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.
The Talmud in Sotah 36b tells us that in his moment of temptation Joseph saw his father’s face and was jolted to remember who he was and the requirements of his faith. Whether wrestling with his own desire or resisting an attack, this story squarely sets Joseph up to be the steady, in-control protagonist of the coming chapters.
Furthermore, Joseph attributes his integrity to God — the first of many times he speaks confidently of his God among non-Israelites: “How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God?”
In a final wink of the story, a furious Potiphar throws Joseph into jail. But it’s a comfortable prison for Pharaoh’s own prisoners. Potiphar, a eunuch according to Ibn Ezra, may well have experienced his wife’s indiscretions in the past. Perhaps his “fury” is in fact directed not at Joseph, but at his wife.
So the story of Potiphar’s wife is a device to show Joseph’s journey and new maturity. A long way has he travelled from the self-absorbed snitch we met at the start of the parashah. Now, as then, a person is measured the most by the distance they’ve travelled and the trials they’ve faced along the way.
Rabbi Lorie is Jofa UK rabbinical scholar
