Dec 30/06 — Parashat Vayigash

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

What must happen in order for brothers to move from hatred to reconciliation?

The abstract answer is relatively clear and simple: everyone in the dispute that has led to the hatred must be willing to move towards the other who is perceived as having caused the problem.

In the Joseph narrative, the brothers’ pride refused to accept the idea that Joseph was blessed with talents that they lacked. This led to thoughts of murdering him and then to a cruel expulsion, severing Joseph’s ties to his home and family. Both these acts must be neutralized and the conditions they created must be changed so that Joseph is restored to a family he can trust. This happens in two steps: first, their pride is crushed by their total dependence on the whims of their hidden brother, who is the mysterious number two leader in Egypt. Second, their cruelty is challenged and ultimately dissolved by the way that the hidden Joseph forces them to face the consequences of what giving up Benjamin means not only to them, but also to their aged father. Their ability to empathize with Benjamin is a shocking new element in how they have defined their responsibilities and their duty to each other. In other words, out of the horror of their current predicament in the hidden Joseph’s court—so closely paralleling what they did to Joseph and to Jacob decades earlier—they finally begin to understand what it means to be brothers.

But there is also learning to be done on Joseph’s part if there is to be genuine reconciliation. In the Midrash, Joseph is sometimes criticized for being immature and arrogant, as well as tactless. His experience strips away that youthful self-centredness. As he develops insight into and understanding of how he was brought to Egypt to become a great man and a redeemer of his own people, he perceives that it has been God all along who was grooming him to be the instrument for saving his family and fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

To his own astonishment, he realizes that his rise to greatness in Egyptian civilization pales in the light of his family’s presence. He simply cannot tolerate that his family from backward Canaan will somehow be humiliated in Egypt. His empathy for them, his understanding of how helpless the brothers were in the grip of their hatred supersedes any remnants of resentment towards them for what they did to him when he was a youth.

In short, each side’s maturation into empathy with the other is absolutely necessary for true reconciliation.

But we readers of the story need to be careful about claiming that each side’s maturation happened quickly. The reversal of attitude required when resentment gives way to empathy took decades. Two 20th-century commentators on the Torah, Benno Jacob and Nahum Sarna, comment wisely on a progression in Joseph’s weeping as he refrains from identifying himself to his brothers.

The first time Joseph weeps is when he hears his brothers blaming each other for their predicament. Their mutual recrimination as they stand accused and helpless before Pharaoh’s vizier is truly painful:

“Alas, we are being punished on account of our brother, because we looked on at his anguish, yet paid no heed as he pleaded with us. That is why this distress has come upon us.” Then Reuven spoke up and said to them: “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Do no wrong to the boy’? But you paid no heed.” (Gen. 42:21-24)

Joseph weeps out of legitimate self-pity, recalling his agony, his sense of total rejection and abandonment. He has learned to “forget” his past and his family, as he has emerged from the various “pits” in his career in Egypt. But all the repressed moments of denial—not of facts themselves, but of the enormity of the fact that it was his brothers who committed this crime against him—have now exploded to the surface, returning him to a vivid and somewhat adolescent awareness as he stands over these vulnerable men.

Joseph weeps a second time after fully realizing who the young man Benjamin is—his full brother, the son of Rachel, their mother who died giving birth to Benjamin. (Gen. 43:29-30) He blesses Benjamin and then hurries out, unable to restrain his tears of joy and love. It’s important to note that on a purely factual level, Benjamin was too young to be a part of the original crime. Perhaps more important, however, is that for Joseph, there is no way his “full brother” would have collaborated in such an act, even if he had he been of age. Beyond the chronological aspects of Benjamin not having been one of “them,” he is special because he is the last vestige of the beloved Rachel—Joseph’s mother—who was buried on the road home.

These two sons, who were isolated by time and events from each other and from their ten other brothers, have joined together now and under Joseph’s rules. Benjamin now “belongs” to Joseph, not to Judah and the others. This releases in Joseph a wellspring of grateful tears, genuine uninhibited fellow-feeling for “another,” the other whom one wants to love.

And this brings us to Joseph weeping a third time—after Judah’s emotionally wrenching appeal on behalf of Benjamin and their father Jacob. This time, the estranged vizier of Egypt cannot restrain himself. His tears at this stage of Joseph’s tortured reawakening to the past broaden to include even his brothers. Magnanimously, he declares: “Do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.” (Gen. 45:1-5)

This is an awesome conclusion: for the first time, Joseph appreciates the role he is playing in continuing his father’s covenant and the Children of Israel’s destiny. He now understands that the dreams of his adolescence indeed heralded a destiny, one into which he needed to grow just as his brothers did. In no way are his brothers required to bow down in homage to him. Instead, by honouring Joseph—and through him—they are given new insight into how God continues to accompany them on their journey. And Joseph, who receives the singular honour of providing food to sustain their lives, accepts with humility his role in their future as well.

Shabbat Shalom.