At the end of Vayigash, the Torah describes in great detail how Joseph managed to centralize all the wealth of Egypt in Pharaoh’s hands. In the process, he reconfigured the entire structure of Egyptian society. Chassidut explains that on a deeper level Joseph was transferring the wealth from the realm of the “evil inclination” to the realm of holiness. The Slonimer Rebbe explains that Joseph had to do this or else Jacob would never have agreed to come. Indeed, Joseph especially instructed his brothers to tell Jacob that he was “ruling over all of Egypt,” so that he would be willing to go to a land known for its moral corruption.
In “The Dreams of Jacob – the Dreams of Joseph,” we discussed the Midrash which demonstrated that everything that happened to Jacob likewise happened to Joseph (Bereishit Rabbah 84:6). Here we see this parallelism again. Just as Jacob had cleverly managed to transform Laban’s wealth into his own, Joseph ingeniously took advantage of the circumstances to legally take possession of all of Egypt’s wealth, albeit on Pharaoh’s behalf. That same wealth – which Joseph managed, and to a large extent had created – was eventually given to the children of Israel when they left Egypt. Thus God’s promise to Abraham was realized: Know with certainty that your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, they will serve them and they will oppress them for four hundred years. But also the nation they will serve, I will judge them and afterwards they will leave with great wealth. (Genesis 15:13-14)
The notion that “the actions of the fathers are a sign to the children” (Sotah 34a), again comes into play here, as the Joseph paradigm has reoccurred repeatedly throughout Jewish history. Jews have risen to the upper echelons of their host countries by accumulating and, in many cases, by creating great wealth. (See the portion of Shemot for further discussion of this idea.) Notably, while the patriarchs and the matriarchs, who preceded Joseph, were also wealthy and highly respected wherever they went, clearly his success far exceeded theirs; thus, he becomes the archetypal figure for this paradigm.
The important point, however, is that our forefathers and foremothers did not accumulate wealth at the expense of their spiritual achievements. In fact, in many cases their wealth and power was instrumental in enabling them to achieve certain spiritual goals for themselves and for society at large. Indeed, Joseph was intent on reshaping Egyptian society for the better by circumcising the Egyptians, thus weaning them away from paganism and corruption. He also wanted to introduce an entirely new paradigm dictating how money and power would be used, and, in fact, he succeeded in creating a centralized government.
Yet we all know the power money has to corrupt when it is not in the right hands or even when it is in the right hands but is used for the wrong purposes. One of the Hebrew words for money is “kesef,” a word sharing the same root with the Hebrew word meaning “desire.” If handled improperly money feeds humankind’s basest desires and has the power to drive human beings to the depths of greed and egotism. The Jewish genius for business and the inevitable accumulation of wealth and power that this brings with it has been, and continues to be, a test of the moral and spiritual integrity of many individuals and communities.
The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that the numerical value of the word “sulam” (when the vav is also counted) – the ladder that was set in the earth, but whose top reached the heavens in Jacob’s dream – is 136, the same as the word “mamon,” another Hebrew word for money. Just like dreams, which can express peoples’ animalistic drives or their more refined levels of the soul, money has the power to either drive people to the ground, revealing their lowest egotistical drives and instincts, or it has the power to elevate them and the world by allowing them to accomplish great things that reflect eternal, spiritual values. Money is intrinsically neutral; its ultimate worth depends on how people choose to spend it.
