The family saga continues

Last night the Torah group met again, this time to discuss the Joseph story. Like any good drama, this one is interspersed with several parallel plots. In addition to the story of the twerp, Joseph, the favorite son who rats on his older brothers and sports fancy duds, there is also the story of Tamar and Judah, which I had not really been familiar with. Tamar is another of those female heroes in the Torah who continue the Jewish people despite everything. Judah is Jacob's son, one of those who threw Joseph in the pit and wanted to kill him, but after his wife's death, he sleeps with his disguised daughter in law, Tamar, who has been widowed by two of his sons. He sees her as a kind of black widow, though there is no evidence at all that she has been responsible for his ne'r do well sons' deaths. The book gives God full responsibility for that, as a form of punishment for sexual and other perversions. Tamar has been promised to the youngest son, in another Levirite marriage (marriage by the next male relative in mind to continue the line), but Judah has not acted on his promise, so Tamar takes things into her own hand, disguises herself as a prostitute, and waylays the horny Judah at the gates of the town. After he sleeps with her, she demands his rod and his staff (a possession of his phallus, an emasculation but also a symbolic marriage), and this saves her life later, when she turns up pregnant (with twins, again! What a family for these multiples!), and Judah accepts responsibility for her act, since he did not give her his son in marriage, as promised, but he never touches her again.
These dramas are tied to Joseph's story by garments--Tamar's veil, with which she disguises her identity, the rod and staff by which Judah's identity and responsibility are revealed parallel Joseph's tell-tale coat, sign of his power and status.
Interestingly, the commentators have seen Joseph as possibly gay. The Torah speaks of his beauty, and the rabbis ran with this. He is a tattletale, not a physical man, unlike his violent, brutal brothers. Supposedly he has curly eyelashes and certainly he struts about like a queen in the transvestite's parade in Provincetown MA (I have several times attended this most interesting event).
This puts a whole different spin on his adventure with Potaphar's unnamed wife, especially since Potaphar himself is intially described with a word that means "eunich." A member of the group told us that it was very common for any male posted near the palace to be castrated, since the pharoah's harem was so large and so alluring that this precaution was deemed necessary. So perhaps Potaphar acquired Joseph to service his wife--or to service Potaphar himself? Who knows? In any case, I never gave the story this spin before. It resonates differently, doesn't it?
I am enjoying this ongoing group, though it is hard to fit it into my already busy life.