Mikketz

know that Jews have won a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes.

But the mostWe  striking disproportion is in the field of economics. 

The first Nobel Prize in economics was awarded in 1969.  

The most recent winner, in 2017, was Richard Thaler. 

In total there have been 79 laureates, of whom 29 were Jews; 

that is, over 36 per cent.

After reading the parasha of this week, parashat MIKETZ, 

I believe that a reasonable case could be made that, 

Joseph was the first economist.

It began with Joseph who, in this week’s parsha, became the world’s first economist. 

Interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, 

he develops a theory of trade cycles, 

seven fat years followed by seven 

lean years,

a cycle that still seems approximately to hold. 

Joseph also intuited that when a head 

of state dreams about cows and ears 

of corn, he is probably unconsciously 

thinking about macro-economics. 

The disturbing nature of the dreams 

suggested that G-d was sending an 

advance warning of a “black swan,” a 

rare phenomenon for which 

conventional economics is 

unprepared.

So, having diagnosed the problem, 

he immediately proceeds to a solution: 

use the good years to build up 

resources for the lean times, 

a sound instance of long-term 

economic planning.

To my mind, 

the most decisive single factor, 

the great break of Judaism from the 

ancient world of 

magic, mystery and myth,  

was the de-consecration of nature 

that followed from the fact that 

G-d created nature by an act of will, 

and by making us in His image, 

gave us too 

the creative power of will. 

That meant that for Jews, 

holiness lies not in the way the world is but in the way it ought to be. 

Poverty, disease, famine, injustice, 

and the exploitation of the powerless 

by the powerful,

are not the will of G-d.

They may be part of human nature, 

but we have the power to rise above 

nature. 

G-d wants us not to accept but to 

heal, to cure, to prevent. 

So Jews have tended to become, out 

of all proportion to their numbers, 

• Lawyers fighting injustice, 

• doctors fighting disease, 

• teachers fighting ignorance, 

• economists fighting poverty and 

• agricultural technologists finding

new ways to grow food in environments where it has never grown before.

(especially in modern Israel) 

All of this is brilliantly portrayed in this week’s parsha. 

First Joseph diagnoses the problem. 

There will be a famine lasting seven years. 

It is what he does next that is world

changing. 

He sees this not as a fate to be endured but as a problem to be solved. 

Then, without fuss, he solves it, saving a whole region from death by starvation.

What can be changed need not be endured. 

Human suffering is not a fate to be borne, but a challenge to be overcome. 

This is Joseph’s life-changing idea. 

What can be healed is not holy. G-d does not want us to accept poverty and pain but to cure them.