We are told that Jacob “saw that there was shever in Egypt” (Gen. 42:1). What is “shever”?

Although it is normally translated as grain or provisions, in the Midrash, Rabbi Yohanan ties it to the word “sever” (Gen. R. 91:1), meaning “hope.”

The Midrash sets up an opposition between shever and sever: there was famine and there was plenty. Joseph was sold as a servant, Joseph became the ruler. The Children of Israel became slaves, the Children of Israel were freed.

Throughout the Joseph story, the interplay of opposites is a theme.

Joseph is the favored child (by his father), he is the hated child (by his brothers). He is adorned with a coat and stripped of his coat. He descends to the pit, ascends to Potiphar’s house, descends to jail, and ascends to Pharaoh’s palace. Joseph knows his brothers and acts as though he does not. He reveals himself in love, and the brothers react in fear.

Even the dreams of Joseph and Pharaoh embody this oppositional movement. In Joseph’s dreams, the older serve the younger. In Pharaoh’s dreams, the weak cows consume the strong ones. There is an intertwining of strength and weakness, age and youth, dark and light.

No biblical character is without flaws, no act without repercussions, no statement single in its implications. The Torah is a sustained argument against simplemindedness and single meanings. Jacob is named Israel and is nonetheless the patriarch responsible for taking his family to Egypt; Joseph is the savior of his people who names his children to represent forgetfulness of his old home and prosperity in the new and still exacts a promise to have his remains brought back to the home he has never truly forgotten.

We just celebrated Hanukkah, which is a military victory and yet the motto of the holiday is, “Not by might, nor by power but by My spirit, says the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). Everything contains something of its opposite, all things interpenetrate, and each flicker of the candle is a dance against the darkness.