During the time when I was stationed at Ramstein Air Base in
Germany, we had a very quirky Commander In Chief, US Air Forces Europe (USAFE),
a four-star General who, since our base was the seat of the command, lived in
our neighborhood. He terrorized the
command in various ways, and since he lived on our base we at Ramstein always
seemed to get the worst of it.
I lived in base housing, and at one point I was informed that I was
being assigned to be Building Captain.
Why me??! There were officers senior
to me living in the building. And then
one of them told me candidly why he’d schemed to avoid the duty; the General
drove right past our building several times a day when going between his
quarters and his office, and if something about the building wasn’t absolutely
shipshape – no matter what time of the day or night he had passed by – the Wing
Commander would be standing before the general within the day and therefore,
the building captain before the Wing Commander shortly thereafter (since poo-poo
rolls downhill). So what did I do? I used my own dodge – I was a chaplain, and
was by regulation and tradition not supposed to be in a command position – to avoid
the dreaded duty.
So far, all I’ve described is a quirky guy who still is not doing
anything ‘wrong,’ apart from driving his subordinates just a bit crazy. But at least one time, the General went over
the line. He had a pique for the
Colonels on his staff; I do not know exactly what his complaint was, but it was
apparently for all his Colonels.
So one would think that he would gather them all behind closed doors and
tell them of his displeasure, explaining why he was displeased, and how he
expected them to rectify the situation.
But instead, he ordered all his Colonels to send their wives to
his conference room, where he proceeded to tell them why he was upset with
their husbands. When I heard this – the chaplain
Colonel who was the Command Chaplain, and was therefore part of this group,
told me about it – I couldn’t believe it!
A bunch of Colonels…one would think that such a senior officer
would have the backbone to respectfully point out to the General that he had no
authority to order his Colonels’ wives into his conference room, and it wasn’t
a very nice thing to do in any case. But
apparently all these Colonels sheepishly sent their wives to hear the General’s
tirade.
The antics of the General in question finally reached HQ Air Force,
and he was quietly retired. Any of his
Colonels could have helped him out by being direct and letting him know that he
was courting trouble with his behavior.
Maybe the General would not have taken the counsel well and would not
have changed his behavior. But maybe,
just maybe, he would have. But the Colonels,
who sound to me like spineless ‘yes men’ lost an opportunity to help their boss
and, by extension, the Air Force.
This General also had a habit of making the command’s metrics his
bedtime reading – much like King Ahashverosh reading the chronicles of the
kingdom on sleepless nights. One time in
his insomnia he came across our chapel’s metrics: how many hours we had spent the previous
month providing various ministries.
(Each chaplain had to submit a report each month, and the entire chapel
staff’s metrics were combined and submitted to USAFE through our Wing
Commander.) So on one sleepless weekend
the General happened across the chapel’s metrics and, to him, they looked ‘too
good.’ The next day, my boss, the Wing
Chaplain was called into the Commander’s office to explain why he should not
assumed that the metrics were ‘pencil whipped.’
In particular, the monthly numbers for ministrations to patients, seemed
astronomically high to his eyes.
But my Colonel was not as spineless as some of his peers on
the General’s staff. He told his boss that
he trusted the integrity of his chaplains, but he would talk to them and
determine that we were reporting accurately.
Returning to the office, he called a meeting for all us chaplains and
calmly asked us to explain how we tallied our figures. We told him, and we assured him that we were
reporting accurately. He went back to
the Wing Commander, explained how we generated our figures and expressed his
confidence that we were indeed reporting accurately, and the Wing Commander
(also a Colonel) went back to the General and insisted that he was seeing true
figures. The General accepted the
feedback and didn’t bother us again about our metrics. Because two Colonels, in contrast to the
Colonels on the General’s staff were forthright and direct, eh General accepted
the correction and backed down.
I guess this a rather long story to introduce a Torah portion, but
it comes to mind to explain, in part, why Joseph achieved greatness. Everybody was afraid of Pharaoh. Why wouldn’t they be??! In his capriciousness, he would arbitrarily
imprison his servants and then decide on a whim what their fate would be – even
execution! We saw this in the account of
the Cupbearer and the Baker, in last week’s parashah. So when the Pharaoh was perplexed by his
dream, the Torah tells us, none of his symbolists or advisors could provide an
explanation. Personally, I believe that
they were afraid to stick their necks out, lest they be cut off by a Pharaoh
who didn’t like their interpretation.
And then there was Joseph.
Taken from the dungeon where he’d been locked up for years, cleaned up
and brought before Pharaoh, he was told the Pharaoh’s dreams and then ordered
to interpret them. It might be
reasonable to think that Joseph spoke up because after all, what did he have to
lose? But because the Torah has already
described Joseph’s character, we know that he responded in forthrightness and
directness out of a conviction that G-d had given him the answer to Pharaoh’s dilemma,
and would have Joseph respond forthrightly.
And Pharaoh, hearing Joseph’s interpretation, accepted it…and elevated
Joseph to a high position in the land in order to carry out the second part of
his forthright answer to the Pharaoh: a
recommendation concerning how to prepare for Egypt to survive the coming famine
that was Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams.
Forthrightness is not without its attendant risks. Had any of the USAFE Colonels spoken out in
counsel to the General to tell him that he had crossed the line between a
General’s true prerogative and a form of madness, the General might have tried
to crush that Colonel. But as my Wing
Chaplain and Wing Commander found, when challenged directly to support their
own subordinates, the General also might just back down.
All the Pharaoh’s trusted advisors were afraid to take the risk of
telling him that bad times were prophesied by their leader’s dreams. Surely at least some of them could see the
message in the symbolism! But not one
spoke up. Instead, a forthright Hebrew
slave in Pharaoh’s dungeon had the courage to speak up. By convincing the Pharaoh that he was
correct, and having the courage to speak up, Joseph saved Egypt from the coming
famine, placed himself in a high position, and placed himself to
ultimately save his own family from starvation…as we will read when the Torah’s
narrative continues to unfold! Shabbat
shalom.
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