Parashat Vayigash
December 11, 2021, 7 Tevet 5782
Torah: Genesis 44:18-47:27; Triennial 46:28-47:27
Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:15-37:28
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Laden Wagons", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "A Good Long Cry" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes about "Reversals" in the Haftarah.
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Laden Wagons
Ilana Kurshan
In parashat Vayigash the patriarch Jacob learns the truth about his son Joseph, whom he has not seen in several decades. Joseph’s brothers return from Egypt to Canaan and inform their father, “Joseph is still alive, yes, he is a ruler over the whole land of Egypt” (46:26). At first Jacob does not believe his sons; the Torah teaches that his heart went numb in disbelief. The brothers keep trying to convince their father, telling him all that Joseph had recounted to them. Then Jacob sees the wagons that Joseph had sent him, and his spirit revives. “My son Joseph is still alive!” he declares. “I must go and see him before I die!” (45:28). Why does the sight of the wagons revive Jacob’s spirit when his sons’ words seem to have no effect? What do the wagons symbolize? What are these conveyances meant to convey?
According to the midrash, Jacob was never fully convinced that Joseph had died, which is why he refused to be consoled for the loss of his son (Genesis Rabbah 84:21). But even so, when the brothers came to report that Joseph was alive and well in Egypt, Jacob discounted their words because it was they who had told him that Joseph had been torn apart by a wild beast (Genesis Rabbah 94:3). Nothing his sons say has any effect on him, because he has already dismissed them as unreliable narrators. Then he sees the wagons, and something inside him shifts. His spirit is revived not because the wagons are proof that Joseph is still alive; he has always known that, at least on some level. Rather, as the midrash teaches, the wagons are an important symbol for Jacob that his son is not just alive and well, but that the connection between them has remained strong in spite of their prolonged estrangement.
Perhaps when Jacob saw the wagons, he realized that his son still honored and respected him. Along with the wagons, Joseph had sent ten he-asses and ten she-asses laden with grain, bread, and provisions for his father on his journey to Egypt. Upon seeing this gift, Jacob realized that Joseph had not forgotten the respect due to his father, in spite of becoming an important Egyptian dignitary. Likewise Jacob understood that his son had not forgotten the values he had learned during the first seventeen years of his life in his father’s home, and he continued to act in accordance with those values, sending wagons so that his father might travel comfortably.
But did the wagons really come from Joseph? The midrash notes that at first, the Torah described that the wagons were sent by Pharaoh (45:21), and later they are described as sent by Joseph (45:27). Picking up on this textual inconsistency, the midrash teaches that when Pharaoh encouraged Joseph to send wagons to his father, he furnished Joseph with wagons covered in idolatrous symbols, like most of the royal conveyances in ancient Egypt. Judah burned those wagons, and Joseph then supplied new ones himself (Genesis Rabbah 94:4). The wagons were thus a sign that in spite of his long sojourn in Pharaoh’s court, Joseph has not assimilated into the idolatrous Egyptian culture. He has remained devoted not just to his father, but also to his father’s God. This revelation, too, revives Jacob’s spirit.
The wagons further symbolize Joseph’s enduring devotion to his father’s teachings. The Hebrew word for “wagon”, agala, is similar to the Hebrew word for heifer, egel. The richly-imaginative midrashic rabbis teach that at the time when Joseph was sold in slavery by his brothers, he and his father had been studying the laws of the egla arufa, described in Deuteronomy 21:1-9 (Genesis Rabbah 84:3, 85:3). These laws teach that if a dead body is found in a field and no one knows who killed him, then the elders of the nearest city must take a heifer and break its neck, and wash their hands while declaring “Our hands have not spilled this blood, nor have our eyes seen it done” (21:7). Joseph sent the wagons as a sign to his father that he still remembered the Torah they had studied together – they were in the middle of studying the laws of the egla, and so Joseph sent agalot, reassuring his father that he had not forgotten their learning, and, presumably, that he was ready to resume.
But there is another level of significance to the particular laws that Jacob and his father were in the middle of studying, as Yakov Z. Mayer points out in his book Drishot (Yediot, 2009, untranslated). Jacob’s deepest fear was that his son had become like a dead body left in the field with no one to tend to him. He worried that his other sons had abandoned Joseph, and that there was no one to bring a heifer in atonement. Moreover, he worried that he was implicated in Joseph’s tragic fate, because it was he who had sent Joseph off in search of his brothers on that fateful day when they threw him in the pit and pretended that the blood of an animal was in fact Joseph’s blood. When Jacob sees the wagons, his spirit revives because he is finally reassured that he was not responsible for Joseph’s death; his hands had not spilled his blood. And so the wagons are proof not just that the son has remained devoted to the father, but also that the father has not betrayed the son.
When Jacob sees the wagons, he realizes not just that his son is still alive, but that he still upholds the values with which he was raised. Jacob’s realization is a reminder that generational distance may be not only physical, but also psychological; a parent may feel that a child has abandoned the values that parent sought to inculcate, or a child may feel that a parent has abdicated responsibility. Perhaps there is no greater gift we can bestow upon our parents than the assurance that we, their children, remain committed to their values and will convey them—wagonload by wagonload—to the next generation.
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A Good Long Cry
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Background: Joseph, after revealing his identity to his brothers, invites the family to relocate to Egypt where there is food.
Text: Bereshit 46:8-30
8And these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons… 27…all the souls of the house of Jacob that came into Egypt were seventy.
28And he [Jacob] had sent Judah before him to Joseph, to show the way before him to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. 29And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up towards Israel his father, to Goshen; and he presented himself to him, and he fell on his neck, and he wept on his neck a good while. 30And Israel said to Joseph: ‘Now let me die, since I have seen your face, for you are still alive.’
· Why do you think that Jacob sent specifically Judah ahead of the family to Joseph? What was his mission?
· Why is it emphasized that Joseph prepared his chariot? What is the significance of the chariot and of Joseph dealing with it?
· Pronouns present a challenge in v.29. Who fell on whose neck, and who cried a good while? What kind of tears are these?
· Why is Jacob speaking of his death when he has finally found Joseph?
Commentary: Ramban 46:29-30
…Israel's eyes were already slightly dim from age, and when Joseph arrived in the carriage of the second in rank, with a miter on his head as was the custom of the Egyptian kings, his father did not recognize him. His brothers also had not recognized him. Therefore Scripture mentioned that when he appeared before his father, who stared at him and finally recognized him, his father fell on his neck and cried again over him, even as he had continually cried over him to this day when he had not seen him after his disappearance, and then Jacob said “now let me die, since I have seen your face.” It is a known matter as to whose tears are more constant: that of an old father who finds his son alive after having despaired of him and having mourned for him, or that of a grown-up son who reigns.
· Ramban paints a picture of the initial moment of the meeting of Joseph with his father. What might Jacob be experiencing emotionally at that point? Why?
· According to Ramban, who cries for a good while? What is his reasoning? What kind of tears might Ramban think that these are?
· What emotional portrait does Ramban paint of Joseph during this meeting? Thinking of the story of Joseph, what might have contributed to this situation? How does this match your impression of Joseph?
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Reversals
Bex Stern Rosenblatt
Sibling relations are tricky. As we progress through Genesis, we read the story of sibling relationship over and over again. It is a story that begins with murder, with Cain killing Abel, and ends with averted murder, with the brothers selling Joseph rather than killing him. We see this theme elsewhere in Genesis, this idea that over the course of time we become civilized. We learn to control our desire to kill, to lie, to destroy and instead we begin to establish ways of living in community. God learns to stop destroying the world. Fathers learn to send away their sons rather than killing them. Mothers learn how to control their fertility. But the person who learns the most, who changes the most, is Judah.
In this week’s parashah we read his passionate plea to be allowed to sacrifice himself in place of Benjamin in order to save his father, Jacob, from grief. It is a beautiful reversal of the trend of brother to kill brother and father to sacrifice son. Our haftarah portion, Ezekiel 37, picks up with this theme of reversal. The reconciliation started by Judah towards Joseph in Genesis is brought to an apex in the promises of Ezekiel. At this point, Judah and Joseph refer to tribes rather than people. Joseph refers to the Northern Kingdom, which was destroyed long ago, its people scattered, and to some extent absorbed into the Southern Kingdom. Judah refers to the Southern Kingdom, which was only just recently destroyed and its people sent into exile.
The focus of the passage is not just on the returning of the people from exile, but rather on the reunification of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, of Joseph and Judah. We read, as translated by Robert Alter:
“I am about to take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and those joined with him, the tribes of Israel, and I will set upon it the stick of Judah and make them a single stick, and they shall be one stick in My hand… And I will make them a single nation in the land on the mountains of Israel, and a single king shall be their king, and they no more shall be two nations, and no more shall they be divided into two kingdoms.”
In Genesis, it is Judah who does the work of changing. He learns and grows from his experiences and reforms his tendencies, changing the paradigm of sibling relationship. In Ezekiel, it appears to be God who affects the change. The tribes will be reconciled through God’s actions, not through work of their own. The division has happened at a national level and the solution must also happen on a grand scale. There is a question then of whether individuals are to be held responsible. Could people within each of the tribes have chosen to reconcile on their own? Or is it the case that when events happen on a grand scale, they need larger, perhaps divine, intervention?
There is a human figure who also acts in the haftarah. He is called King David. Of course, by this point King David has been dead for centuries. Radak would have us understand the reference as either pointing us toward the idea of resurrection of the dead (which is a theme in Ezekiel shortly before this passage) or as referring to someone from the line of David. This person will act to keep the reunified nation in line, living within the bounds of the covenant with God. It is only too appropriate that David descends from the tribe of Judah. When we look for a leader who can do the impossible, we look back to Judah. Leadership, even kingship, is something that arises from humility and the ability to sacrifice oneself for others. With such leadership, national change becomes possible. Just as Judah reconciled the brothers, a king in the style of David can reconcile a fractured nation.
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Torah Sparks! - Parashat HaShavua Advanced Studies
If you are looking to deepen your knowledge with the weekly Parashah, are trying to find some creative input for your Dvar Torah for your Shabbat sermon, or are simply looking for an engaging discussion about the Parashat HaShavua, FJC’s Thursday Parashat HaShavua Advanced Studies class is for you. On Thursday, December 16, we are offering an Open Day for you to try out our class before you commit to signing up. If you decide to join our weekly Parashat HaShavua Advanced Studies Course, you can sign up for just $36 a month.
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