The Gift of the Dreamy Brother

Joseph, the hero of the last great cycle of Genesis, is not remembered as the fourth patriarch (“The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, that’s how it will always be said instead). Joseph is the son of Jacob and Rachel, but, above all, Joseph is one of the brothers, and his story is a great lesson on the grammar of Biblical brotherhood (and ours). Jacob-Israel begot Joseph from Rachel, the woman with whom he fell in love at the well. His father had a special love for Joseph, an explicit and known preference. The text is not afraid to tell us, that Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons. For this reason he made him a robe of many colours. This coat was special and different from those of the other brothers. It was long, with sleeves that covered the palm of the hand, and maybe colourful and embroidered, too. For Thomas Mann – who will guide us in this last cycle of the Genesis – the coat was Rachel’s robe that her father Laban had given her for her wedding, and that had been bought from merchants and thought to have belonged to a king’s daughter once. Joseph was a dreamer and a teller of dreams: in this lies vocation his tragedy together with his resurrection.