"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student." (Soren Kierkegaard)
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Archived Articles: Good and Evil
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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON Prison Blues and Going Against the Grain Joseph has been languishing in prison since the last parasha. As parashat Miketz opens, Pharaoh will have his famous double nightmare involving cattle and stalks of wheat. Joseph will be pulled up from the dungeon and will interpret Pharaoh's dreams. But while the dream symbols are interesting and Joseph's life is about to take a turn toward rich-and-famous, let's pause to look at an often glossed-over element of the story: the imprisonment. What is the meaning, the purpose, of incarceration? The answer to the question is not so simple. Perhaps we need to consider the nature of the offense committed by the person who has been arrested. Perhaps we need to consider the cultural and historical contexts. A person jailed in ancient Egypt is in a situation which is quite different from someone jailed in the United States in the 21st Century. So how can we begin to figure out what imprisonment is about. A quick Google excursion to www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc82.html yielded this (I'm excerpting from the document. It is worth checking out the site. The document is not very long. The Psychological Effects of Imprisonment. The Purpose of Prison Historically, imprisonment was based on punishing those who wronged society, by inflicting suffering of the body – similar to the pound of flesh depicted within Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. In contrast to this concept, today’s imprisonment is no longer simply intended as an acute form of corporal punishment, but a method by which to work on a person's mind as well as his body, through 3 distinct areas – which include:
These 3 unique areas, when interlinked into a single process are intended to allow society to remove criminals from a position where they may continue their criminal behaviour, place them into an institution that satisfies the masses who desire some form of retribution, persuade other would be criminals that such activities are not beneficial, and in time sculpt them into productive and law abiding citizens through positive psychological conditioning who may later be re-integrated into society. In theory, such a concept fairs well – but unfortunately in reality, the large range of negative psychological experiences encountered within prison do not lead to this otherwise well thought out plan. Let us begin by looking at the textbook objectives and responsibilities of prisons – which once again are three.
Safe keeping generally comprises of keeping inmates locked away, counted, and controlled whilst allowing for isolated moments of welfare activities to satisfy needs through recreation, education and counseling. Unfortunately, the welfare and psychological freedom of the individual inmate does not depend on how much education, recreation, and counseling he receives but rather, on how he manages to live and relate with the others inmates who constitute his crucial and only meaningful world. It is what the prisoner experiences in this world; how he attains satisfaction, and how he avoids its detrimental effects through the adjustment process known as prisonization, that ultimately decides how, if ever, he will emerge. It has also been recognized, through simulations of prison environments, that lockups and isolation have the habit of dehumanizing prisoners by making them feel anonymous, and breeding ill feelings because of their rejection and condemnation by society as a whole. Likewise, it must be remembered that offenders have been drawn from a society in which possessions are closely linked with concepts of personal worth by numerous cultural definitions. However in prison, inmates find themselves reduced to a level of living near bare subsistence. Does any of this stuff help us with studying Torah? I think it does. keep in mind that within a few chapters, there are two different incarcerations. In last week's parasha, Joseph was wrongfully imprisoned due to the false claim that he attempted to rape Potiphar's wife. David Blumenfeld, citing a few midrashim (Conservative Judaism, Spring 2008. interesting article. I'd happy to pass it along to you.), tells us that Joseph languished in prison for 10 or 12 years. In chapter 42, Joseph jails all the brothers on the trumped up charge of espionage. They were detained for 3 days, at which point, Joseph released all of them except Shimon. Shimon might be characterized as a hostage being held in order to force the brothers to return with Benjamin. The length of Shimon's detention is not stated in the text. The above-cited website mentions three motivations for incarceration: They are punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. The last rationale - rehabilitation - does not seem to be part of the ancient institution of prison. Punishment certainly appears to be the motivation behind Joseph being imprisoned on the (false) attempted rape charges. The short term detention of the brothers appears to have been a temporary holding action that bought Joseph some time to figure out his next move. The ancient Egyptian prison guards liked Joseph - seems like everybody did. How did other, less-favored prisoners fare? Did Joseph find himself intoxicated with the power of jailing his brothers? Blumenfeld (in the above-cited article from Conservative Judaism) focuses on the Hebrew terms for the nouns "prison" [beit hasohar] and prisoner [asir], as well as the verb to imprison [vye'esor]. The root - samech, hei, reish - is shared by several older Near Eastern languages. "Sahar" is connected to grain. Prisoners, like Samson, were punished - and dehumanized - by being forced to grind flour, worked like oxen. The round or crescent shape of the dungeon was a distinct architectural feature of an ancient Near Eastern prison. How ironic - almost funny - that when Joseph impresses Pharaoh with his skill at deciphering dreams, he lands the big job of....collecting and tallying grain!! ...Must've driven him crazy. The puzzle gets even more interesting when we consider that Joseph's personal dreams - which include the brothers represented by sheaves of grain, bowing to his upright sheaf - moved the brothers to throw Joseph into the pit, a crude type of prison. Even Pharaoh's nightmare includes sheaves of grain! Three days doesn't seem like much, especially when you consider lengthy sentences of several years, or even a life-term. But the website at the end of this drash should dispel any illusions we have about "a few days in jail." The website takes us back to the famous (or infamous) Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. The experiment was supposed to last twelve days, but it was halted after six. Please - spend a few minutes clicking through the slide show within the website below; you will understand what a few days in prison means. In this case it was a fake prison - where the "prisoners," "guards," the professor (Philip Zimbardo), and the parents of the undergraduate male students - were all middle class Californians in Stanford. The effects upon everyone involved were profound. I expect that the taste of prison conjured up in the 1971 experiment is a drop in the bucket compared to the real thing. Factor in race, factor in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan. Zimbardo teaches us some painfully important lessons about prison and its effects upon the humans who occupy the space on either side of the bars. Shabbat Shalom,
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