parashat vayigash Brothers Recognize
The Torah portion read in synagogues around the world this week is parashat vayigash. Parashat vayigash runs from Genesis chapter 44 verse 18 to chapter 47 verse 27. Parashat vayigash is the middle of the story of Joseph and his brothers. Parashat vayigash is where the sons of Jacob come to recognition, where the sons of Jacob come to reconciliation, where the sons of Jacob become children of Israel. The keyword to the story of Joseph and his brothers is l-hakir “to recognize.”
The first time the sons of Jacob say “recognize” is when they deceive their father about selling their brother. This comes in the parasha we read two weeks ago. Genesis 37:31-38.
“So they took Joseph’s tunic and slaughtered a goat-buck and immersed the tunic in blood. They sent the stripped tunic and had it brought to their father and said, ‘We found this, please recognize it, is this your son’s tunic or isn’t it?’ And he recognized it and said, ‘my son’s tunic, an evil animal has eaten him, surely Joseph has been preyed upon!’ And Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth around his waist and mourned over his son many days. All his sons and all his daughters rose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, ‘I will go down to my son mourning into the underworld.’ And his father wept for him.”
The recognition that the brothers demanded of their father is of course a false recognition. While the tunic did belong to Joseph, the conclusion they expected their father to draw was a deception.
The story of the brothers’ betrayal is followed in Genesis 38 by the episode of Yhuda and Tamar. Many readers of the Torah have wondered why the intrusion here? On the surface this story seems totally unrelated to the story of Joseph in Egypt. But this is another recognition story.
I’m sure you’re somewhat familiar with this affair, but let me refresh your memory. Yhuda marries his oldest son Er off to a girl named Tamar. When Er dies, Yhuda commands his second son Onan to act as the yavam. In accordance with ancient law, if a married man dies without a son and his widow is still of childbearing age, his brother must try and get her pregnant. This, is in order to give the dead brother a descendent to perpetuate his name. The term for the guy with the duty is the yavam. Well, Onan isn’t interested in being the yavam. He practices birth control when he’s supposed to be in there pinch-hitting for his brother. We see in Genesis 38 that the dysfunctionality of Jacob’s family has jumped the generation gap. Just as Yhuda and his brothers didn’t recognize Joseph’s rights, in the next generation Onan doesn’t recognize Er’s rights. In this family, brothers don’t recognize one another.
Then Onan dies, and Er still doesn’t have a descendant. Yhuda has a third son, but he thinks his daughter-in-law is jinxed. He doesn’t want to risk the last boy in the family on this widow-maker. Yhuda tells Tamar to wait until his third son grows up before she remarries, but he has no intention of granting her rights. Then Yhuda’s own wife dies.
Tamar seizes her chance to produce an heir for Er. She disguises herself with a veil as a prostitute and propositions Yhuda by the roadside. They agree on the price of one goat. He gives her his signature seal, his cord, and his walking stick in pledge until she can take delivery of the goat, and they transact their business. When Yhuda sends the goat to recover his pledge, nobody knows where this prostitute has disappeared to along with the ancient equivalent of the man’s ID and all his credit cards. Yhuda gives up. Three months later he finds out his daughter-in-law is pregnant. Clan leader Yhuda gives the order, “Bring her out and have her burned.” As Tamar is being dragged out of her tent she produces Yhuda’s lost ID. Tamar declares, “By the man to whom these belong I got pregnant.’ In the words of the text [37:26] Tamar says,
“‘Please recognize, whose are this seal and cords and staff?’ And Yhuda recognized them.”
That’s the second recognition you need to keep in the back of your mind in order to understand how Yhuda will finally come to recognize his brother.
The midrash dramatizes these first two recognitions with a rebuke from on High. Midrash is an imaginative way of searching the linguistic details of the Torah in order to fill in the story details that the Torah doesn’t tell. Midrash often presents its findings in the form of an imaginary conversation.
“Said the Holy One blessed be He to Yhuda, ‘You deceived your father with a goat-buck. By your life, Tamar will deceive you with a goat-kid!… You said to your father, please recognize. By your life, Tamar will say to you, please recognize!’”
When the brothers had “sent the stripped tunic and brought it to their father and said, ‘We found this, please recognize it, is this your son’s tunic?’” it was a deception. But when Tamar sent, and “said, ‘Please recognize, whose are this seal and cords and staff?’ and Yhuda recognized them,” it was a discovery.
At this point his recognition is rather reluctant. But God is leading Yhuda to a fuller recognition by turning the tables. What goes around comes around. The perpetrator becomes the victim. Yhuda is being repaid in kind. For Yhuda this is his road to repentance. God is allowing Yhuda to develop sympathy. Until we find ourselves on the receiving end we often don’t recognize the harm we’ve done to others.
While Yhuda and family have been distinguishing themselves by impropriety, Joseph has distinguished himself by self-control. God has revealed the future famine to him and put him in position to save everybody who’s wronged him: the frustrated seductress who put him in prison on false charges, the ugly Egyptian society dependent on slave-labor, his lousy relatives the Yishmaelite slave-traders who like himself are also descendents of Avraham, and his own rotten brothers who figured they’d killed him off. God puts Joseph in the unique position to save every person who’s ever wronged him from starving to death. During the famine his ten brothers come down to Egypt to purchase food. Genesis 42:6-8.
“And Joseph was the ruler over the land, he was the distributor to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down to him, with their faces touching the ground. And Joseph saw his brothers and he recognized them, and he made himself unrecognizable to them. He spoke with them harshly, he said to them, ‘from where have you come?’ They said, ‘From the land of Canaan to purchase food.’ And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they didn’t recognize him.”
In case you haven’t caught on yet that the key to the story of Joseph is recognition, the Torah tells you here twice that Joseph recognized his brothers, but they didn’t recognize him.
Now we come to the initial undoing of what the brothers did to Joseph twenty-two years before. They had lied about him; he will lie about them. They had thrown him into the pit; he will throw them into prison. The brothers are being repaid in kind, measure for measure. Genesis 42:9-11.
“And Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them. He said to them, ‘You are spies, to see the nakedness of the land you’ve come!’ They said to him, ‘No my lord, but your servants have come to purchase food. We are all sons of one man, we are honest, your servants wouldn’t be spies.’”
The irony of the brother’s statement “we are all sons of one man” didn’t slip the eagle of commentators. Rashi remarks,
“The Holy Spirit flashed in them and they included him with themselves, for he too was a son of their father.”
But consciously the sons of Yaakov don’t yet know they’re all brothers; this is precisely what they must learn and what they must demonstrate in order for the family to be healed. Let’s continue with the story in verses 12-16.
“He said to them, ‘No, for the nakedness of the land you came to see.’
They said, ‘Twelve are your servants; we are brothers, sons of one man in the land of Canaan. And behold the youngest is with his father today and the one is not.’
Joseph said to them, ‘That’s just what I told you, when I said, “You are spies.” By this you will be tested, by the life of Pharaoh if you will leave this spot except at the coming of your youngest brother hither! Send one of you, let him fetch your brother and you’ll be imprisoned and your words will be tested, whether the truth is with you, and if not, by the life of Pharaoh you are spies!’ And he imprisoned them under guard three days.”
Why do you suppose Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies? Is this simply the most convenient excuse he can come up on with the spur of the moment in order to detain them? Or is there some inner connection between the treachery of espionage and the betrayal of a brother?
From strictly security considerations the logic of the test is rather dubious. True, if the ten brothers don’t come up with their youngest brother it will prove they’re lying, but the converse isn’t true: they can come up with an eleventh brother and still be spies. Coming up with another brother isn’t a reliable test.
But on a deeper level, Joseph’s test makes perfect sense. If these sons of Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah, who once betrayed the son of Rachel, have not harmed Rachel’s other son all these years it will prove the truth of their claim, “We are all sons of one man.”
In his monumental code of law Rambam has a very interesting definition of repentance. I quote from the Mishne Torah of Rambam [tshuva 2, 1].
“What is true repentance? When a person is confronted by a similar situation in which he or she once transgressed, and in which it is possible to transgress again, but he or she nonetheless does not transgress, and it is neither out of fear nor out of weakness…this is true repentance.”
Unquote. This is what Joseph has arranged: an opportunity for his brothers to demonstrate that they’re changed persons. Joseph has set up a parallel situation. Continuing the story with Genesis 42:18-21.
“Joseph said to them on the third day, ‘This do and live. I’m a God-fearing man. If you are honest your one brother will be imprisoned in your guardhouse, and as for you, go, bring your purchase to the hunger of your households. And you will bring your youngest brother to me that your words may be secured and you need not die.’ And they did so.
Then they said each to his brother, ‘But we are guilty on account of our brother, because we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us and we didn’t listen. For this reason this distress has come upon us.’
Reuven answered them, ‘Didn’t I tell you, “Don’t sin against the boy,” but you wouldn’t listen. Now his blood is being required.’ But they didn’t know that Joseph was listening, because there was a translator between them.”
The brothers, minus one hostage, return to Canaan with food. After hearing their report, the old man announces [Genesis 42:38].
“‘My son will not go down with you, for his brother is dead and he alone remains. And a disaster befalls him on the way in which you go, and you would bring down my gray hair in grief into the underworld!’”
Here Jacob says that Binyamin alone remains. Incredibly, he neglects to add “from his mother.” Father Jacob still carries on like the offspring of Leah and Zilpah and Bilhah don’t count for anything, that only the children of Rachel are his sons. He talks like this right to their faces!
This of course was the problem with the brothers in the first place. Jacob’s open favoritism of Joseph is what had aroused their jealousy. This is why they had plotted to get rid of him. By favoring Joseph over his brothers, Jacob did the boy a terrible injustice. After all these years, Jacob’s love for the sons of Rachel is still blind. But despite the old man’s intractability, Joseph’s brothers have undergone a change.
If you’re in a relationship that has soured and are waiting around for the person at fault to change, it’s probably not going to happen. The secret of reconciliation in parashat yayigash is that even though the problem didn’t begin with you, change can begin with you. Genesis 43:1-10.
“And the famine was heavy in the land. And so it was when they finished eating the purchase which they brought from Egypt their father said to them, ‘Go back, purchase us a little food.’”
“Yhuda said to him, ‘The man surely testified against us, saying, “you won’t see my face unless you brother is with you.” If you are sending our brother with us we’ll go down and purchase food for you. But if you are not sending we won’t go down, for the man said to us “you won’t see my face unless your brother is with you.’”
Israel said, ‘Why have you done me evil, to tell the man whether you still had a brother?’
They said, ‘The man surely asked about us and about our homeland saying, “is your father still alive, do you have a brother?” We told him about these matters. How were we supposed to know that he would say, “Bring down your brother”?’
Yhuda said to Israel his father, ‘Send the lad with me and we will rise and go and live; we will not die, neither we, nor you, nor the little ones. I will become a pledge for him and from my hand you can seek him back. If I don’t bring him to you and present him in front of you then I will have sinned against you all the days. If we hadn’t delayed by now we could be back twice.’”
Yhuda, who once offered his seal and cord and staff to Tamar as a pledge, now offers himself to his father as a pledge. Yhuda has learned by hard experience that when it comes to preserving the family there’s no substitute for pledging yourself.
By now Yhuda has become a man capable of the closest sympathy with his father. Indeed the very survival of his family now depends on his ability to identify with his father. This comes in the scene where Yhuda offers himself as a slave in place of his brother. Chapter 44 verses 30-33. We finally get to parashat vayigash.
“And now when I come to your servant my father and the lad is not with us and his soul is bound up with his soul and when he sees that the lad is not, he will die and your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father in grief into the underworld. For your servant became a pledge for the lad from his father, saying ‘If I don’t bring him to you I will have sinned against my father all the days.’
And now please let your servant sit instead of the lad my lord’s servant and the lad go up with his brothers. For how shall I go up to my father and the lad is not with me, lest I see the evil which will find my father!’”
Yhuda ignores the trumped-up charge of the stolen goblet. Yhuda speaks only of his father. Jacob in his old age has not changed: he still favors the sons of Rachel to a fault. But Yhuda has undergone the change we call tshuva, the change we call repentance.
Because like his father, Yhuda too has lost his wife while she was young, because Yhuda too has lost young sons, he has developed sympathy for his father’s situation. But more than this, Yhuda has observed his father’s grief. Yhuda has come to accept his father’s love for what it is, with all its defects.
We’ve all at times hurt the people around us, often those we love most. And we’ve all made the mistake, at one time or another, of running away from the past. The problem with running, is that no matter how far or how fast you run, the past always catches up — and usually at the worst of times. Tshuva means not having to run away any more.
Some of us are quick to repent, at least of certain of our sins. Others of us need to be led over a long and circuitous route in order to confront our sin and experience God’s transforming power. However tortuous the route, the gate of repentance never closes. Sefer Mishle, the biblical Book of Proverbs, teaches us that in admitting to and abandoning our sin, we find mercy with God. Proverbs 28:13.
“The one covering his rebellions will not succeed, but the one admitting and abandoning will receive mercy.”
The story of Joseph’s brothers teaches us that the first step home is recognition. The first family in the Book of Genesis was broken by fratricide. When God asks the guilty party, “Where is your brother?” Kayin callously retorts, “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?”
At the end of the Book of Genesis, before there can be a family called Israel, the family with whom God partners to recover his alienated world, the offspring of Israel have to sort out this recognition thing. Before the offspring of Jacob can be constituted children of Israel, they must recognize their brother. Before the offspring of Jacob can be saved from starvation, they must recognize what they’ve done to their brother. Recognition is not an option; recognition is a matter of survival. Without recognition between brothers and sisters God’s plan to save the world isn’t going to happen.
The prophet Malakhi predicts that before the day of HaShem, Eliyahu will return and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. From parashat vayigash we understand that when that happens, brothers will also turn toward brothers. Malakhi 3:22-24 [English 4:4-6]
“Remember the Torah of Moshe My servant, which I commanded him at Chorev, concerning all Israel, comprising statutes and precedents. Behold, I am sending you Eliyahu the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of HaShem. He will turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the earth with a curse.”
The prophecy of Malakhi operates not only on the personal level; the prophecy also addresses God’s family. For nineteen hundred years God’s family has been separated by a schism that began when Jesus-confessing Gentiles excluded Jesus-confessing Jews. That ugly schism among Jesus’s followers widened, creating a situation where the Gentile church and the Jewish synagogue could no longer recognize one another as brothers and sisters.
The prophecy of Malakhi addresses both Jews and Christians. The prophecy tells Christians they need to remember the Torah of God’s servant Moshe. Torah is not just for Jews. The prophecy tells Jews that Eliyahu Hanavi, Elijah the prophet, will announce the great and awesome day of the L-rd. The great and awesome day of the L-rd is not just for Christians. The side of God’s family who remember Torah and the side of God’s family who announce the day of the L-rd must embrace one another. They must each embrace the other’s truth, the truth they forfeited during their long estrangement. They must turn toward each another in recognition. Our estrangement has been long and bitter, but we are brothers and sisters.
Until God's family achieves reconciliation, our dysfunction is a curse to the whole earth. The witness of Jews and of Christians is crippled. The world looks at our family and is not impressed with our Father in heaven. The message of parashat vayigash is "please recognize."
