This week’s Torah reading of Vayeshev begins the story of Joseph and his brothers, which takes up the remainder of the book of Genesis. At least, this is how the book’s narrative structure is normally understood. Yet seeing the text this way leads the reader to connect Joseph’s prescient dreams of stalks, stars, sun, and moon bowing down to him, with which the parashah begins, with what comes later, but not before. Lazarre Simckes, drawing on the modern psychological understanding of dreams as reflections of previous experiences, seeks to understand this passage with reference to the story that precedes it:

Studying the narrative leading up to the dreams will indicate that Joseph has indeed gone through significant trauma. By analyzing his astonishing dreams as we would those of a trauma survivor, we find that they do indeed have a direct source in his past, particularly the traumatic encounter with Esau and his 500 armed men, in which his terrified family all bow down to Esau, starting with Jacob, seven times to the ground, followed by the concubines and their children, Leah and her children, and finally Joseph and his mother Rachel (Genesis 33:3-7). The Joseph saga, then, begins at age seven, not seventeen, and the critical figure in the saga is Esau.

Joseph and Jacob are both entangled with Esau. Jacob played Esau to gain the birthright, and Joseph played Esau in his dreams, becoming the person the family bows down to instead of Esau to erase Esau’s potential power over the family.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.