In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeshev, Joseph is cast into a Biblical version of solitary confinement. After boasting of his future successes and power over his siblings, the brothers plot to kill Joseph before deciding to throw him into a pit. Soon after, they remove him from the pit and sell him into servitude. While there is plenty to say about the human rights violations at play here, I want to focus on the conditions described in the pit, where Joseph is left alone, vulnerable, confined to the depths of the earth.
The Torah says, “And they took him (Joseph) and cast him into the pit; now the pit was empty and there was no water in it” (Genesis 37:24). But why is it necessary to say that there isn’t any water in the pit? Isn’t it obvious since it was empty? Rashi, quoting Tractate Shabbat 22a, teaches that not only was there no water in the pit, to imply that Joseph had no means of satiating himself, there were snakes and scorpions in the depths that posed a threat to Joseph’s life. Joseph, alone and endangered, was in a form of solitary confinement.
Prof. Lisa Guenther describes modern-day solitary confinement in a New York Times op-ed, “The Living Death of Solitary Confinement.” In her description of “living in the black hole” of solitary, human beings become “unhinged” due to a lack of human contact. “They experience intense anxiety, paranoia, depression, memory loss, hallucinations and other perceptual distortions.” Yet inmates are often not put into solitary confinement for the severity of their crimes; in fact an “inmate can be sent to the hole for failing to return a meal tray, or for possession of contraband (which can include anything from weapons to spicy tortilla chips).”
In our Torah portion, Joseph is thrown into the pit for boasting about his dreams and his multicolored coat, not to mention being the favorite son. But does this warrant the punishment of being thrown into the depths of the earth, left alone to suffer? We have a moral and ethical responsibility as Jews to speak up against solitary confinement. We cannot allow people to be treated like Joseph, to be simply cast aside into a darkness filled with scorpions and snakes in the form of psychological impairments and lack of the presence of community.
Rabbi Isaac Avraham Kook (Ein Ayah vol. III, pp. 67-8) suggests that, alternatively, the pit is a metaphor for Galut, for exile, and in Joseph’s case it represents the beginning of a period of turmoil for the Jewish people, exiled from their land. Although Joseph’s pit was deadly because of the presence of scorpions and snakes, Rav Kook notes that there are other pits that, even when actually empty, may be filled with water and transformed into useful pits. Ultimately, I hope that we can follow the model of Rav Kook and find productive ways to turn these pits of confinement into wells of opportunity to reform our prison system, and nurture prisoners toward rehabilitation and repentance.
May the story of Joseph be a reminder to us that we must not allow others to experience the Galut, the exile of “the pit” and instead find just ways to treat everyone with dignity.
