What does Joseph’s Inkwell Mean?

The story of Joseph begins when he is a teenager struggling to find a sense of belonging in a complicated world. Rabbis have suggested that while his brothers worked in the fields, Joseph was singled out by his father to learn how to read and write in order to run the household and one day lead his tribe. His gift of literacy and numeracy, which will eventually save his life and his people, gets him into trouble at a young age.

Joseph is thrown into three different “wells", each with its own challenges and risks to his life. The first is the physical well at the hands of his brothers who envy him. The second is the yoke of slavery when he is sold into servitude of a foreign empire. And the third is when he is wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit and thrown into prison. Each time, Joseph uses his talent for interpretation and storytelling to save his life. Eventually, Joseph’s intellectual gifts and connection to his faith help him rise out of the depths of the “well” and into a position of opportunity to make a profound difference.

There is a Russian children’s tale that my family tells about a kitten who is drowning in a barrel of milk. The kitten is so determined to live that he tirelessly churns the milk with his little paws, turning it into solid butter and is able to escape to safety.

Using sacred imagination, (some would call it midrash), I imagine that when Joseph was deep in each “well”, he would churn his way out of what felt like an impossible situation through his ability to use ink, or write and story-tell his way to safety.

My hope is to call on my peers to do the same. Let us use our experiences and our voices to free ourselves from external projections onto our Jewish generation.

Let’s write and tell our own story.

(c) Yosef by Shoshannah Brombacher (image used with permission by the artist).