In the last aliya of this week's portion the torah tells us how Yosef managed food distribution during the famine. In the first year, the Egyptians came to buy bread and Yosef sold it to them -- a straightforward transaction between those who stored grain during the years of plenty and those who did not. As the famine continued, eventually there was no more silver to pay with -- Yosef (proxy for Paro) had it all. At this point the people still sought bread and Yosef accepted livestock in trade -- barter is not uncommon either. But in the second year even the livestock ran out and the people offered themselves in exchange for bread, and Yosef agreed. On the face this seems like indentured servitude, which is also not that unusual (and is supported by the torah, though with time limits).

Now there are some interesting questions one could ask here about what it means for subjects of a king to sell themselves into service to that king. This is ancient Egypt, not feudal Europe; weren't they servants already, particularly when it's time to build a new monument? And the text tells us they sold their land along with themselves -- but the land already belonged to Paro, it appears (and Rashi concurs). So what exactly does this transaction mean? I'll come back to this.

At this point, when the people sell themselves into servitude, there is a change in the text -- the people ask for bread and also for seed to sow the land. This is new. Until now they have only asked for bread. When Yosef gives them the seed he stipulates a tax: 20% of the crop goes to Paro and they keep the rest.

This tax seems like a reasonable arrangement. In fact, it makes me wonder why the people didn't just do that from the start. Instead of beggaring themselves to the point of slavery, why didn't they ask for seed from the start, either buying it outright or agreeing to a tax? Wouldn't they have been better off in the end?

Granted, we often see things in hindsight that we don't see at the time. But I think there is an important shift here, from looking for bread to looking for the means to produce bread. For the first year of the famine the people are content to buy bread; only in the second year do they seek to grow bread and thus sustain themselves. What happened? We don't know. But we do know that once the people decided to participate and not to just consume, Yosef gave them favorable terms, enabling them to produce for themselves and pay from the proceeds.

At no point, by the way, does Yosef just give them the bread. Tzedakah would seem to call for that; we're obligated to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and otherwise help the poor. This is all true, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum, which is why, on the Rambam's hierarchy of charitable acts, giving a man a job is the highest level and giving him money is much lower. Along similar lines, when the torah talks about the case of the overburdened donkey we are commanded to help our fellow lighten its load -- help, but not to do it for him. We must give tzedakah, but the recipient must do his part too.

Perhaps Yosef, in selling bread to the people, was trying to move the Egyptian people from consumers to producers. What need does Paro have for all the silver in the land? Once he has it all, is it even valuable? And as I mentioned earlier, the people are already Paro's subjects; does selling themselves into servitude actually change anything externally? Or is it an internal change -- does Yosef go along with this because he perceives that the people need to sink to a certain level before they'll start to take matters into their own hands and participate in their own sustenance?

We are living through the beginning of a famine today. This is not a food shortage like in Egypt, but the economic situation certainly seems to have the capacity to be as bad for us as the famine was for the Egyptians. Our retirement savings have been cut nearly in half, unemployment is rising, national debts (and thus our future taxes) are way up, and it's a lousy time to be looking for credit (like a mortgage). I begin to understand how the Egyptians felt -- planting seed is hard compared to buying bread, and deep inside I really want to just buy bread and hope the situation passes. But maybe we can learn something from the Egyptians.

This situation, like the famine, is beyond our control, but how we react to it is not. Even though it's hard, maybe it's time to learn more about what our financial statements mean instead of just tossing them in a drawer or deciding not to look at them because they're depressing. Maybe it's a good time to think about job skills: if my job disappeared tomorrow, what would potential employers want to see on my resume that isn't there, and what can I do about it now? Maybe it's a good time to evaluate household budgets and try to restructure debt, before it becomes overwhelming.

Now maybe that's overkill; maybe the famine will pass quickly and in retrospect all we needed to do was buy some bread. But I think it's best to assume that the famines that enter our lives might last for a while, and the sooner we move on from buying bread to buying seed, the better our chances will be of riding it out. There are no guarantees, of course, but if we try then I believe we will not sink as far as the Egyptians did.

Kein y'hi ratzono, may this be God's will.