Joseph and the Birth of Israel: VaYigash

Parashat VaYigash begins in the middle of the BIG drama at the end of the story.

Eleven sons of Jacob are all gathered before none other than Egypt’s Prime Minister.  But what these eleven brothers don’t know is that the Prime Minister is their own brother, Joseph. Their twelfth brother, Joseph, who 20 years ago, they had sold into slavery in Egypt.

And who was the youngest brother of all twelve? Innocent Benjamin, who throughout the Torah, never speaks, not even once.  Some say Benjamin was a child with special needs.  Joseph, the Egyptian Prime Minister had framed his brother Benjamin for a crime he did NOT commit – accusing Benjamin of stealing Joseph’s silver goblet. The Prime Minister had declared “Only he in whose possession the silver goblet was found shall be my slave!” But then another brother, Judah, steps up bravely. “Please!” Judah begs the Prime Minister, “Let ME remain as a slave to you, but let innocent Benjamin go. If anything happened to Benjamin, it would break our aging father’s heart!”

Now comes the climax. A climax is the height of tension – and then its release.

Joseph weeps.  Did you know that Joseph was a crybaby? In the Torah Joseph cries seven times.  This time, Joseph, Egypt’s big Prime Minister, cries so loudly that all Egypt hears. And through his tears, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, saying: “I am Joseph! Does my father yet live?”

But Joseph sees that his brothers are still afraid.  And no wonder.  Here is the Prime Minister who had just framed them, put them on trial, accused them of crimes they didn’t commit. And then, suddenly, it turns out he is actually Joseph, the 17-year-old boy the other brothers had wanted to kill, and instead had sold into Egyptian slavery.

But then – a hinge of history –  Joseph makes an interesting move.  Instead of telling them the personal psychological truth – that he, Joseph, was simply forgiving them for their past actions – he tells them a collective philosophical truth: to explain his change of heart, Joseph gives his eleven brothers a persuasively enlightening interpretation. He says: “It was not YOU who sent me to Egypt; God sent me here, ahead of you, in order to save all our lives.”

Joseph giving a reason for something that happened in the Past allows all twelve brothers to move into the Future together as a People. Joseph’s illuminating interpretation is not only the climax of the Joseph story, but the climax of the entire Book of B’reisheet, for three reasons:

First, the great drama of the story itself.

Second, it brings the central storyline of Genesis to its close.

Third, by interpreting history to give a larger meaning to his brother’s actions, Joseph establishes interpretation itself as a central pillar of Jewish identity: through his act of interpretation, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob becomes a People.  The twelve sons of Jacob become “B’nai Yisrael”: the Israelites.

Let’s examine the 3 reasons why this story is the climax of the entire book of B’reisheet. 

Shakespearean Drama

First, the drama of the story itself. Like a scene from Shakespeare, or from an epic by Homer, the tale is full of dramatic reverses: the lowly slave becomes the Prime Minister.  The tale is full of dramatic irony: Joseph understands exactly what his brothers are saying, but they don’t know that he knows.

And the tale is full of dramatic parallels – Reuven was taken prisoner, just as Joseph was taken prisoner; parallels in changes of clothing; parallels of being thrown into pits and then being raised up high.

The climax comes, when after 20 years of guilt and separation, the victim of a hidden family crime reveals himself to his astounded brothers as the hero of the story.

The Arc of Narrative is the second reason VaYigash brings the central story of Genesis to its close.  That story begins when God makes a deal with Abraham and promises: “I will make of YOU, Abraham, a great nation.”  How DOES a single private individual become a great nation? To become a People, Abraham and his descendants must overcome two challenges.

Challenge Number One is to pass on the Blessing to the next generation – this is the challenge of parenthood.

Challenge Number Two is to build a family in which all members are a part of a greater whole – this is the challenge of brotherhood.

Two challenges faced by every family from then to now: Parenthood and Brotherhood.

In the first two generations there is terrible trouble dealing with both those challenges. Abraham cannot pass the blessing on to his own first-born son Ishmael, because his wife Sarah forces him to banish Ishmael in favor of Isaac, her own biological son. Between Isaac and Ishmael, the two sons of Abraham, there was no brotherhood.

Isaac’s life is marked by repeated trauma. He hears his mother tell his father to kill his half-brother. And then, in the Akedah he faces his own near-death-by-knife experience at the hand of his own father. Isaac’s willful wife Rebecca repeats the pattern of Isaac’s mother, by favoring one twin son over the other. I’m no PhD in psychology, but I think Mother and Father each favoring a different twin son over the other is not a recipe for brotherhood.

So did Isaac and Rebecca pass the parenthood test of passing on the Blessing to the next generation and promoting Brotherhood? No. They also failed. Isaac favoured first-born Esau, while his powerful wife Rebecca uses guile and deceit to make sure that the blessing is passed on to the second-born twin, to Jacob. Jacob, fearing his cheated twin will murder him, flees. After twenty years of estrangement, Jacob’s lavish gift of a thousand beasts settles the dispute between them but does not restore true brotherhood.  The twins do not carry on in history together. Esau goes East, Jacob goes West, and they meet again only at their father’s funeral.

My goodness! The Torah is not shy about family dysfunction, or the challenges of Parenthood and Brotherhood.

The same old same old?

So now the drama of passing on the Blessing, and building a unified family, shifts to Jacob and his twelve sons. But it seems that here, too, there is that same tragic inability to build a cohesive family because of favouritism and choseness.  This time it is in favour of Joseph; once again not the first born, but the son of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel. Here again there is rivalry; jealousy; murderous intent; betrayal of the brother; and deceit of the father. Oy!

It seems the same challenge of parenthood, and the same challenge of brotherhood, will also plague the Children of Jacob. They too will not be able to build a family in which ALL members are part of a greater whole, not be able to carry on TOGETHER the covenantal blessing into the future, and so not be able to become a great nation like God promised Abraham. Now, in this climax in VaYigash, it all comes down to Joseph.

And what does Joseph do? For the third time – but not the last – Joseph weeps. Now let’s stop and ask: WHY does Joseph weep? Joseph did not weep when his brothers threw him into a pit; Joseph did not weep when he was framed by Potiphar’s wife. Joseph wept when confronted by the fact that he and his brothers share a common father.

On a human level, it is understandable why a sensitive guy like Joseph would weep at such a moment. As Paul Simon famously sung about Joseph, “When he left his home and his family, he was no more than a boy, in the company of strangers” – cut off from his parents, from his country, from his language. Even before being thrown in the pit, he was isolated from his brothers. He bore the burden of being favoured, of being  – like the Jews – “chosen”. To be Joseph means – through no fault of his own – to be born to a complicated family narrative.  To this day, part of every human’s fate is who their parents are, and who their siblings are.  In Joseph’s case, his fate is to be the first-born of Rachel, the favourite wife, who for years couldn’t have a baby; Rachel, the wife for whom Jacob worked for 7 years.  (And then another 7 years, after his father-in-law deceived him on his wedding night.  Can you imagine?)

But Jacob’s favoring of Joseph, instead of being a benefit, isolates Joseph among his brothers. Joseph has amazing talents – the telling of stories, and the interpretation of dreams.  But the brothers don’t admire Joseph for his talents – they are jealous.  So far away from his family, without a friend in the world, Joseph had to make his way.  But how sad for Joseph.  Even when his fortunes reverse, and, just as he predicted to his jealous brothers he rises to great heights of power, who was there to witness his success?

It’s like the joke of the Rabbi who sneaks out on Yom Kippur afternoon to play golf, and hits a hole-in-one.  And the angels complain to God: “How could a Rabbi – on Yom Kippur afternoon! – be rewarded with a hole-in-one?” God responds: “Who can he tell?”

The sadness for Joseph was that his great power and success, just as he had dreamed, were without meaningful witnesses. Who from the old crowd could say, “Wow, remember Joseph, that obnoxious showoff, that insecure boaster, ‘one day I’m going to rule over all of you’? Yes?  Well, he’s the Prime Minister of Egypt, the greatest empire in the world.  He lives in a palace.  He married the daughter of the High Priest. He is all powerful. His prophecy came true.” And now, just as he prophesied, his eleven brothers stand before him, witness to the truth of his prophesy. No wonder he cries. What a moment!

But now that Joseph’s prophecy has come true, what will he do? Will he carry on the tradition of his dysfunctional family?  Or can he do some act to allow the prophecy’s fulfillment to lead instead to reconciliation?

Joseph is helped because at least one of his brothers, Judah, shows evidence of change. Just before the revelation, Judah’s final speech to Joseph puts the interests of Benjamin, their brother, and Jacob, their father, ahead of Judah’s own interest. Perhaps – in part at the hands of Tamar, his daughter-in-law, who forced Judah to do the right thing – Judah has learned about responsibility.

So, now we come to the climax, the big reveal, a great hinge of history: the arc of narrative rests on Joseph’s shoulders. Will Joseph, like his grandfather Isaac, completely cut himself off from his brothers? Will Joseph, like his father Jacob, placate his brother with gifts, but let each one go their own separate way? Or will Joseph now do some special, definitive act that will allow the family to continue into the future as a cohesive unit?

You can only change yourself

Behitvadeh Yosef. Joseph made himself known. Behitvadeh is a reflexive verb. It is a truism of therapy that you cannot change the other – you can only change yourself. Joseph cannot reverse the fact that his brothers wanted to kill him, that his brothers sold him into slavery, that his brothers lied about his death to his father. He cannot even reverse the fact that, just as he had prophesized years earlier, all eleven brothers now bow down before him. But when the climactic moment of revelation comes, Joseph does the essential act that closes the long arc of the Genesis narrative. He uses interpretation of the fulfillment of the prophecy.

He says: “ki le’michya shlachani Elohim lifnaichem – “It was not YOU who sent me to Egypt; God sent me here, ahead of you, in order to save ALL our lives.”

He tied the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to history and to the destiny of the Children of Israel.  This bold act of interpretation, giving transcendent historical meaning to human action, not only absolves the brothers of their crime, but enables all twelve brothers to carry on into history together.

Joseph indeed has great power. Not only, le’michya physically – to provide food to the family – but  le’michya metaphysically – to transform the sons of Jacob into the Children of Israel, and bring them as a great nation into history. No wonder Joseph’s cry of hitvadaut was so great that all of Pharaoh’s house, all of Egypt, knew.

Behitva’dah Yosef. Joseph made himself known. There is a final sense in which Joseph “made himself known”: he provided a central modality for what being the Children of Israel is all about to this very day. Joseph’s special gift was the interpretation of dreams and prophecy, and this is indeed what Judaism would become known for, to this day – interpretation. The entire Talmud is interpretation of prophecy. The Torah tradition is not just the revelation itself but mainly its interpretation by the Children of Israel.

And that act of interpretation continues to this moment. This Dvar Torah is just the most recent in a long, long line of interpretation throughout the ages.

It was that climactic moment of reconciliation, that act of interpretation, which allows a subtle shift in Parshat VaYigash. When in chapter 46, verse 8, the narrator says: “v’elah shmot B’nai Yisrael”, “These are the names of B’nai Yisrael,” the arc of narrative is complete. The shift has been made from the “sons of Jacob” to the Israelites. The Israelites, the people who move through history, and who, to human action, use interpretation to give transcendent meaning.