Yosef brought his father, Yaakov, and had him stand in Pharaoh’s presence… Yaakov gave Pharaoh a blessing.

(Bereishit 47:7, 10)

Rabbi Avraham, son of the Rambam, wrote: “Yaakov blessed” – he blessed him upon his entering and he blessed upon his leaving. And our Rabbi Saadya Gaon twice interpreted “blessed” as “gave him peace”, and our teacher interpreted “God bless you” (Ruth 2:4) “Allah yislameha” – “God will give you peace”.

(Notes by Rabbi Yosef Kapah, z’l, on his commentary on Rabbi Saadya Gaon)

 

 

YAAKOV’S BLESSING OF PHARAOH – FOR HIS LIFETIME, OR ALSO FOR AFTER HIS DEATH?

“Yaakov blessed Pharaoh” – with what did he bless him? That the years of famine be prevented. Even so, they [the years] were completed after his death, as is written, “And now do not be afraid! I myself will sustain you” – just as “sustain” which appears later (Chap. 45:11) refers to years of famine, so does “sustain” here refer to years of famine.

Rabbi Shimon said: It is not a kiddush Hashem – a sanctification of the Name – that the words of the righteous are effective during their lifetimes but are nullified after their death.

Said Rabbi El’azar son of Rabbi Shimon: I prefer the words of Rabbi Yossi to the words of father; this is a kiddush hashem – as long as the righteous are in the world, the world is blessed; once they depart from the world, the blessing departs from the world. Till here, the words of the Sifri. And we find the five years of famine were completed. [Two years of the famine were to have taken place during Yaakov’s lifetime. Yosef’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream as predicting seven years of famine were thus vindicated, for he did not predict seven consecutive years].

(Ramban, Bereishit 47:18, according to Sifri Ekev).

 

 

YOSEF’S LIBELS, EMOTIONS AND PASSIONS

Binyamin Salant

 

“All this was caused by God who weaves stories about people” (Radak, Bereishit 37:13)

            The story of Yosef, one of the longest in the Bible - if not the longest - is highly detailed.

            It is a story rich in dreams, and does not conceal emotions and passions which accompany all the twists of the narrative describing Yosef in Canaan and in Egypt.

            Sometimes, these developments are painted in strong colors, expressing deep emotions. Many of these phrases appear for the first time in the Bible in this story.

            At the very beginning of his tale, within three passages, both the verb “to love” and the verb “to hate” appear twice: “Israel loved Yosef above all his sons, for he was a son of old age to him, so he made him an ornamented coat . When his brothers saw that it was he whom their father loved above all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak to him in peace. Now Yosef dreamt a dream, and told it to his brothers – from then on they hated him still more” (37:3-5)

The expression of hate (sin’a) becomes more intense further on in the narrative, as is expressed by the word ‘masteymah’.

            As we continue to read, we find different phrases connoting anger. “His father rebuked him”… “His [Potifar] anger flared up”… “Pharaoh became infuriated”… “was once infuriated”… “spoke harshly with them” [Yosef to his brothers]…”Do not be agitated on the journey” [Yosef to his brothers]… “Do not let your anger flare up” [Yehuda to Yosef]… “They (Pharaoh’s servants) were dejected” [‘zoafim’ – ‘highly agitated – Mandlekorn].

            Weeping, a manifest expression of emotion, is repeated a number of times with regards to Yosef: “He cried”... “He wanted to cry”... “He raised his voice in weeping.”

Fear, dread, confusion, are terms which appear primarily in reference to the brothers: “Their hearts gave way and they trembled (‘va’yekherdu’) to one another”... “They looked at their money pouches... and they became frightened (‘va’yir’oo’)"… “For they were confounded (‘nivhalu’) in his presence”. There is a single appearance of an unique term of dread, when Yaakov receives the dramatic news: “And they told him, saying: Yosef still lives... his heart failed, for he did not believe them.” An earlier parallel to this appears when Yosef – after heavy weeping – asks: “Does my father still live?”

            More terms of emotion and impulse appear – jealousy ( “And his brothers were jealous of him”), guilt (“Truly, we are guilty concerning our brother! – that we saw his heart’s distress when he implored and we did not listen”). “His heart’s distress” is interpreted by Ramban and Sforno as indicating cruelty – although a plain reading would seem to describe it as Yosef’s agony.

            In addition we have terms of endearment: “And he kissed”… “and he embraced”… “and he kissed all his brothers”.

            Terms of compassion and sadness: “And may God Shaddai give you mercy before the man (43:14) [Yaakov to his sons]; “And in haste – for his feelings were so kindled toward his brother that he had to weep – Yosef entered a chamber and wept there.” (43:30).

            Later, as he calms his brothers, Yosef says: “But now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves...” (45:5)

 

THE PERSUASION

            The Bible describes the seduction attempt by Potifar’s wife in straightforward terms: “And she said: Lie with me. But he refused”... “Now it was, as she would speak to Yosef day after day, that he would not hearken to her, to lie beside her, to be with her...”

            In reference to this, The Midrash relates: “Day after day, Potifar’s wife would entice him with words”. At the same time, the Midrash does not hesitate to criticize Yosef, too:

“Now Yosef was fair of form” - Upon finding himself as overseer, he began to eat and drink and curl his hair. Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: “Your father mourns, yet you curl your hair? I will incite the bear against you!” Immediately – “His lord’s wife fixed her eyes upon Yosef.”

 

THE RESTRAINT

            The verb a’p’k’ appears in all the Bible only twice, both times in relation to Yosef and his brothers:

            “Yosef entered a chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and came out, he restrained himself and said: Serve bread!” (43:31)

            When he reveals himself to his brothers: “Yosef could no longer restrain himself”. (45:1)

            In the home of Potifar, Yosef exhibits great restraint (even though the verb a’p’k does not specifically appear). The scholars who added vocalization and cantillation notes to the Bible fully appreciated Yosef’s restraint and his refusal (“vayemaeyn”) by elongating the chanting of the word “vayemaeyn” through the attachment of a shalshelet. (The shalshelet is a series of siren-like rising and descending tones.)

            As we examine Yosef’s capacity for restraint in his dealings with his brothers in Egypt, and his self-control in the house of Potifar, we are prompted to ask: Why did Yosef not refrain from relating the content of his boyhood dreams to his brothers – dreams expressing haughtiness – which led to his brothers’ hatred and envy?

            A second question may be found in the Midrashim: Why did Yaakov discriminate between Yosef and his brothers by giving him the coat of many colors? Yet more puzzling – why, well aware of the brothers’ attitude towards Yosef, did he send Yosef to them alone, far away from home? The Talmud is critical:

And Rava of Mehasia, in the name of Rav Hamma ben Guria, quoted Rav: “Never should a person treat one son differently from the others. Because of two shekel’s worth of fine wool with which Yaakov favored Yosef over his other sons, the brothers envied him, and events evolved which resulted in our ancestors going down to Egypt.”

(Shabbat 10b)

Regarding the dispatching of Yosef to his brothers, the Midrash says:

“Yaakov would recall these things and his conscience would pain him. “You knew that your brothers hated you, yet you said to him ‘I am ready.’”

(Bereishit Rabba, IV:13).

The Midrash Mekhilta says of Yosef:

“And he said to him ‘I am ready” – Yosef knew that his brothers hated him, but he did not wish to disobey his father.”

(Parashat Beshalah Petichta)

These are troubling questions. In an attempt to answer them, it may be said that his dreams contained prophetic revelation. So maintained Rambam and Radak. A prophecy must be heard and realized, for that is its purpose.

Few are the heroes of the Bible to whom the Torah devotes so much narrative as it does to Yosef and his brothers. As in all great drama, we find here feelings and emotions. On the basis of the Bible’s descriptions, Thomas Mann, in his “Joseph and His Brothers” succeeded in penning a novel rich in plot, which begins with the love story of Yaakov and Rachel. Mann mined the Bible and aggadah for dramatic motifs which are found in abundance, and succeeded in producing a creation of great range, with psychological and dramatic depth. But even his perceptive novel does not provide an answer to the questions which the Biblical story raises.

Rav Y. D. Soloveitchik, z”l , in a lecture published in Days of Remembrance, cites an interesting quote from Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed (Part III: 50)

“Know that all the stories that you will find mentioned in the Torah occur there for a necessary utility for the Law; either they give a correct notion of an opinion that is a pillar of the law, or they rectify some action so that mutual wrongdoing and aggression should not occur between men.”

Rav Soleveitchik explains:

“This is to say, every story in the Torah comes to teach us a major principle in Jewish ethics, and what is the main principle in the ethics of Judaism if not the emulation the qualities of The Holy One, Blessed Be He?

Why did all this have to occur in the form of a painful tragedy, of the selling of Yosef, of conflict and baseless hatred in the house of Yaakov, by means of sin and great wrongdoing on the part of the brothers towards their brother?”

The Rav’s answer is: “Only in this way – and only in Egypt – did the people crystallize into a great nation.”

And so conclude the above-quoted words of Rav: “and events evolved which resulted in our ancestors going down to Egypt.”

Binyamin Salant is a member of Kibbutz Saad

 

 

YOSEF COULD NO LONG CONTROL HIMSELF – OUT OF MERCY OR BECAUSE OF OTHER REASONS?

“Yosef could no longer control himself before all his attendants” – He could not tolerate having the attending Egyptians witnessing his brothers’ embarrassment as he informed them.

(Rashi, Bereishit 45:1)

 

“Could no longer” – As he [Yehuda] mentioned a number of times the misfortune which may befall his father, Yosef was overwhelmed with pity, and could not refrain from crying, and because of all the attendants he called “Have everyone withdraw from me!”   

(Radak, ibid., ibid.)

 

The intention is to say that he wanted to control himself and to maneuver Yaakov into realization of “The sun and the moon... bowing down to me.” There was no reason for him to pity his brothers, for they paid him no heed as he pleaded with them, but it was not proper before all the attendants who were not aware of the whole story; to them he would appear as a cruel person, with merciless, evil heart. He could not control himself because of the attendants.

(Meshekh Hochma, ibid., ibid.)

 

 

IS MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DIRECTION OF HIS ACTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS?

“It was not you who sent me here, but God” – But they sold him of their own volition, in order to harm him! And even if it developed that some benefit derived from the sale – their sin still stands, for a person is judged not by what happens to evolve from his actions, but only on the basis of his action and his intent; what happens to develop later neither adds nor detracts.

(Abarbanel 45:8)

 

It is very clear that everything that is produced in time must necessarily have a proximate cause, which has produced it. In its turn that cause has a cause and so forth till finally one comes to the First Cause of all things, I mean God’s will and free choice. For this reason all those intermediate causes are sometimes omitted in the dicta of the prophets, and an individual act produced in time is ascribed to God, it being said the He, may He be exalted, has done it…

Know you, that all proximate causes through which is produced in time that which is produced in time, regardless of whether these causes are essential and natural, or voluntary, or accidental and fortuitous – I mean by the voluntary cause of that particular thing produced time, the free choice of a man – and even if the causes are ascribed in the books of the prophets to God, may He be exalted. And according to their manner of expressing themselves, it is said of such an act that God did it or commanded it or said it…

(Guide for the Perplexed, II 48)

 

“HE FLUNG HIMSELF UPON HIS NECK AND WEPT UPON HIS NECK CONTINUALLY” – WHO WEPT, AND WHY?

Yosef wept; Yaakov did not weep. Yosef could still weep, Yaakov was finished with weeping, because he had wept enough in his life. Yosef was still weeping even after Yaakov had already spoken to him – in such small points the actual truth is mirrored. Since he had missed Yosef, Yaakov had had a dull monotonous life, had not ceased from weeping, his whole life of feelings had been spent in grief over Yosef. In the meantime, Yosef had lived a life full of changes, had had no time to give himself up so much to the pain of separation, he was fully occupied with each of his different posts. Now when he fell round his father’s neck again, he felt all the more what the separation had really meant to him, and lived once again through the past twenty years. Yaakov had already become Yisrael; Yosef still wept.

(Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, 46:29)

 

“And wept upon his neck continually” – In addition to the weeping which he wept on the shoulder of his brother, as is written, “And they wept”. An alternate explanation: [Based upon the fact that the Hebrew “od” can mean both ‘continually’ and ‘another’] The word “od’ (‘another’) refers to the words “he flung himself upon his neck”, and thus should the text be understood: And then he did something else upon his neck – he wept.

(Hizkuni, Bereishit Ibid., ibid.)

 

It is well known who is crying – the aged father who discovers, after years of despair and mourning, that his son is alive, or the firstborn son who reigns. Do not be mislead by [the next passage] “And Yisrael said” [which might lead one to erroneously conclude that the preceding action – the crying – was not done by Yisrael] because the text was talking of Yisrael before and now it returns to mention his name. Similarly (41:48-50) “And he gathered all kinds of provisions for seven years… And to Yosef were born two sons.” This literary structure is to be found often in the Torah and in the Bible.

 (Ramban, Bereishit, ibid., ibid.)

 

 

 

 

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