Joseph and their life of many genders
Joseph and their life of many genders[1]
In this paper, I focus on an exceptional figure in the Torah narratives of the ancestors; a character who completely confounds binary gender assumptions: Joseph, the first-born child of Rachel and Jacob. In an effort to draw out Joseph’s gender nonconformity, when I am not mentioning Joseph by name, I will use the nongendered pronouns, ‘their’, ‘they’ and ‘them’.
Just as Rachel was Jacob’s preferred and most loved wife, so Joseph, amongst his ten sons and one daughter, was Jacob’s favourite child. But Joseph was set apart, not just because they were given preferential treatment. As we read in Genesis chapter 37,[2] which is where the story begins, the beautiful coat Joseph received as a gift from their father, k’tonet passim, a ‘coat’ [k’tonnet] that reached to the ‘palms’ [passim], signalled more than Joseph’s special status in Jacob’s affections. K’tonet passim is also the garment of a princess. In the Second Book of Samuel (13:18-19), when Tamar, the daughter of King David was assaulted by her half-brother, Amnon (:18), we read that: ‘She was wearing a k’tonet passim, for virgin princesses were dressed thus in olden times.’
Most people know Joseph’s coat by its popular name, ‘the coat of many colours’, which derives from chiton poikilo, ‘variegated coat’, the translation found in the Septuagint, the first Greek version of the Bible, that seems to be based on the Aramaic pas, meaning ‘strip’ or ‘stripe’.[3] Curiously, although k’tonnet passim only occurs in the Joseph and Tamar narratives, the Septuagint provides a different translation for Tamar’s k’tonnet passim: a ‘garment reaching to the ankle’. Along with the view that the k’tonnet passim worn by Tamar provides the original reference for the garment, scholars have debated the meaning of the Hebrew, passim, and suggested that it relates to the Assyrian form of an Akkadian word meaning ‘veiling’, indicating that virgin princesses were veiled in such garments as a sign of their virginity.[4]
This explanation provides a rationale for Tamar’s tearing of her garment after she was raped by Amnon (II Samuel 13.19). However, understanding the ‘veiling’ function of Tamar’s k’tonnet passim does not help us to make sense of why Joseph wore one. In an effort to explain the k’tonnet passim in the Joseph narrative, some scholars argue that the reason for it may lie in connections between the story of Tamar and Amnon, and the tale of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar (Genesis 38), which interrupts the Joseph story, and includes some shared features with it, not least, Tamar hiding her identity from her father-in-law, Judah.[5] Nevertheless, these connections do not adequately explain why Joseph wore a garment associated with a royal virgin princess.
In the absence of an explanation, we are left with Joseph’s ‘princess’ garment providing a gender-confounding visual cue to the life of an exceptional individual who acted in exceptional ways. Joseph was not just a shepherd like their brothers, Joseph was a dreamer, and their dreams revealed their exceptional calling: Joseph dreamt that their family were all binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly their sheaf stood up and remained upright, and then all the other sheaves gathered round and bowed down to their sheaf. Joseph dreamt that the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to them (Gen. 37.5-9).
Unsurprisingly, Joseph’s older brothers hated their father’s favourite (37.4). Meanwhile, even Jacob was angry and bewildered by Joseph’s dreams (37.10). But that did not stop Jacob being oblivious to the feelings of his other sons towards his favourite child, which is why he sent Joseph on an errand to go and see how they were, as they tended the flocks (37.12-17).
The scene was set for Joseph’s older brothers to wreak their revenge on the princess-garment-wearing dreamer. If it had not been for the actions of the eldest brother, Reuben, they would have killed Joseph. As it was, the fourth eldest, Judah, came up with a plan to sell Joseph to a travelling caravan of merchants[6] who took Joseph down to Egypt and sold him to Potiphar, a courtier and chief steward of Pharaoh. Meanwhile, Joseph’s k’tonnet passim continues to resonate. It is mentioned again, when the brothers strip Joseph of it before throwing him into a pit (37.23), and then having dipped the coat in the blood of a he-goat, all the brothers have to do is show it to their father for him to reach the obvious conclusions (37.32-33).
A dreamer with a special ‘princess’ garment. Further, another detail in the second verse of the Joseph story – ‘Joseph was a lad [na’ar] with the sons of Bilhah, and the sons of Zilpah, the wives of his father’ (37.2) – invited extraordinary rabbinic speculation. We read in B’reishit Rabbah, a collection of midrash that comments on the Book of Genesis, dated between 300 and 500 CE (84.7):
‘He was a lad’: he did youthful things [ma’aseih na’arut]. He touched up his eyes [m’mashmeish b’einav], he picked up his heels [m’talleh ba’akeivo], he fixed his hair [m’takkein b’sa’aro].
In his commentary, the eleventh-century French mediaeval scholar, Rashi,[7] quotes this passage, and also adds another detail about Joseph from further on in the story at Genesis chapter 39:
‘He was a lad’: he did youthful things [ma’aseih na’arut], he fixed his hair [m’takkein b’sa’aro], he touched up his eyes [m’mashmeish b’einav], in order that he should appear beautiful [nireh yafeh]
In the next chapter of the Joseph narrative, when Joseph is a slave in the house of Potiphar in Egypt, Joseph is described as ‘beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance’ [y’feih-to’ar vifeih mareh] (Genesis 39.6). This description is a prelude to what happens when Potiphar’s wife casts her eyes in Joseph’s direction (39.7). I will explore what transpires in more detail in a moment. Suffice it to say at this point that Rashi incorporates the reference to Joseph’s beauty into his comment about Joseph’s youthful behaviour, thereby reinforcing the description of Joseph in Genesis Rabbah 84.7 as a ‘lad’ who ‘touched up his eyes’, ‘picked up his heels’ and ‘fixed his hair’.
Rashi’s commentary on the next verse of B’reishit Rabbah (84.8), focuses on exploring the meaning of k’tonet passim from a linguistic point of view. He then goes on goes on to link Joseph’s k’tonnet passim with that worn by Tamar:
The same k’tonet passim is mentioned in the story of Tamar and Amnon (2 Samuel 13.18).
Taken together, we can see how the references to Joseph’s ‘princess’ garment and their ‘beauty’, informed Rashi’s comment about the ‘lad’ Joseph’s girl-like youthful activities. A later commentary has more to say, prompted by the phrase that follows ‘He was a lad’ in Genesis 37.2: ‘He was a lad with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah’. The plain meaning of the text is that Joseph was close in age to the sons of the handmaids. However, in Midrash Ha-Gadol, a thirteenth-century collection of Biblical commentary, we find this interpretation: [8]
‘He was a lad with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah’: ‘The sons of the handmaids would kiss him and embrace him [shehu b’nei ha-sh’fachot m’nash’kin u’m’gap’fin oto].
To the description of Joseph’s girl-like behaviour, Midrash Ha-Gadol adds the suggestion that Joseph attracted the sexual attentions of the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Clearly, rabbinic interpreters picked up on Joseph’s gender nonconformity long before contemporary readers began to ‘queer’ the text.[9] And no doubt, Joseph’s k’tonnet passim was a major signal.
The opening verses of Genesis chapter 37 paint a picture of Joseph that invited remarkable rabbinic interpretations. On the other hand, as it turned out, Joseph was destined for future greatness, and so one might argue that the purpose of the first three verses of the narrative is simply to introduce an exceptional character, set apart from other members of their family. But we cannot leave it there. With the opening verses in mind, the next stage of the Joseph story, related in Genesis 39, which begins with Joseph being ‘brought down to Egypt’ and purchased by Potiphar, ‘the captain of the guard’ (39.1), does much more than propel the action as Joseph moves from house-slave to prisoner to dream-interpreter to Pharaoh’s second-in-command. The encounter with Mrs Potiphar (Gen. 39.7 ff.) reinforces the gender-confounding image of Joseph at the heart of the story. On the one hand, the tale at this point simply conveys the vulnerability of Joseph the ‘Hebrew slave’ in the house of his Egyptian master – and mistress. And so, the reader understands why Joseph ran away, when she kept pleading with Joseph on successive occasions to ‘lie’ with her. On the other hand, this story within a story, opens by saying how ‘beautiful’ Joseph was, literally, ‘beautiful’. We read in Genesis 39.6:
Va-y’hi Yosef y’feih to’ar vifeih mareh – Now, Joseph was beautiful of form and beautiful in appearance.
At first glance, the reference to Joseph’s ‘beauty’ simply acts as a preamble, explaining why ‘his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph’ (Gen. 39.7). But this phrase is more than a statement about Joseph, it links Joseph directly with his mother, Rachel. We read in Genesis chapter 29 that when, as a young man, Jacob took flight from his brother Esau’s wrath, and went to his maternal uncle, Laban, for refuge, he encountered Rachel herding her father’s flock, and promptly fell in love with her. Laban wanted his nephew to marry his older daughter, but Jacob told Laban, boldly, that he would serve him for seven years for his younger daughter. Immediately prior to this offer, the Torah briefly explains Joseph’s choice (29.17):
V’einei Leah rakot; v’rachel hay’tah y’fat to’ar vifat mareh – While Leah had weak eyes, Rachel was beautiful of form and beautiful in appearance.
Hebrew is an entirely gendered language. The only difference between this phrase about Rachel and the later one about Joseph is that the verbs, nouns and adjectives associated with Rachel are in the ‘feminine’ gender and those associated with Joseph are in the ‘masculine’ gender. But the difference in gender only serves to underline the similarity between the two phrases. There is no getting away from it, the Hebrew root, Yud Pei Hei means to be ‘beautiful.’ So, Joseph was ‘beautiful’ as their mother Rachel was ‘beautiful’.
Intriguingly, Joseph’s ‘princess’ garment, proclaiming their uniqueness, continues to resonate in the text, even when it is conspicuously absent. In the incident with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph’s non-compliance is signalled by reference to ‘their garment’ [bigdo].[10] We read in Genesis 39.12-14:
She caught hold of them by their garment [bigdo] and said, ‘Lie with me!’ But they left their garment in her hand and got away and fled outside. / When she saw that they had left it in her hand and fled outside, / she called out to her servants and said to them, ‘Look, he brought us this Hebrew to play around with us! [l’tzachek banu[11]] He came to lie with me; but I screamed aloud’…
And then at 39.16-17:
She kept their garment beside her, until their master came home. / Then she told him the same story, saying, ‘The Hebrew slave whom you brought into our house came to play around with me; / but when I screamed at the top of my voice, he left his garment with me and fled outside.’
We are not told anything about Joseph’s garment in this encounter. The Hebrew noun, beged, is a general term, indicating an article of clothing without any distinctive features. However, these references remind the reader that Joseph was not always a ‘Hebrew slave’, but rather a favourite child, who once dressed in the robe of a princess. Moreover, the garment ‘left’ in the hand of Potiphar’s wife, serves as a commentary on Joseph’s vulnerability, favoured by God and appreciated by Potiphar, but nevertheless, a slave. I mentioned earlier that the incident begins with a description of Joseph’s beauty, immediately prior to that description, we read at 39.6:
He [Potiphar] left all that he had in Joseph’s hands and, with them there, he paid attention to nothing save the food that he ate. Now Joseph was beautiful of form and beautiful in appearance.
Potiphar left everything in Joseph’s hands. Did he also leave himself in Joseph’s hands? Was he captivated by his beautiful captive? Does that explain why Potiphar accorded Joseph such a special status in his household? Potiphar left everything in Joseph’s hands, except his wife, who, like Joseph, belonged to him. Potiphar’s wife: unnamed, she existed only in relation to her husband, who was also her master. The captive wife exercised the only power that she had: over the servants and slaves, who entered her domain.
So, what do we make of Joseph? To say the least, Joseph was utterly different from their brothers. Indeed, Joseph was as different from them as was their sister, Dinah, who was born immediately before Joseph (Gen. 30.21-24). Contrary to the impression given in Genesis 37.2 that Joseph was ‘a lad with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah’, Joseph’s closest sibling in age was Dinah. One wonders what Dinah made of the beautiful-dreamer? Dinah, too, had an exceptional status in the family, as the only daughter, and the story about her recounted in Genesis chapter 34 may be read as a cautionary tale to daughters, who have not yet understood that unlike their brothers, they are supposed to stay at home. When Dinah took the initiative and ‘went out to see the daughters of the land’, she was raped.[12] Joseph by contrast was sent by his father to look for their brothers. But still the errand did not go well. Nevertheless, despite being thrown into a pit, and then sold to a travelling caravan bound for Egypt, Joseph’s destiny was quite different. Indeed, the trajectory of Joseph’s experience went in the opposite direction: from victim of their brothers’ jealousy to victor. And yet, like Dinah, Joseph’s closest sibling, Joseph did not fit. A lone daughter in search of other daughters, Dinah learned a bitter lesson about the status of daughters in a patriarchal culture. Meanwhile, the only way that Joseph could find a place to be ‘Joseph’ was by becoming a stranger in a strange land.
The connection between these two siblings closest in age, and both marginalised in different ways, also concerns gender. As Robert Harris points out, from the time of the early rabbinic commentators, Joseph’s gender was an issue, even in the womb. This was because of the unique phenomenon of Leah giving birth to a daughter (Gen. 30.21), following the births of ten sons to three of Jacob’s four wives.[13] And then, immediately after the birth of Dinah, Rachel finally gave birth to a child: Joseph (Gen. 30.22-24).
The account of Dinah’s birth is short, but the language is significant. We read (Gen. 30.21):
And afterwards [V’achar], she bore a daughter, and called her name Dinah.
A midrash in the Babylonian Talmud reflects on the use of the words ‘and afterwards.’ The midrash also draws on the meaning of Dinah’s name, which is based on the Hebrew root, Dalet Yud Nun, to ‘Judge’. Interestingly, although Leah provides explanations for the names of each one of her sons, she does not explain why she called her daughter, Dinah. We read in B’rakhot 60a:
‘And afterwards she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah’ (Genesis 30.21). What is ‘and afterwards’ [mai v’achar]? Afterwards Leah judged against herself [l’achar she-Dinah Leah din b’atzmah], and said, ‘twelve tribes are destined to go out from Jacob, six have already gone out from me, and four from the handmaids; this is ten. If this [baby] is a male, my sister Rachel shall not [even] be like one of the handmaidens. Immediately, she was switched into a daughter, as it is said, ‘and she called her name Dinah’.
As mentioned, Joseph was born immediately after Dinah. Robert Harris cites the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 30.21, which suggests how Leah’s foetus came to be ‘switched’:
Then the prayer of Leah was heard from before [God] YY, and foetuses of their wombs were exchanged, and Joseph was given into the womb of Rachel, but Dinah into the womb of Leah.
Robert Harris also cites a comment In the Jerusalem Talmud B’rakhot 9.3, in which Rachel is the one who prays, and has the agency to switch her sister’s foetus from male to female:
R. Y’hudah bar Pazzi in the name of the house of Yannai: The essence (ikkar) of Leah’s pregnancy was male. After Rachel prayed, she was made female. That is: ‘And afterwards she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah.’
The notion of the switching of foetuses from male to female in Leah’s womb in order that Rachel might give birth to a male rather than a female, only serves to reinforce the gender-confounding portrayal of Joseph.
At the very end of the Joseph narrative, when Joseph was reunited with their brothers, Joseph reassured them: ‘Now do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you’ (Gen. 45.5). In this way, Joseph may be seen as a ‘messenger’ of God, a malakh, engaged in doing God’s ‘work’ (m’lakhah).
Joseph’s special mission was realised as the former slave took responsibility for saving Egypt from the seven-year famine that followed the seven years of plenty (Gen. 41.1ff.). We might say in that context, that the gender-confounding young dreamer turned out in the end to be an undisputed he. Indeed, as we read in Va-y’chi, the last portion of the Book of Genesis, Joseph’s story has a conventional happy ending that serves to normalise and integrate him. The first ‘diaspora’ Jew to make it, Joseph not only got to be Pharaoh’s second-in-command, he was also reunited with his family. But at the same time, the happy ending also conveys other messages. Exceptional Joseph ultimately survived by becoming an Egyptian and assuming a new identity. As an Egyptian vizier, Joseph’s transformation was complete, to the extent that their brothers failed to recognise at every encounter the dreamer who had provoked their rage, and so, finally, Joseph had to reveal their identity to them: ‘I am Joseph’ (Gen. 45.1). Pharaoh even gave Joseph a new name, Tzaf’nat Pa’nei’ach, and also ‘gave’ the newly named Tzaf’nat Pa’nei’ach, As’nat, the daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On, as a wife (41,39-45). To complete the picture of Joseph’s new identity, Joseph then became a father of two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (41:50-52). Further, although the re-made Egyptian Joseph made their brothers promise that they would carry up their bones, when God brought them up out of the land to the land promised to their ancestors (Gen. 50.25), the Book of Genesis nevertheless closes with an image of Joseph’s body being embalmed in the Egyptian manner (50.26).
Joseph the beautiful princess-garment wearing dreamer. Joseph the vulnerable slave, then prisoner. Joseph the powerful Egyptian overlord. Joseph wore a variety of different garments and many guises, transcending a simplistic understanding of who ‘Joseph’ was. Joseph: an exception that proves the rule. And yet, also a model and exemplar of another gender-confounding way of being human. Which brings us to the name Rachel gave her first child: Yoseph, which is based on the Hebrew root, Yud Sameich Pei, to ‘add’. As we try to make sense of Joseph, binary gender categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ do not suffice. Perhaps, what we need to do in order to encompass the complexity of Joseph and acknowledge fully Joseph’s qualities, is add a gender-fluid dimension of humanity between male and female.
Elli Tikvah Sarah
‘Queer Studies Panel’
BIAJS Conference, University of Bristol,10 July 2024
This paper is a slightly amended version of a section in ‘Triangulating Gender and Embodying Diversity’, chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, Judaism Beyond Binaries. I began to study the Joseph story in 2014, and gave a presentation on Joseph as part of my session, ‘Transgender / Transcending Gender and Binary Tyranny’ at the Day of Celebration to mark the 25th anniversary of the ordination of the first ‘out’ lesbian rabbis – the late, Sheila Shulman, Z”L, and myself – organised by Leo Baeck College, London, 23.06.14. Subsequently, I led a session on ‘Joseph: Reading Torah with LGBTQI+ Eyes’ on Shabbat Chanukkah 2014 at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue (20.12.14). More recently, Joseph was a major theme of my session on ‘Reading Torah with LGBTQI+ Eyes’ as part of an online Tikkun Leil Shavuot organised by Habonim Dror, Melbourne (28.05.20). Since 2014, a number of scholars have examined the Joseph narrative, most notably: Lefkovitz, Lori, ‘Not a Man: Joseph and the Character of Masculinity in Judaism and Islam’ in Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet and Beth S. Wenger, Ed., Gender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage, New York: New York University books, 2015, pp. 155-180. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296323263_Not_a_man_Joseph_and_the_character_of_masculinity_in_Judaism_and_Islam; Adelman, Rachel A., ‘“Passing Strange”: Gender Crossing in the Story of Joseph and Esther’ in her book, The Female Ruse: Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015, pp. 198-230
https://www.academia.edu/34088527/Passing_Strange_Gender_Crossing_in_the_Story_of_Joseph_and_Esther ; Harris, Robert A., ‘Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph’s Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature’, Association for Jewish studies Review 43.1, April 2019, pp. 67-104 https://www.academia.edu/40309867/SEXUAL_ORIENTATION_IN_THE_PRESENTATION_OF_JOSEPHS_CHARACTER_IN_BIBLICAL_AND_RABBINIC_LITERATURE ↑
The Joseph story occupies 13 chapters: Genesis 37 & 39-50. Chapter 37 concludes with Joseph being sold by his older brothers to merchants bound for Egypt. ↑
The Septuagint is also known as the LXX, the Roman numerals for ‘Seventy’. The first Latin translation, the Vulgate, follows the Greek: tunicam polymitam. Heath Dewrell points out that the LXX translation is based on the Aramaic, pas, ‘strip’ or ‘stripe’ (see: Jastrow, Marcus, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, one volume edition,, New York: the Judaica Press, 1982, p. 1191): Dewrell, Heath, ‘Tamara’s Veil Became Joseph’s Coat: The Meaning of K’tonnet (ha)Passim’, Biblica, Vol. 97, No. 2, 2016, pp.161-174 (p. 161), https://www.jstor.org/stable/43922802 ↑
See: Dewrell, Heath, 2016, p.166. ↑
Referencing other scholars, including the work of Umberto Cassuto, Dewrell notes connections between the Joseph and Judah-Tamar narratives: Dewrell, Heath, 2016, pp. 169-170. ↑
Ishmaelites – or Midianites – the Torah seems to include two versions of the tale (Gen. 37.25-36). ↑
Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Sh’lomoh Yitzchaki, Solomon ben Isaac, born in 1040 in Provence, France, where he spent most of his life, who died in 1105 in Worms, Rhineland. Rashi is famous for his commentaries on, both, the TaNaKh, the Hebrew Bible, and the Talmud. ↑
In his article, ‘Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph’s Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature’, Association for Jewish Studies Review, 43.1, April 2019, pp. 67-104, Robert A. Harris draws attention to this midrash (p. 73). Midrash Ha-Gadol is officially anonymous, but attributed to David ben Amram of Aden (in Yemen), known as ‘Adani’. It only came to the attention of European scholars in the nineteenth-century, having been brought to Europe in manuscript form in 1878, and sold to the Royal Library in Berlin (Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 11, p. 1515). ↑
Two ground-breaking Jewish books that focus on ‘queering’ the text: Drinkwater, Greg, Joshua Lesser and David Shneer, Torah Queeries. Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, Eds., New York: New York University Press, 2009; Ramer, Andrew, Queering the Text. Biblical, Mediaeval, and Modern Jewish Stories, Maple Shade, New Jersey: White Crane books, 2010. ↑
Without the suffix, ‘a garment’ is beged. ↑
The Hebrew root of l’tzahek – Tzadi Cheit Kuf – in the intensive active form known as, pi’el, means to ‘play around’. This expression is also used by Sarah of Ishmael ‘playing around’, m’tzacheik, with his younger half-brother, Isaac, Sarah’s son (Genesis 21:9). Isaac’s name, Yitzchak, means ‘he shall laugh’, and is a simple active (pa’al) form of the same Hebrew root. ↑
Gen. 34:1 ff. See my account of Dinah’s story in Trouble-Making Judaism, Chapter 5, ‘Gender Trouble and the Transformation of Judaism’. ↑
As Robert Harris points out (2016, p.84) that the singularity of the birth of a daughter is reflected in a break in the pattern of the verbal form used concerning all the previous births (Genesis 29.34-30.21). Instead of Va-teiled, ‘then she bore’, that is, the imperfect with the Vav Conversive, converting future meaning to past, in the case of Dinah, the verb is in the perfect: ‘And afterwards, she bore [yal’dah] a daughter’. ↑