I’m a bit delayed in posting to the blog this week. I was inspired in reading this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeshev, (Genesis 37:1-40:23) which begins the story of Joseph. Joseph is a dreamer, an outsider both at home and when he is sold into slavery in Egypt, and a queer icon! The topic of Joseph, gender, and sexuality is one that I hope to explore in more depth in future posts and/videos.
In reading his story this year, I was profoundly moved by the sense of displacement and related deeply to the difficulty of standing out in contexts that value sameness. Through the character of Joseph, I explore the quest: What does it mean to belong?
If only it had been a cloak of invisibility. Your mistake was being too colorful in a world of black and white tones. letting the words spill from your mouth into a waterless pit filled with snakes and scorpions. When the house falls down and you step through the portal into a world of kings and gods Palaces cupbearers lustful eyes who do you become? There is no place like home. No place is home for beautiful goatherds who dream.
Rabbi Lindsey Healey-Pollack 