
surroundings. They care too much about what other people think about
them.
Someone with a
healthy self-image gives shape to the environment around him because they
have their own positive sense of self. Perhaps that was Yosef’s source of
finding favor in the eyes of so many people. In spite of the fact that
people hated him he remained himself. Now, in order to preserve that
healthy sense of self he also needed to hear that people hated him. It
was a large serving of humble pie, and a helpful reminder that he and we
are both a masterpiece and a work in progress.
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