Vayeshev contains two stories of spurned women. The first, Tamar, is wrongly kept away from the man who should lawfully marry her. The Torah is resolutely on her side. But the second, Potiphar’s wife, is a seductress, whom Joseph, our story’s hero, manages to resist.
We are told this story in vivid detail (technicolour, if you will). What is its function?
According to Midrash Tanchuma, in his elevated station in Potiphar’s house, Joseph “began to eat and drink and curl his hair”. The boy who bragged of his narcissistic dreams has grown into a man who is clearly still somewhat self-obsessed. So, the Midrash continues, The Holy Blessed One said to him, “Your father is mourning and you curl your hair! I will let a bear loose against you” (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayeshev 8). Potiphar’s wife is that bear — she persists with daily seductions culminating in an assault — the second time that Jospeh’s garment is torn from him.
This is a story of a lonely young man far from home, encountering what can only be understood as sexual harassment from a superior. And yet Joseph resists. The leyning trop treats us to one of the four shalshelet notes in the entire Torah on the word vayema’en (“and he refused”) to illustrate the wavering that Joseph experienced, or maybe the core-shaking experience.
