When Pharaoh accepted Joseph’s interpretation of his dreams, Joseph was given the opportunity to prepare for the approaching catastrophe in Egypt that he predicted.

Having requisitioned the surplus grain during the seven good years, Joseph now heads a state monopoly. First, he sells grain for gold and silver. Then he takes the people’s livestock. Finally, the people offer their lands and themselves to Pharaoh in exchange for food, and Joseph moves them away from their rural roots into the cities to work for Pharaoh.

Joseph, however, did not take away the land of the priests, “because they had a royal right enshrined in law to be maintained by Pharaoh (Exodus 47:22 ).” A sort of royal pension. Why not? In the ancient world, the priesthood did not just have a religious functionary role. It was also a powerful aristocracy, an administrative bureaucracy, and the equivalent of modern social welfare and educational systems. The priesthood was, in effect ,the arm of the king in running the country. This was similar in countless nations throughout history.

The reason Joseph did not take over their lands might have been because he needed allies. Just as medieval kings couldn’t always do what they wanted to with barons and other rich landowners, so too Joseph in Egypt — even if it was an autocratic state and the monarch was divine — had to make political concessions because he needed their services to run the land.

The Torah’s attitude toward priests was very different from that of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians. The Torah wanted everyone to have the status of priests, as it says: “ You will be a nation of priests”(Exodus 19:6). Originally, the firstborn of every family was intended to be responsible for the functions of the priests, both religious and civil. But then Moses appointed Aaron to establish the priesthood, which turned into a hereditary aristocracy. and they too had responsibility for education and welfare. Even so, the Torah wanted to dilute the priests’ power, and forbade them from owning tribal lands, unlike the Egyptians.

If the Torah’s aim toward the priests was to control their lust for wealth and power, it failed. Throughout the two kingdoms and two temples, the priesthood more often than not was greedy, corrupt, and failed in its mission (with notable exceptions of course). Only occasionally did it offer spiritual leadership. With the destruction of the Second Temple, it lost its raison d’être, even if we nowadays maintain a vestige of priestly customs in memory of the historical priesthood.

Perhaps the message is that a meritocracy is preferable to an aristocracy, even if meritocracies can also be misused.

But there’s another aspect to this whole Egyptian saga that intrigues me. Why was Joseph written out of Egyptian history so that a later king did not even know who he was? Was it because we don’t always appreciate our benefactors, and often try to avoid remembering our debts? Perhaps it was a Marxist critique of capitalism, and the masses resented Joseph for exploiting them for Pharaoh, if not for himself? Was it envy or prejudice on behalf of the priests because he was an outsider and had overcome adversity? Or was it an early form of antisemitism, and nothing has changed over the thousands of years since?

Shabbat Shalom.

The author is a rabbi and writer, currently based in New York.

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