Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

This week we come to the climax of the Joseph story. Joseph has framed his brother Benjamin and threatens to enslave him in Egypt while allowing the other brothers to return to their father, Jacob, in Canaan. In the next 32 verses Judah delivers a passionate speech culminating in the plea to allow him take Benjamin’s place and permit the lad to return home to his father. Joseph can no longer control himself. His emotional dam breaks; his sobbing is so intense that everyone in the palace can hear it. Then he reveals his identity to his siblings with the words, “I am Joseph your brother….”

In 1960, Pope John XXIII met with a group of 130 Jewish leaders in the Vatican. He greeted them with the words, “I am Joseph, your brother.” He could not have chosen better words. Pope John XXXIII had been baptized Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, “Giuseppe” being Italian for “Joseph”. He was also a true “brother” of the Jewish People. In the 1940s he used his offices to help save Jews from the Nazis. After the war he was a strong supporter of the establishment of a Jewish State. As Pope he was responsible for the document called Decretum de Judaeis which declared that Jews at the time of Jesus were not responsible for Jesus’ death, nor did Jews in subsequent generations bear any guilt for Jesus’ death. He changed the language of the Good Friday Mass to remove a negative reference about Jews. And he set in motion the Second Vatican Council that would revolutionize the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish People.

It is interesting to speculate on the deeper meaning of the Pope’s allusion to the Joseph story in his meeting with these Jewish leaders. According to Pat Marrin of the National Catholic Reporter, “one interpretation might be that the pope saw the tragic separation of Christianity from its Jewish family roots as a temporary trial meant to be resolved.” Or he writes, Pope John XXXIII may have seen himself as the embodiment of Catholicism in exile in “Egypt”, wounded by the separation from the Jewish faith and awaiting healing through reconciliation with the older sister religion of Judaism.

The revolution and evolution in the theological understanding of the Catholic Church toward the Jews over the past 60 years has been profound. Unfortunately, it seems to me that few Jews know about it! I hope this brief note will encourage my readers to learn more.

joseph Recognized by his Brothers by The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0