In this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, Jacob blesses Joseph and gives him Shechem. The city of Shechem seems like a strange inheritance to leave to Joseph, since it was the place where he was thrown into a pit and sold by his brothers, a site of profound personal trauma. One might expect Shimon or Levi to inherit Shechem, as they had killed the male inhabitants of the city and thus had already subdued it.
Shechem was much more than the setting for these violent acts. It was also the place of blessing for Abraham, as the Torah records: “And Abraham passed through the land until he reached Shechem…and God appeared to Abraham and said, ‘To your seed will I give this land,’ and Abraham built an altar there to God.”
Perhaps the reason Shechem was given to Joseph is that it is Joseph himself who embodies the character of Shechem, a place of potential for both blessing and curse, good and evil. Joseph is the one who knows how to take that which has potential and transform it from negative to positive.
His youthful dreams take neutral things, like wheat and stars, and make them harbingers of doom. His later interpretations in prison are mixed—restoration for the wine steward and death for the baker. As he matures and interprets Pharaoh’s dreams, though, he transforms the negative into the positive, turning impending famine into survival and abundance. Later, he reinterprets his descent into Egypt. What began as a story of attempted fratricide becomes one of God sending him on a mission to save the world, as he tells his brothers: “Do not fear, am I in the place of God? You intended evil but God intended it for good, so I could save the lives of many.”
A Midrash teaches that the Shechem Jacob gives Joseph refers not to the city of Shechem but rather to the coat of many colors. According to the Midrash, the coat had a long history. It was first the clothing that God made for Adam and Eve after the sin. Like the city of Shechem, these garments represented raw power. They originated with the snake, at the moment of the acquisition of knowledge of good and evil, the power that can be used for good or bad. According to the Midrash, these clothes were stolen by Nimrod, and then by Esau, and it was these clothes that brought Esau his power. They were the clothes of Esau that Rivkah put on Jacob to disguise him so he could receive the blessing from Isaac. Following this, they were hidden away and eventually became the clothing of the Kohen Gadol, the high priest, and later Joseph’s coat of many colors.
Whether Shechem is understood as a city given to Joseph or as the coat given to Joseph, it conveys the same message: powerful things can be used for good or evil. When they are in the right hands, like those of Joseph, who possesses self-control and deep faith, they can become very good. Thus, it is Joseph who merits Shechem, the city of power, and the ketonet passim, the coat of power. It is he who has learned over many years to use these tools for good rather than evil.