Shabbat January 4, 2020 Vayigash - Torah Reading Genesis 44:18- 47:27 In this week’s parasha, Vayigash, we near the end of the Joseph arc. Having forced his brothers to return with Benjamin, Joseph has announced his intention to keep Benjamin with him as punishment for a supposed theft. Joseph himself had planted evidence of this imagined theft on his brothers. Having no idea who this imposing figure who is second only to Pharaoh really is, Judah summons his courage to the sticking place and pleads with him. He asks that he spare Benjamin for their father’s sake, offering to take Benjamin’s place and remain as Joseph’s slave. At that evidence of brotherly self-sacrifice, Joseph is overcome with emotion. He dismisses all of his attendants and reveals to his brothers that he is the sibling they sold into slavery many years ago. The brothers are dumbfounded – what he says is so unexpected that they can’t even assimilate the information. Joseph brings them close to him and explains again who he is and they finally accept the truth of what he tells them. Rashi says that he proved who he was by showing them his circumcision and by speaking to them in Hebrew. The scene is extraordinarily moving as Joseph forgives them and rationalizes their crime by saying that G-d used them to send him to Egypt for a larger purpose. In many ways the scene is reminiscent of the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau. Strife between/among siblings with eventual reconciliation is a recurrent theme of the families of the Patriarchs, as is the trope of the younger becoming more powerful than the elder. In real life, as in the Torah, patterns of family dysfunction often repeat from one generation to the next. Joseph sends the brothers back to their father with many gifts and admonishes them not to fight on the way, showing he knows this family well. Jacob is overjoyed at the news that Joseph is alive and announces his intention to join his son in Egypt. As has happened to him in connection with previous journeys, he has a dream (this time called marot halailah - a vision of the night) in which G-d speaks to him reassuringly. In Jacob’s dream, G-d tells him that G-d will be with him when he goes down to Egypt and when he comes up from Egypt. Since he doesn’t actually return to the Holy Land, this is often interpreted as meaning G-d is with his descendants when they return. Rashi, on the other hand, takes it to mean that he will be buried in the Land. G-d goes on to say that “Joseph shall put his hand on your eyes.” The custom of closing the eyes of someone who died is traced to this verse. It is also the tradition to have a child of the deceased do this, if the child or children are present at the death. Jewish tradition breaks with the biblical account, though, in suggesting which child does this service for the deceased parent, recommending that the first born son do it, if he is there at the parent’s death. Presumably, interviewing the family at the time of death to decide who had been the parent’s favorite child was rejected as impractical and unlikely to lead to family harmony. The reading continues with a long and confusing list of Jacob’s children and grandchildren who were going to Egypt with him. The text says that 66 people (literally “souls”) came with Jacob to Egypt, and that the total of Beit Ya’akov – the House of Jacob – that came down to Egypt, including Joseph’s two sons, is 70. The actual names listed add up to 71. But if you subtract Joseph and his sons (who were already in Egypt) and Onan and Er (who died in an earlier chapter) you do get the 66 mentioned above. But in what sense could 70 people from the House of Jacob be said to have come down to Egypt? Two of the 71 listed are already dead and two never came down because they were born there. Much rabbinic effort has been expended to make the math work, but the view of modern scholarship is that the contradictions occur because of different source material being put together. According to the Oxford Commentary on the Bible, for example, “Probably this list was originally intended as a list of all Jacob’s descendants through three generations and had no original connection with this narrative.” Jacob sends Judah ahead to Goshen to prepare the way for him. Joseph comes to meet his father and there is a tearful reunion. Jacob says that now he sees that Joseph is alive, he can die. It is a poignant scene, both in contrast to and reminiscent of Jacob telling the older brothers that he will die if he loses Benjamin. Joseph prepares his family to meet Pharaoh, saying that if asked they should say they are owners of livestock, not sheep herders. To modern ears he sounds like any assimilated Jew with a good job well above his immigrant origins, trying to make his immigrant relatives a little less embarrassing as he introduces them to the boss. Rashi, on the other hand, says that he instructed them not to mention sheep herding because sheep were gods to the Egyptians. When it comes to it, though, the brothers do say that they are shepherds. Did they forget or are they unwilling to dissemble? In any event, Pharaoh is not disturbed by this revelation and, in fact, decides to put them in charge of his sheep. The narrative then switches from Joseph’s personal story to his professional one – the handling of the famine. Having confiscated the grain during the years of plenty, he now sells it back to the Egyptians when the famine threatens their lives. When they run out of money, he tells them to give their livestock in payment. When they run out of livestock he takes their land and makes them share croppers. Only the Egyptian priests are exempt from this land grab – Pharaoh provides for them. The rest work the land and pay 20% of the produce to Pharaoh as rent for what had been their property. Independent landowners become, in effect, slaves to Pharaoh and to Joseph. The parasha ends by stating that the Israelites thrived in Egypt. The narrator passes no judgment on Joseph’s maneuvers. The calls for compassion and kindness to the poor seen elsewhere in the Torah are absent as Joseph impoverishes the Egyptian people. Joseph himself, who was once a slave, doesn’t seem to have gained a sense of justice or compassion from that experience. However, in the Book of Exodus a new Pharaoh will arise who doesn’t know Joseph and the Children of Israel will, in the words of the Jewish Study Bible, “find themselves once again on the wrong end of the enslavement process.”

Haftarah Ezekiel 37:15-28

The haftarah comes from the book of Ezekiel, the third of the Major Prophets, who prophesied during the Babylonian exile. His book consists of a series of what sound like hallucinatory visions. This week’s haftarah comes right after the famous “dry bones” vision.

In the haftarah for Vayigash, G-d tells Ezekiel to take two sticks and mark them so that one represents the descendants of Joseph (through Ephraim) and the other the descendants of Judah. He is told to hold the sticks in one hand, to make them one, and to explain to the people that G-d will forgive them and reunite them in their land. The stick for Ephraim is generally thought to represent all of the Ten Lost Tribes. Ezekiel’s vision says that the all the descendants of Jacob will reunite in their own land and that King David will rule over them. Since the Messiah will be a descendant of David, this heralds the Messianic Age.

The connection with the parasha is that they are both about reunions of B’nei Yisrael. In the Torah reading the actual sons of Jacob/Israel are reunited, in Egypt. The prophet tells of a future time when their descendants will be reunited as well, this time in the Holy Land.

The prophesied time (and the Messiah) have yet to come. Israel was established as a nation in 1948, but the Ten Lost Tribes remain lost.