And joseph said to his brothers:

 i am joseph. Is my father still alive?

But his brothers could not answer himm,

For they were confounded in his presence.

(Bereishit 45:3)

 

 

For they were confounded in his presence. This confusion contained both amazement and fear, for he said: 'I am Joseph' and they feared revenge, for it was as if he had said: 'Can my father still be alive after all his tribulations?'

(Malbim, Breishit 45:3)

 

Is my father still alive? He asked them this, because he thought that perhaps what they had told him until now, that their father would die from sorrow, was so they might achieve their goal of freeing Benjamin, and that actually he was already dead, and he wanted to determine the truth (Ralbag). And it may be that the prefix 'heh' is the 'heh' which expresses wonder - "Is it possible that my father is still alive after suffering all these troubles?!"

They were dismayed - The author of Haketab VeHakabbalah, recalling that in an earlier case of fearful revelation - Yitzchak discovering that Yaakov had deceived him - the verb 'vayechrad' ['was seized with a great trembling] was employed, whereas the brothers 'nivhalu' - "were confounded". The difference between the two is as follows: 'Nivhalu" describes confusion resulting from unexpected developments; "vayechrad" connotes fearful concern without panic.

(Haketab VeHakabbalah, loc. cit).

 

Is my father still alive? - Yehudah's closing words frightened Joseph' s imagination, and it seemed to him that his father was in danger. Therefore he cried out: "Is my father still alive? -  even though they had already told him that he was alive (Hacorem - Naftali Hertz Homberg).

(Shadal ibid., ibid.)

 

 

Finally facing the truth

Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel

Yehudah's decision to approach Joseph brings to its climax one of the central motifs of the Book of Bereishit -  fraternal confrontation. These charged confrontations are played on two grids: the national grid, as part of the construction of the founding narrative of the Children of Israel, and the inter-personnel universal grid upon which the Book of Bereishit serves as a testing ground for relationships between brothers and as a lookout point over human society.

The trauma of Abel's murder by Cain accompanies the stories of brothers in the Book. The confrontations are resolved by separation, expulsion, and escape, in order to avoid repetition of Abel's sad end. In these stories, following the rifts, the brother's meeting anew - to the extent where they do occur - is marked by haste and avoidance of confrontation. Yitzhak and Yishmael, Yaakov and Esav, meet briefly at the burial of their respective fathers, the Torah leaving it to our imaginations to reconstruct their interactions. We expect violent confrontation at Esav and Yaakov's dramatic meeting at Mahanayim, but the Torah surprises us with its absence. Our Sages filled in these lacunae with scenes of dramatic confrontation. But plainly read, the story of Yaakov and Esav ends with evasion and cutting off contact.

Our parasha brings to the boiling point the last brother story in the Book. Yehudah is unaware of the identity of the person before him, but the informed reader finds himself excited and expecting a psychological and verbal battle. Unlike his predecessors, Yehudah accepts the challenge and takes responsibility. Rabbi Yehudah understood this (Bereishit Rabba 93): 'And Yehuda approached him. . . approached him to do battle', Yehudah's tactic differed from that of his father who hoped that gifts and sycophancy would penetrate Esav's heart. Yehudah based his plea on two points: his father's sorrow and his own willingness to sacrifice himself. Yehudah knows that the past cannot be changed, but that he can influence the future by choosing the path which was not taken at a similar crossroad in the past. Yehudah's clever battle is not only against Joseph - it is against himself, against his past, against the unhealed sore of the betrayal of Joseph. His declaration "For your servant became pledge for the lad . . . and so, let your servant, pray, stay instead of the lad" scatters the cloud from above Yehudah's head and signals Joseph that it is time to end his self-restraint.

In the perspective of the Book of Bereishit, the reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers is a real innovation. Shem, Ham and Yefet went each to a different continent; Abraham and Lot separated to different regions in the Land of Canaan; Yitzchak and Yishmael are distinguished from each other by class and geography; Yaakov evades familial relations with Esav, preferring the region where his father lived rather to going to Seir. Joseph and his brothers, on the other hand, are reunited. The emotional reconciliation is not truncated, as in the Yaakov-Esav story; the hitherto alienated brothers march together to a shared future.

Seen as part of the national narrative, this story completes the process of the formation of the distinctive group. The sequence of divisions and separations comes to an end with the union which makes possible definition of a group with inner cohesion.

On a literal level (p'shat), however, the story is primarily a personal one. Yehudah's arguments, his willingness to pay the price and the human pain discerned in his words have universal value, above and beyond their place in the collective narrative. Joseph, from personal experience and from past history knows how terrible fraternal strife can be. He stops the show nanoseconds before explosion. He, too, could have avoided confrontation, taken Yehudah for a slave, and freed Benjamin. But his desire to rise above the past and establish a new future, after seeing similar preparedness on the part of his older brother, allows him to compose a new dénouement to the narrative.

Yehudah's speech and Joseph's response endow us with the importance of the interpersonal ability to identify that point in time at which relations between people are on the verge of the critical test - for better or for worse. Yehudah and Joseph symbolize, for their brothers and for generations of readers, the decision to step bravely into the future and, at the moment of truth, to take the right step.

Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel, a member of Kibbutz Ein Tsurim, teaches in the Yaakov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies and other institutions. He is doctoral candidate in Talmud at Ben-Gurion University.

 

Words that Come from the Heart Enter the Heart - the Art of Diplomacy

A gentle response allays wrath; a harsh word provokes anger (Proverbs 15:1): King Solomon teaches in this verse that a person must train his soul and habituate his nature and tongue to offer gentle response, for a gentle response calms and sets aside the wrath of the angry, while harsh words - which are the opposite of gentle - give rise to anger and wrath.

(Rabbeinu Behayey on Parashat Vayigash)

 

Yehuda's Pacifying Toughness

"My lord asked his servant saying" - Know that you libel us; how many nations came here to purchase food - did you interrogate them as you did us? Were we seeking your daughter, are you requesting our sister? "And we said to my lord etc." - Can it be that a person like Yehuda should assert something which is not clear to him - "And his brother is dead"? But this is what Yehuda said: If I tell him that Yosef is alive, he will order me "Bring him to me" as he did regarding Benyamin so therefore he said "And his brother is dead." Said Rav Hiyyah bar Abba: All that you read from Yehuda's speech until "Yosef could no longer restrain himself" contains words of pacification for Yosef, pacification for Benyamin, pacification for his brothers. Pacification for Yosef: Note how he sacrificed himself for Rachel's children. Pacification for his brothers: See how he sacrificed himself for his brothers. Pacification for Benyamin; just as I offered my life for your brothers, so do I offer it for yours.

(Yalkut Shimoni, Bereishit 44, 151)

 

His heart failed, their father Jacob's spirit came to life:  The Connection Between Body and Soul

His heart failed - His heart stopped beating and his breathing ceased, for cardiac activity stopped and he was as dead. This is a known phenomenon resulting from sudden joy. Medical texts state that the aged and weak may not be able to withstand this; many faint at the sudden reception of good tidings; the heart suddenly expands and opens, and the warmed blood goes out and spreads throughout the external portions of the body, and as a result of its cooling, the heart ceases. The old man fell as if dead, and he said that he believed them not, informing us that he stood a good part of the day, and he lies in silence because he did not believe them, for he knew that this fainting would lead to their shouting at him, accustoming him to this joy until it is absorbed in calm. This is the reason that they spoke to him all of Joseph's words which he had spoken to them, and when he saw the wagons etc. - they were shouting Joseph's words into his ears, and bringing the wagons before him, and then his spirit returned to him, and his breathing was restored, and he lived, and this is the meaning of their father Jacob's spirit came to life.

(RaMBaN, Bereishit 45:26)

 

A Moral Leader takes Communal Needs into Account and Distributes Resources Justly

Bread, according to the number of infants (Bereishit 47:12): Even though he could have given them a lot of food, he gave them only what they needed. As the Sages said: "When the public is suffering, one should not say: 'I shall go, I shall eat and drink, and all will be well with me'" (Ta'anit 11a).

(Seforno on Bereishit 47:12)

 

 

Who is Courageous? He Who Makes a Friend of his Enemy

Rabbi Shimon said: The firmament is made entirely of water and the angels entirely of fire [as we read] his servants are fiery flames. Yet the water does not extinguish the fire, nor does fire burn the water. Judah and Joseph; this is a lion, the other an ox. Yesterday they gored each other, and now one is sent as an emissary to the other, as it says: And he sent Judah before him. [Therefore,] say: He makes peace in His heights.

(Midrash Tanhumah VaYigash 6)

 

"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 Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my sojournings are one hundred thirty years. The days of the years of my life have been few and miserable, and they have not reached the days of the years of the lives of my forefathers in the days of their sojournings."

(Bereishit 47:9)

           

The days of the years of my sojournings - the years of my sojourning, for I was always a stranger in the land, and all of the early saints referred to life in this world as that of a stranger, for indeed it is not the important thing, it is like a passing shadow compared to life in the world to come. Thus, David said: I am a sojourner with You (Psalms 39:13). When the people pledged themselves to the service of the House of God, David said, For we are like sojourners before you and like residents as were all of our forefathers, in that our life on earth is like a shadow (I Chronicles 29:15). This is also proof that these holy people knew about the survival of the soul, for he who sojourns in another country will eventually return home.

(Reggio ad. loc.)

 

For all shepherds are abhorrent to Egyptians

When Pharaoh summons you (Bereishit 46:33): It may be assumed that he called you in order to choose warriors from amongst you. So, when he asks you "What is your occupation?" answer him "your servants are breeders of livestock." It is not proper to speak of something that is abhorrent in the eyes of the king. God forbid you should explicitly mention something prohibited by his religion! If this were not so, why did Joseph not mention another explanation of his own words, but rather he said [all shepherds] are abhorrent to Egyptians... that is precisely the reason why he told them not to say that they were shepherds. Of course, the king must understand that since you are breeders of livestock, you certainly must all be shepherds.

(Keli Yakar on Bereishit 46:33)

 

"On prophecy"

The haphtarah (reading from the prophets) which goes with the portion of Vayigash is a prophecy of the future: the unification of Judah and Joseph and the political and spiritual rehabilitation of the united people after it had split into two separate nations. This prophecy was never fulfilled. We therefore need to study and discuss the significance of prophecies of the future, of what appears in the words of the prophets as foretelling what will happen. Ezekiel said these things after the ten tribes and Judah had gone into exile... Hosea and Amos too, who prophesied the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, went on to prophesy that Israel would return. This didn't happen. And in this instance, it is also impossible to accept the Midrashic view of prophecies that have not been fulfilled to this day - that they are prophecies concerning the end of days, and are destined to be fulfilled. The ten tribes, including those of the sons of Joseph, were wiped off the face of the earth, apparently not through being physically exterminated but through spiritual extermination; they completely assimilated into the peoples among whom they were exiled, and there is no trace of them in historical reality. In the Talmudic period, R. Akiva, who knew the prophecies about the return of the ten tribes as well as we do, said: "The ten tribes are not destined to return." He knew they were lost. His faith in the true and righteous prophets was not undermined by this, because we understand that their words do not tell us what will happen, but present the purpose and the point of what will happen, and what should happen, which we ought to look forward to and strive towards, even if no guarantee is given that it will come about... it says in the Tosaphot: "A prophet only prophesies about what ought to happen, if there is no sin." The false prophets down the generations have preached belief in the certainty of an unconditional redemption; in redemption even if man does not redeem himself from sin.

(From the late Professor Yeshyahu Leibovitz's "Remarks on the Weekly Readings")

 

 

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