Parshat Vayigash - 5761 The Invisible Yoseph The four
Parshiyot Vayeshev, Miketz, Vayigash, the Parshah read this Shabbat, and
Vayechi, the last Parshah in the Book of Bereshit, of course involve many
themes. But the central
conflict about which they all revolve is that between Yoseph and his
brothers. The Torah begins its account of that conflict in
Parshat Vayeshev, where we find the family of Yaakov torn apart by
dissension between the brothers, dissension that Yaakov either does not
notice, hardly likely, but whose
actions, in any case, only seem to exacerbate the situation.
These actions include his giving
to Yoseph a "Ketonet Pasim," an embroidered tunic, made of strips
of variously colored fine wool,
as a symbol of leadership, according to the Biblical commentator, the Sforno.
The Kli Yakar adds that after Reuven discredited himself by tampering
with Yaakov's bed (Bereshit 35:22), Yaakov demoted him from the position of
"Bechor," "First-Born," and appointed Yoseph, the youngest
of the brothers, in his place! Yoseph adds
fuel to the fire by speaking words of slander against the sons of Leah to
his father, based on his
mistaken impressions that they had violated the prohibition of "eating
the limb of a live animal,"
that they would insult the sons of Zilpah and Bilhah by calling them
"servants," and that they seemed
to have committed sexual crimes. The
relationship between Yoseph and his brothers deteriorates to the extent that
the Torah tells us in Bereshit 37:4 that "His brothers saw that it was
he whom their father loved most of all the brothers, so they hated him; and
they could not speak to him peaceably." His worst
offense in the eyes of the brothers is that they perceive in him the trait
of insufferable, and dangerous-to-them, arrogance. For he dreamed, and insisted upon telling them of his dreams,
that he would ultimately rule over
them, and over their father and his mother as well. Such is the
extent of their developing hatred of their brother that they begin to see
him as a "Rodef," a "Pursuer," who is pursuing them in
order to accomplish their spiritual death by causing their father to curse
them. The "din," or
law, of the "Rodef" is that if one sees a person pursuing another
with the intention of killing him, then one is permitted to take the
"law into one's own hands," and kill the "Rodef," the
"Pursuer," to save the life of the "Pursued."
In their eyes, Yoseph is the "Pursuer," and they are the
"Pursued." The brothers
get their chance to implement this verdict against Yoseph when he comes on a
mission, described in Bereshit 37:13-14, to visit them and inquire after
"their welfare and the welfare of the
flocks that they were tending."
This mission was initiated by their father Yaakov, who "should
have realized," one would
think at first glance, that this was a terribly dangerous situation into
which he was sending his
favorite son, were it not for the prophetic, sub-conscious awareness, that
Yaakov had, according to the Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, quoted by RASHI, that
somehow it would contribute to the realization
of the prophecy of his grandfather Avraham that his descendants would be
"strangers in a strange land" (Bereshit 15:13).
The
brothers, sitting as a "Bet Din," a court, condemn Yoseph to
death, but then, at the urging of Reuven (who was really hoping to save
Yoseph, as testified by the Torah itself), commute his
sentence to indirect death by starvation or snake or scorpion bite
and throw him into a pit, and then, at the urging of Yehudah, commute the
sentence further to slavery. When
a caravan of traders appears on the scene, Yoseph is pulled out of the pit,
and sold into slavery, for the price of twenty shekalim, the price of a pair
of sandals. He eventually winds
up in Egypt, the "House of Bondage."
Eventually,
by the agency of dreams, Yoseph rises to the position of "Mishneh
LeMelech," Viceroy to the Pharaoh, and is placed in charge of the
stockpiling (during the seven "years of plenty") and distribution
(during the seven "years of famine") of food.
Famine grips Canaan as well, and the brothers now reverse the earlier
mission of Yoseph, and travel to him, at the urging of their father, to
obtain foodstuffs to help them survive the famine. The
following question has bothered me for years, as we read through these
Parshiyot: It was well known in
Egypt, and must have been as well in the surrounding countries that sent
their populations to this man who had been given responsibility for their
survival during this crisis of famine, that he was not a native Egyptian.
That he was in fact an "Ivri," a Hebrew, and a former
slave, who had risen to prominence and power by virtue of his amazing
ability to interpret dreams; in particular, the double dream of the Pharaoh
that had forecast the seven-year cycles of plenty followed by famine. The Egyptians, in fact, despite their dependence upon him, motivated presumably by deeply ingrained feelings of racial and religious superiority would not eat together with Yoseph, the "Ivri." As we see in Bereshit 43:32, where we find, "And they served Yoseph and the brothers separately, and the Egyptians who ate with them separately, for the Egyptians could not bear to eat food with the Hebrews, for it was loathsome to the Egyptians." And finally,
according to the Midrash Bereshit
Rabbah 84:7, Yoseph looked just like Yaakov, their father! The question
is, given all these hints, the fact that the "Egyptian" Prince was
in fact a Hebrew, that he was a
former slave, that his rise to power had been by his uncanny ability to
interpret dreams, and the fact
that he looked like his father, why did it not enter the minds of any of the
brothers, before Yoseph revealed his identity, that he was in fact Yoseph
their brother? Although the Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 91:7, attempts to answer the question by
saying that he recognized them because when he
last saw them, they were adults, with beards, and when they last saw
him, he was only seventeen, and
beardless, this hardly seems an adequate reason for their not recognizing
him. Yet, as the Torah
testifies (Bereshit 42:8), when they appeared before him, "Yoseph
recognized his brothers, but they did
not recognize him." We can only
answer that the brothers must have been fixated on the idea that Yoseph's
dreams of mastery were false,
they must have been false for the brothers to be vindicated in their act of
selling him, to the extent that
they would not allow another possibility to enter their minds.
They searched for Yoseph in all the slave-markets of Egypt, hoping
indeed to recognize him by his remarkable
handsomeness, but when the powerful and strikingly handsome Prince of
Egypt stood before them, they
could not acknowledge that the man standing before them, albeit now bearded,
was none other than the brother
whom they had sold into slavery, Yoseph. We see here
the power of pre-conceived notions, especially when the ego is involved, for
they had been portrayed as his subjects in those old dreams, to blind one to
the truth. They could not believe them, for had they not said (Bereshit 37:20),
"…And we will see what will become of his dreams." The sin of
the Sale of Yoseph is the model for the terrible sin of "sinat chinam,"
causeless hatred, of letting pre-conceived notions, images based on grudges
and enmities that we cannot let go of, concerning our brothers, obscure and
blind us to their very brotherhood. We must
fight this tendency, and allow ourselves to relate to our brothers as
brothers, obnoxious though they may seem, because who's to say that the
feeling is not mutual! Over the
centuries of Exile, our brothers may have taken on characteristics that make
them look very different, and perhaps behave very differently from us, in
superficial and sometimes deeper than superficial ways.
But as Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, as a large force of Native
Americans shooting bows and arrows charged towards them on horseback,
"What do you mean 'us,' White Man?" All of us
must look deeper than the surface effects of minor differences and the
deeper effects of lack of education, assimilation and estrangement, to
perceive our common, essential Jewish identity. Then, and
only then, will we see the fulfillment of the words of the Prophet Yechezkel
taken from the Haftarah of Vayigash (Yechezkel 37:16-17): "Now
you, son of man, take yourself one wooden tablet and write upon it, 'For
Judah and the Children of Israel, his friends,' and take another wooden
tablet and write upon it, 'For Yoseph, the wooden tablet of Ephrayim, and
all the Children of Israel, his friends.' " "And
bring close to yourself, one to the other, like a single wooden tablet, and
they shall become one in your
hand." And the
later words of the Haftarah (Yechezkel 37:24-25), "My
servant David will be King over them, and there will be a single shepherd
for all of them; they will follow My ordinances and they will observe My
decrees and perform them." "They
will dwell on the land that I gave to My servant Yaakov, on which your
forefathers dwelt, and they shall dwell within it - they, their children and
their children's children, forever; and My servant David will be a prince
for them, forever." Rabbi Pinchas Frankel |
