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Parshat Miketz: How Outside the Box Thinking Can Lead to Salvation
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
“Experts are often wrong — but rarely in doubt.” On the evening of October 15, 1987, Michael Fish went on BBC television to do what he had done reliably for years: give the weather forecast.
Before signing off, he added a few words of reassurance. Earlier that day, he told viewers, a woman had rung the BBC saying she had heard there was a hurricane on the way. “Well, if you’re watching,” Fish said with calm authority, “don’t worry, there isn’t.”
A few hours later, the Great Storm of 1987 tore through southern England, with winds exceeding 120 miles an hour. Eighteen people were killed. Fifteen million trees were uprooted. Roofs disappeared, power lines collapsed, and entire landscapes were altered overnight.
It was the Jewish festival of Shemini Atzeret, marking the end of Sukkot, and hundreds of sukkahs were caught up in the chaos, blown down and destroyed.
In the town of Sevenoaks, Kent, six of the seven famous oak trees that gave the place its name were ripped out of the ground. The town, it should be noted, was not subsequently renamed Oneoak. Instead, with its identity so closely tied to multiple oaks, Sevenoaks replanted seven new ones — so that today, Sevenoaks actually has eight oak trees.
Michael Fish, it is also worth noting, kept his job.
The financial crash of 2008 followed a similar script. For years beforehand, economists, regulators, and financial institutions spoke confidently about risk being “priced in” and markets being fundamentally sound. Complex models reassured everyone that the system was stable, even resilient.
And then, almost overnight, it wasn’t. Banks collapsed, markets froze, pensions evaporated, and ordinary people paid a terrible price.
In the countless Congressional hearings and post-mortems that followed, an uncomfortable truth emerged: the warning signs had been visible for some time. Housing prices had become detached from reality. Subprime mortgages were being packaged into investment products that were anything but safe. Leverage was out of control, and incentives rewarded recklessness rather than restraint.
But the prevailing assumptions were so entrenched that few within the system were willing — or able — to see where the patterns were leading.
Closer to home, and far more devastating, was October 7, 2023. Israel’s intelligence agencies and the IDF are widely regarded as among the most sophisticated military and intelligence establishments in the world, staffed by brilliant analysts with unparalleled access to data, surveillance, and human intelligence.
And yet, the attack — which resulted in wholesale slaughter, rape, destruction, and kidnappings — came as a profound shock.
In the weeks and months that followed, it emerged that Hamas’ preparations had not been invisible. There were signals: training exercises, intercepted communications, and anomalies that, in retrospect, now seem glaring.
But they were filtered through assumptions about deterrence, capability, and intent — assumptions that dulled their significance. The unthinkable was discounted precisely because it was unthinkable.
What links all these failures — and many others throughout history — is not a lack of information, talent, or effort. In each case, the data existed, the signs were there, and the patterns were discernible.
What was missing was not expertise, but the ability to step back from the details, challenge prevailing assumptions, and recognize what the information was really pointing toward. The experts were using familiar methods to analyze the evidence, but no one was assembling the full picture.
And this is precisely the failure that lies at the heart of the opening section of Parshat Miketz. Pharaoh is disturbed by two vivid dreams and acts as any leader facing uncertainty would: he calls on his ancient think tank of experts.
Egypt’s seasoned magicians and dream interpreters are brought before him, a group akin to today’s specialized advisory committees, with a long track record of success, grounded in a deep familiarity with the symbolic language of dreams. According to the Midrash, they do not sit in baffled silence but offer interpretations that are clever, confident, and internally coherent. And yet, for all their sophistication, they fail to satisfy Pharaoh.
Pharaoh’s dreams themselves are not especially obscure. In the first, he sees seven healthy, well-fed cows emerge from the Nile, only to be swallowed whole by seven gaunt, famished cows that remain just as emaciated after consuming them. In the second, seven full, robust ears of grain are consumed by seven thin, scorched ears–and once again, the weaker do not benefit from swallowing the stronger.
The imagery is unsettling but not incomprehensible, and the parallels between the two dreams are obvious. The experts in Pharaoh’s court duly get to work, analyzing the symbols and offering a range of plausible explanations. But for all their ingenuity and proficiency, they fail to grasp what Pharaoh senses instinctively: these dreams are not puzzles to be decoded, but warnings demanding a response.
So who will decode the dreams? At that moment, Pharaoh’s chief butler remembers that his own dream–and that of the royal baker–had been interpreted some two years earlier by a young Hebrew slave when they were all together in prison. “Get Joseph,” he tells Pharaoh.
Joseph is hastily summoned, shaved, and brought before the king. But why would Joseph have an edge over the experts? What was his secret? The Torah never spells it out explicitly, but the answer is not difficult to discern.
Joseph succeeds where the experts fail because he approaches the dreams in an entirely different way. The magicians of Egypt focus on the imagery, on what each cow or ear of grain might symbolize.
Joseph steps back and looks for structure. He notices that the dream is repeated, which tells him it is certain. He sees the symmetry of seven followed by seven, and abundance followed by collapse. Most importantly, he recognizes urgency.
This is not so much dream interpretation as it is pattern recognition. And clearly Joseph is not interested in impressing Pharaoh with his brilliance; he is far more interested in preparing Egypt for what is about to come.
A striking insight offered by the Izhbitzer Rebbe, Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner, sharpens this point even further. Repetition, he explains, signals that events have already moved from possibility to determination. When something appears just once, it remains fluid, subject to change and human choice. But when it happens twice, the process is already in motion.
That is why Joseph tells Pharaoh that the matter has been firmly decided by God and is imminent. The dreams are not symbolic riddles; they are revelations of a reality already unfolding. Egypt no longer has the luxury of asking what the dreams mean. The only meaningful question left is how to respond.
So many modern experts, for all their intelligence and sophistication, end up resembling the soothsayers of ancient Egypt more than Joseph. They are not foolish, and they are not careless. But they are trained to work within established frameworks, to refine existing models, and to interpret data in ways that confirm prevailing assumptions. When reality begins to shift, those habits become liabilities.
Joseph represents a different kind of wisdom. He is willing to question the framework itself, to notice when repetition signals momentum, and to understand that clarity imposes responsibility. The challenge Miketz leaves us with is not whether we respect expertise, but whether we are prepared to move beyond it — to step back, see the pattern, and act before the storm is already upon us.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
The post PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors appeared first on The Forward.
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Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide
(JTA) — The Church of England’s legislative body voted Monday to encourage churches across England to engage with a document produced by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide despite requests from Jewish organizations and Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The document is titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” and is also known as Kairos II, after the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine that produced it. It describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism,” and says decades of “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vote on Monday does not adopt the accusations as church doctrine but says the church should hear the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians,” and to engage with them in order to better understand the conflict.
Ahead of the debate in York, several Jewish organizations expressed concerns, and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis asked Synod members to reject the amendment. Mirvis called Kairos II “deeply concerning” and that it “risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building” between Christians and Jews.
“It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood,” he said.
Afterwards, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, issued a statement calling the passage of the motion “highly problematic.”
“Kairos Palestine may come from a place of genuine pain, but the falsehoods and distortions of Kairos II, including its erasure of Jewish identity and experience, is a prescription for more division and not the answer to conflict in the Middle East,” he said.
“This document reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people. As a pastor, I hear the cry of our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers — a cry that rises from the ruins of Gaza, and from the violence and oppression of the West Bank,” she said.
She added, ”I also hear the concerns of the chief rabbi, the co-leads of the Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Board of Deputies, and I thank them for their honesty.” She said the church remained opposed to antisemitism and committed to safety for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
The Synod debate followed Mullally’s visit to the West Bank in June, where she met Palestinian Christian communities in Birzeit. During the visit she said, “I will use my role as Archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve.”
The debate marks the ascendance of Israel-related issues in another major church, after the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV angered Jewish groups soon after being elected last year by endorsing an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown
(JTA) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has weighed in against antisemitism after officials in his Indiana town say a costly fire may have been caused by arson to an Israeli flag displayed on a local barn.
The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.
Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.
“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”
On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.
“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”
The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.
The post Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown appeared first on The Forward.
