This is the week in Torah where, year after year, we have to suffer seeing 17-year old Joseph thrown into a pit. His brothers – older, rougher – cannot abide Joseph, the dreamer, the tattletale, the wearer of too-colorful clothing.
There is something they cannot stand about this kid’s self-importance when Joseph tells them he dreamt that one day they will bow down to him. They stew; they seethe. And we, the helpless readers, know by now that it is true, one day they will bow down to him, but we, in knowing that, still cannot save him. The brothers conspire to kill him. One brother, Reuben, talks them down to just casting him in the pit. Selling him to slave traders is an afterthought.
You know that I have written extensively about Joseph’s gender, at all the hints Torah throws at us that Joseph is not exactly what he seems. Torah talks about his clothing, his beauty, his birthing knees, his sympathetic womb. The sages of old see these hints too, and they scurry to clarify the matter of Joseph’s gender. The text doesn’t mean what it seems to say, they keep insisting, when Joseph is compared to women in Torah over and over.
Poor Joseph, bullied by brothers, with our ancient rabbis also piling on, trying to convince us that it didn’t have anything to do with Joseph’s gender or Joseph’s queerness.
This portion always lands hard with me, even though I already know and foresee the rest of Joseph’s journey. In this week’s portion we are still with young Joseph, still a kid being thrown in a pit. This portion lands hard, and so this week’s news that the Sutter system has stopped providing gender-affirming care for transgender minors is bitterly timed. Because this turn of events is the work and the reward of bullies.
Who are the bullies? Who are the ones rabble-rousing against trans kids? Who are willing to pick off the least enfranchised, the least defended members of our families and communities. Who are these bullies who are willing to sacrifice our children and throw them in a pit? What is behind it? Is it hatred? Is it religion? Does it come from deep in their gut? Or is it cynical, the work of politics, because you can score lots of points off of them without much worry about the consequences? These politicians and pundits, petty bullies installed in the government, threatening everyone’s funding who doesn’t do their bidding, and all of it tracing back to the biggest bully, the one squatting in the White House.
I don’t consider Sutter to be a bully. Not a frontline bully. They are scared. What if they lose funding for all the things that the government reimburses them for in the delivery of health care? They are scared. But they have now officially responded to their fear by doing the bully’s work. By doing the thing the bully had not yet even asked for.
I am sure each of us can remember – I know I can – a time or many times that we witnessed bullying and kept silent. Out of fear maybe. Fear of exposure. Fear of violence. I’ll bet you don’t have to think very long for an example in your life. Certainly in mine. I remember times I saw and I understood and I felt too frightened or too vulnerable or too uncertain or too weak to try to stop it. I think every queer kid for sure has those moments. And maybe so does everyone else. And we live with those moments for the rest of our lives. But we are not proud of them. And it is hard to know what the teshuvah is for that, when you reach the point of no longer remembering the details, but still keenly remembering the sensation.
I understand Sutter’s fear. And Kaiser, which has also now limited gender-affirming care for minors. Sure, they have much at risk. Hard decisions to make. But nothing makes it okay to sacrifice our trans children, and the most vulnerable in their care. Shame on them. Shame.
At the end of the story, Joseph has found their way, through luck or destiny or cleverness, into a position of tremendous power in Egypt. The brothers bow down as prophesied in Joseph’s dream. Their safety and well-being are now in Joseph’s hands; they are at Joseph’s mercy. And Joseph shows mercy – rachamim in Hebrew, a word that comes from the Hebrew for “womb.” Joseph forgives their bullies. They are no threat to Joseph now.
Like Joseph, some of our transgender kids will be the future leaders, visionaries, CEOs, presidents. And we will then see the quality of their mercy. But for many kids, this is a terrible, traumatic blow that will be hard to move through and recover from. We want them to survive. We want them to flourish. We want the bullies off our children.
And so it is up to us to remember back to our own silence in the face of bullies of the past and to choose a different course now. This is the teshuvah for all of those moments. To stand up fiercely now, mama bears, all of us. To write letters. To call legislators. To protest. To sit in. To put our symbolism and our stories and our bodies on the line. To support the resistance that will arise inside Sutter and Kaiser. And to be ready to be part of whatever new Undergroud Railroad our kids are going to need. Let us commit to pulling them out of the pit, so they can grow up as their true selves – strong, colorful truth-tellers, filled with dreams, finding their own power, and free, like Joseph at last, to choose mercy.