Becoming Superman: From Joseph to Idan Amedi, lessons from the pit: Vayeshev
- Dr Tanya White
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
(Shabbat friendly printable PDF at the bottom of the page)
What is a hero?
Over the past two years we have witnessed heroism in forms we never imagined: the soldiers who dropped everything to defend their country — many making the ultimate sacrifice; the wives of miluimnikim navigating months, even hundreds of days, of absence; the hostages who endured unimaginable darkness and somehow emerged alive, resilient, even radiant; the survivors of Nova, of the kibbutzim, of the southern towns — each carrying a story carved by fire.
A hero in the Bible, and a hero in modern Israel, is not the mythic figure favoured by the gods, born with instinctive courage or superhuman perfection. Our heroes are not angels. Israeli singer and iconic war hero in his song Superman, which catalogues the trajectory of his life, sheds light on the way we become:
“Thrown into life, my hands were bare I survived all the thin air Choking me as I rose.”
Greatness is rarely a result of comfort, most often it is forged in the valley — in darkness, vulnerability, and suffering.
True heroes are called, Not Born
Our biblical heroes are not born great; they are called to greatness. They are not perfect; they strive toward perfection. They are not role models because they are angelic, but because they show us what we can become, not what we already are.
Joseph begins his story protected and privileged — his father’s favourite, wrapped in a special tunic, exempt from the hard labour of shepherding. At seventeen, the Torah describes him as a na’ar — immature, self-focused, unable to perceive the emotional world around him. Rashi notes that he behaved childishly, preoccupied with his appearance. Even when his dreams cause his brothers pain, he repeats them again and again, blind to their implications.
Then one day, Yaakov sends him to seek his brothers. Joseph wanders through the field and encounters an ish — a mysterious man. It is a liminal moment and a liminal space, suspended between the safety of home and the vulnerability of the unknown, the na’ar, still unformed and unindividuated, and the emerging self destined for a different future. Just as Yaakov encountered an ish at the Yabbok crossing — another threshold, another meeting with a part of himself previously unacknowledged — Joseph’s encounter reflects a similar inner moment. This ish represents the self Joseph has not yet met.
This is what Winnicott calls disillusionment — the moment a child discovers that the world is not an extension of themselves, that the omnipotent parent cannot protect them forever. Individuation begins with a sense of alienation, a feeling that something is missing. And that lack awakens the search for growth. Joseph is, quite literally, searching for his brothers, but for the first time he also encounters a sense of inner lack — the beginning of self-awareness.
Locked in the space of immature narcissism, Joseph has failed until now to see beyond himself. He does not intuit the jealousy and pain his dreaming provokes in his brothers and so he repeats them again and again. In that sense, his brothers remain objects in the theatre of his imagination. The Torah says רועה את אחיו ro’eh et echav — he is “tending” or “shepherding” his brothers, but not רואה ro’eh in the sense of truly seeing them. He fails to see their pain, he fails to see their humanity. And when we objectify others, they eventually objectify us in return.
“Here comes that dreamer,” the brothers say as Joseph approaches them from a distance. They see him from ‘afar’, not up close and personal. They do not differentiate him as Joseph, their brother. Instead, they perceive as a threat — another Yishmael, another Esav — a danger to the covenantal line. And once a person becomes an object, violence becomes not only possible but, in the brothers’ minds, justified.
Their violent act — the stripping of his coat, the throwing into the pit — becomes the crucible from which Joseph slowly transforms into someone else. Someone who knows suffering. Someone who discovers he does not need privilege or protection to survive. Someone who realises that when life deals unimaginable blows, we sometimes find strengths we never knew we possessed.
A hero is not born; a hero is formed.
The Divided Self
In this parsha Joseph grows up. The conversation with the ish marks the division between two selves: what the midrash calls shalva (serenity) and toref toref Yosef (being torn apart as the brothers describe to their father). The undivided self and the divided self.
As soon as we begin the process of individuation — as soon as we become — we experience alienation. The question is:
Do we turn back and cling to childhood wholeness? Or do we face the fragmentation and allow it to shape a deeper, truer self?
Transformation cannot be imposed from above. It must rise from within.
None of us would choose adversity. And yet, when we look back, we realise: down in the valley, in the pit, in the darkness, something happened. We changed. We became other. No longer protected or privileged, we discovered new contours of joy — a joy shaped not by ease but by meaning. We realise that the striped coat we once wore — the symbol of our status — was masking the unfinished self beneath it. And eventually the colours, once a covering, become the essence of who we are.
The Josephs of Today
We have heard this echoed by our modern-day Josephs — those who spent over 700 days in pits underground, stripped of everything human, starved, beaten, dehumanised. And yet some say:
“If we could go back… we would still buy the tickets to Nova.”
What makes a person say such a thing?
Not because suffering is good. Not because trauma is justifiable. Not because they would choose to endure that nightmare again. But because they know that in that liminal space — between life and death, hope and despair — something inside them transformed. They encountered a self they didn’t know existed: a self of strength, resilience, belonging, and clarity. They discovered a world beyond the given, beyond the ordinary. They found a self of essence and not just exteriority. In the words of Idan Amedi:
“Everything I experienced was meant for me so I could understand in the end that only one who has been through the darkness truly knows what light is.”
As the individuals who share their modern-day Joseph stories attest, we can — and must — grow from circumstances that are forced upon us; otherwise, what was the point? As a nation that also lost its privilege and protection on that October day, just like Joseph, we too must look in the mirror and see beyond the parochiality of our existing beliefs and conceptions. We must look at the other as a brother and not as an object of their external garb. We need to dig deep. We need to strip away the external coverings we have worn for so long and uncover the essence of who we are — who we are called upon to be — and the inner strength we possess as a unified people.
This is our Joseph moment. Will we rise to the occasion, or remain in the darkness of the pit?
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