Word: אחד, ehad, “one”
Context: חלום פרעה אחד הוא, “Pharaoh’s dream is one” (41:25 and again in 41:26)
Interpretation: Yosef says this statement twice at the beginning of his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, as if to emphasize that his ability to understand the dreams relies on his belief in their unity. The Egyptian magicians could not interpret Pharaoh’s dreams correctly because they thought of Pharaoh’s two dreams as separate — the Torah says, “There was no one who could interpret them [plural] to Pharaoh” (41:8). But Yosef, who understands that the world is run by one God, can see that all that happens in it is of a singular, unified, directed nature. Your two dreams are really one, he says, both uncovering for you the divine plan for the future.
Wider Context: The word אחד is a leitwort, a significant, repeated thematic word, in this week’s parsha, appearing 13 times. Contained inside this word is another word which appears even more frequently (37 times), the word for brother, אח. Our heartbreaking story of family strife is moving inexorably towards its stunning conclusion — the reunification of the brothers, the coming together of the children of Israel as one. Kulanu bnei ish ehad nahnu, “We are all children of one father (42:11 and 13),” the brothers claim, strangely but significantly, as a defense against the accusation of spying. It is as if they intuit subconsciously that this is indeed what matters here, to Yosef, and to the divine plan, that this is the direction they need to head in — reuniting as the children of one man.
Yosef, whose very name means “gatherer,” is an instrument for seeing and bringing about unity in the world. Though he started out his life by causing the divide, he gradually becomes the orchestrator of unity. Et ahay anokhi mevakesh, “It is my brothers that I seek (37:16),” he says just before he is sold by his brothers to Egypt. And now, indeed, it is his brothers, and their unity, that he seeks, creating a situation — by demanding that Binyamin be brought to him — for them all to be together in one place.
The book of Bereishit is a book of sibling rivalry and of exclusion in each generation, but it ends with a family united, twelve sons of Yaakov who all together carry on the legacy as a single nation.
Message: Yosef is a harbinger of the messianic era. The world began as אחד and one day will return to this unity, when the whole world will see and understand its true אחד-ness — “On that day, God will be one and His name will be one.” Bayom hahu yehiyeh Hashem ehad ushemo ehad.
We live in a fragmented world. We often feel ourselves separate and isolated and in competition with one another, yearning for a sense of belonging, to relax into being part of something larger. We remind ourselves to move in this direction, to sense the unity undergirding the fragmentation, each time we recite the Shma, ending in the word ehad; God is one and the world is one.
May we wake up from the dream of Pharaoh, from our dream-like experience of multiplicity and know that, the truth is as Yosef saw it — חלום פרעה אחד הוא — Pharaoh’s dream — all the multiplicity and separateness we think we see — is really one.
Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels
