Pope John XXIII (1881-1963)

The encounter between the biblical Joseph and his brothers twenty years after they sold him into slavery, an event that inspired me to write the poem below, is among the most emotionally dramatic and heartfelt meetings between brothers in all of scripture. The resolution of their conflict has important implications for us and for the numerous religious, cultural, ethnic, and national groups in America and around the world. In this era of polarization, inter-group and inter-religious distrust and tensions, the story of Joseph and his brothers can be regarded as a corrective healing template. See the book of Genesis, chapters 37 to 50.

Pope John XXIII (1881-1963) thought so much of the encounter between Joseph and his brothers that he quoted the text: “I am Joseph, your brother” (Heb. אני יוסף אחיכם – Ani Yosef Achichem) (Genesis 45:4) to a delegation of 130 American Jewish leaders associated with the United Jewish Appeal in the Vatican on October 17, 1960, five years before the Second Vatican Council published its revolutionary document Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time” or “In Our Age”) in 1965. That document augured the Catholic Church’s modern approach to non-Christian religions, particularly Judaism and Islam, but also to other Christian religious streams. The document emphasized our shared humanity, common values, and the importance of interfaith dialogue, and it affirmed Judaism’s, Christianity’s, and Islam’s shared spiritual roots in the biblical Abraham while rejecting historical condemnations of one religion or other religious streams. 

The moral message in the Joseph stories and in Nostra Aetate is simple – the more commonality we feel with those who are unlike us, the more empathy we will experience and the greater will be the likelihood that we will reach out and act with a sense of shared responsibility in times of need, persecution, poverty, hate, bigotry, and a people’s powerlessness.  

The bronze bust of Pope John XXIII pictured above was given by the Pope to my aunt and uncle – Dr. Max W. and Fay Bay – when they met with the Pontiff in the Vatican in the early 1960s. My uncle was the President of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles and my aunt was a beloved and respected leader in the Women’s Division of the United Jewish Appeal when they represented Los Angeles Jewry in a meeting with the Pope.

Fay and Max left the bust to me in their will, and I treasure it because it represents a new era in the relationship between the worldwide Catholic Church and the Jewish people, and it recalls my loving memories of my mother’s oldest sister (there were ten siblings) and her husband.

Here is my poem:

I can’t stop the dreams in the night / Even while awake I gaze the light / My mother died my father sighed / And wondered about my dreams.

Trusting a man along the way / I found my brothers lying in wait / To banish me from family and home / And send me far away.

They could not utter even my name / They cast me down and spat me away / They broke my father’s heart and claimed / That I had passed away.

My name was written in the stars / But I became a slave and was scarred / And as flesh in a woman’s lustful heart / Who also cast me away.

Her master incensed sent me to Sheol / But still a seer I glimpsed a glow / And blessings bubbled into my dreams / As I wondered about my way.

Alas I was given a royal reprieve / And brought to a place beside the King / I served him long and faithfully / And continued to dream my dreams.

My heart shut down over twenty odd years / My love poured into cold desert tears / I amassed power and instilled much fear / While serving at the pleasure of the King.

My brothers came their faces forlorn / Begging for bread before the throne / Thinking me Viceroy with scepter in hand / Not Joseph of their family clan.

My grandfather re-dug his father’s wells / Seeing my brothers the waters swelled / Into my steeped-up and hardened heart / I opened to love again.

I forgave them all and brought them near / Saved them from their desert fears / Settled them safely amongst their peers / As God intended over all those years.

• Poem composed by Rabbi John L Rosove