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Let us continue. When he became viceroy of Egypt, he married an Egyptian: Osnat, daughter of the priest Potifera. True, the Talmud invented a bizarre story to explain that in reality she was not Egyptian at all but. . . Jewish; that she was in fact the daughter of Dinah, Joseph’s sister, kidnapped at birth and left with Potifera. Of course, nobody was supposed to know this, not even Joseph, who did not realize that in marrying Osnat he was marrying his own niece. A convenient story, no doubt. But the fact that the Midrash felt compelled to invent it strongly indicates that misalliance there was.

According to all evidence, Joseph tried to adapt to his newly found country. One of his sons he named Menashe: For God has made me forget all my tribulations and the house of my father. And the other, Ephraim: For God has made me bear fruit in the land of my misery. The Midrash, as usual, goes further yet: When Jacob met his grandsons, he found them so alienated that he could not recognize himself in them. Is that the portrait of a Tzaddik? Jacob, says the Midrash, did not forget what he had studied—Joseph did. Joseph, the assimilated Jew.

Remember: during the long years of separation, Joseph, now a powerful prince, did nothing to obtain news of his father. Yet spying was common practice in those days and there were countless caravans. Why, then, did he let his elderly father, who had loved him so, despair and mourn for him? He was angry with his brothers, that we understand. But why did his father deserve such shabby treatment?

Later, when his brothers were brought before him, he sought only to ridicule them, to take his vengeance. Instead of inquiring about his father and his younger brother, he demanded hostages; instead of feeding them, he made them tremble with fear. Weeks and weeks went by before he deigned to reassure them. Ten times he heard his brothers refer to their father as Your servant Jacob, and unmoved, neither protested nor betrayed himself. Indeed, that cost him dearly. For every humiliating mention he did not acknowledge, he paid with one year of his life. He died at a hundred and ten, not at a hundred and twenty as had been planned. But forgetting the issue of crime and punishment, the question is whether a man so lacking in respect for his father’s honor deserved the title of Tzaddik bestowed upon him by tradition.

Joseph had adopted Egyptian customs and tradition to the point that his brothers did not recognize him—which speaks in their favor rather than his. Luxury is more corrupting than poverty, happiness more corrosive than misery. In their eyes he was a foreigner, a man who had left his people, repudiated his roots; nothing remained of his childhood. No wonder they began by looking for him in the quarter reserved for prostitutes.

And yet. Joseph was and remains—in tradition and legend—a Tzaddik. Why? By virtue of his deeds? Inevitably, we stumble on that question once more.