[Avodah] "VaYakom Melekh Hadash al Mitzrayim..." Self-hatred

[Michael Makovi]

> Interestingly, "VaYakom Melekh Hadash al Mitzrayim..." could be translated
> as "A new king arose against Egypt..."  In other words Pharaoh was his and
> his people's own worst enemy.
>
> Regarding the famous machlokess between Rav and Shmuel: Was it mamesh a new
> king or was it the old one who made as if he didn't know Yosef?  The fact
> that the Torah doesn't mention the king died, would indicate that it was the
> same king.

I personally think it was a new king. I see no way to explain how the
old king suddenly rose against Yosef like this. Even evil gentile
kings, don't usually have a Jew put in second-in-command and then turn
on his people a year later. Sometimes they'll tolerate us and then
turn on us, but lavish such love and goodwill and affection, and then
turn into Hitler? That's just bizarre. No, it'd have to be mental
illness, seriously.

It makes more sense to say that over the generations, the Jews
proliferated, and the Egyptians grew afraid of a fifth column. And the
memory of what Yosef had done faded.

The Torah doesn't need to say that the old king died. Just saying a
new king arose, implies he died. Plus, it may have been quite some
time later, generations even. If so, not only Yosef's king, but many
other kings too, all died. But the Torah didn't want to give a
chronology of kings dying and succeeding as king. So it just said, "A
new king arose".

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin asks, how on earth could this new pharaoh not
know Yosef? He compares it to if a president of the US arose who
didn't know George Washington. Whether not knowing is literal or
figurative, either way it implies a dramatic catastrophic shift in the
ruling power.

And according to a widely-held historical theory (see the Hertz
chumash for example), Yosef entered Egypt at the time of the Hyksos,
foreign Semitic rulers in Egypt (Rav Hertz shows for example many
distinctly Hyksos practices by Yosef's Pharaoh). Shortly thereafter,
the native Egyptians took back power, and naturally, they wanted to
get rid of any remnants of the Hyksos, especially cultural ones (which
would involve destroying any records or artifacts - indeed, we have
very few records of the Hyksos period, but the few records we have
indicate that materially, Egypt did not suffer - this implies the
records were destroyed deliberately, not by cataclysm). And
furthermore, anyone who was a friend of the Hyksos ( = the Jews) would
be very much despised and feared. And our being foreign Semites like
the Hyksos, well...oy vey.

Mikha'el Makovi