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TORAH PORTION: VAYIGASH

Parashat Vayigash

December 23, 2023 | 11 Tevet 5784

Torah: Genesis 44:18–47:27 Triennial: Genesis 45:28–446:27

Haftarah: Ezekiel 33:15–28

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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Torah portion by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Judah and Jacob", Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein asks shares insights from Hassidut in a video titled "Bringing Thanksgiving Into Moments of Challenge", and Ilana Kurshan reflects on the parashah through poetry in a piece called "The Quality of Mercy".

D'VAR TORAH

Judah and Jacob

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

Judah loses two of his sons. In doing everything he can to protect his remaining son, Judah ensures that that son will not have progeny of his own. He bears the unbearable pain of loss of a child and it changes him. Judah, the brother who would not consent to killing Joseph, callously orders that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, be burned to death for harlotry. He may see her as the source of his loss, the source of his pain. Yet when he learns that it is actually he who is in the wrong, Judah once again changes. He says, famously, of Tamar, “She is more in the right than I.” And Judah becomes the sort of person from whom King David would descend. He becomes the sort of person who can convince people to change. 

In this week’s parashah, we read Judah’s devastatingly beautiful speech to Joseph. It is this speech that will finally break through the facade of Joseph’s foreignness, this speech which will convince Joseph that his brothers have changed and that he can reveal himself to them. Last week, Judah convinced his father, Jacob, to allow them to bring Benjamin down to Egypt. This week, when Joseph wants them to abandon Benjamin with him, Judah refuses. He says, “let your servant, pray, stay instead of the lad as a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers. For how shall I go up to my father, if the lad be not with us? Let me see not the evil that would find out my father!” 

Judah is willing to sacrifice himself to save his father and the brother his father loves best. He knows the pain of losing two sons; he’s done it. He is willing to do anything to prevent his father from suffering the loss of a second son. Somehow, Judah’s suffering has made him stronger, more empathetic, more ready to give. 

Jacob too has suffered. He has suffered the loss of his beloved wife and thinks he has lost his beloved son. And these losses break him. Jacob ossifies, drowning in his grief. Repeatedly, we hear him speak about himself as if he is already dead. Life cannot go on for him without Joseph. He forgets his other sons, he forgets Benjamin, he forgets God’s promise and his responsibility to it. Jacob sleepwalks through life after losing Joseph. 

Then, in our parashah, Jacob finally learns that he has not in fact lost Joseph. This could be a moment of jubilation. This could be the revival of Jacob, the happy, long-imagined, hardly thought to be possible reunion. But it is not. Jacob has been broken by unbearable pain. Even upon learning the cause of the pain is gone, even knowing that Joseph is still alive, all Jacob can think of is death.

In the moment that he hears the news, Jacob’s heart stops. Some think he faints, some think he suffers a heart attack. He has been so consumed by grief that when he learns that there is no cause for grief, there is nothing left in him that can celebrate. He needs a restart, a reawakening, in order to be able to leave his grief behind. Even so, he still thinks only of death. Jacob has been pushed to the point of breaking. He cannot change; he cannot heal. It is fitting then that we are B’nei Yisrael, descendants of Jacob. We know unbearable grief. But our kings come from Judah. We aspire to follow Judah’s example, to rise up from grief and choose life.

HASSIDUT

Bringing Thanksgiving Into Moments

of Challenge

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Insights from Hassidut

*

Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.

WHITE FIRE: POETRY ON THE PARASHAH

The Quality of Mercy

llana Kurshan

The quality of mercy is not strained. 

It drops like gentle rain, or like my tears, 

As tense and anxious I stand pleading here

With you, my lord. So realize not my fears.

My father, old and wizened, had two sons

He loved more than us all. And one is gone

A tattered cloak. A pit. A beast and blood

I’ll spare you (so to speak). I won’t go on.

The other boy, the son-of-sorrow turned

The son of his right hand, he could not bear

To part with, til I told him that he must

“I’ll guard him with my life,” I pledged. “I swear.” 

“My lord, how can I go back and report

The other boy, bright-eyed and freckle-browed,

Is left behind in Egypt? Father would—

My lord, I cannot speak such words aloud. 

Send not my father’s white head down, I beg. 

Relax your iron fist, your scepter’s sway. 

I tremble at the dread and fear of kings,

Though justice be your plea, I dare to pray: 

May all these stars—eleven? twelve?--align

As earthly power shows itself divine.

*

The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.

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