Catastrophe Averted — Vayigash 5781

Storytelling is so important to the Torah, and this week the rabbis employ one of the oldest tricks in the book, right out of a Hollywood movie—a good cliffhanger, right in the middle of a global catastrophe that only one man can see coming.

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The rabbis who segmented the Torah into weekly portions must have loved a good cliffhanger, and true to its favorite plot device, this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, resumes our saga right at the climax of a particularly dramatic chapter of Joseph’s story.

Last week, Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, and rose to prominence after Pharaoh named him a Chief Advisor, and placed him in charge of preparations for the seven years of famine to come. Last week’s portion ended roughly two years into the global famine Joseph had been preparing Egypt to endure, but about which Joseph’s family in Canaan had no warning, leaving Jacob and his remaining sons desperate just as rumors begin to reach them of food and grain to be found in Egypt.

Jacob twice sends sons to Egypt procure food for the tribe, but on the first mission Benjamin, to his knowledge Jacob’s only remaining son by his favored wife Rachel, stayed home. The brothers who did journey to Egypt met with their brother Joseph without recognizing him in the garb of an Egyptian vizier. For his part, Joseph plays a trick on his brothers. He instructs the first group of brothers to return with Benjamin, and then plants evidence to accuse Benjamin—Jacob’s other son with his favored wife Rachel and the only full blooded sibling Joseph has—of stealing a silver goblet from the palace a faux-crime which leads Joseph to claim Benjamin as his slave for life. And that’s where this week’s parsha begins.

Genesis 44:18

Then Judah went up to him and said, “Please, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord, and do not be impatient with your servant, you who are the equal of Pharaoh.

My lord asked his servants, ‘Have you a father or another brother?’

We told my lord, ‘We have an old father, and there is a child of his old age, the youngest; his full brother is dead, so that he alone is left of his mother, and his father dotes on him.’

Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set eyes on him.’

We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; if he were to leave him, his father would die.’

But you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, do not let me see your faces.’

When we came back to your servant my father, we reported my lord’s words to him.

“Later our father said, ‘Go back and procure some food for us.’

We answered, ‘We cannot go down; only if our youngest brother is with us can we go down, for we may not show our faces to the man unless our youngest brother is with us.’

Your servant my father said to us, ‘As you know, my wife bore me two sons.

But one is gone from me, and I said: Alas, he was torn by a beast! And I have not seen him since.

If you take this one from me, too, and he meets with disaster, you will send my white head down to Sheol in sorrow.’

“Now, if I come to your servant my father and the boy is not with us—since his own life is so bound up with his—

when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will send the white head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief.

Now your servant has pledged himself for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I shall stand guilty before my father forever.’

Therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers.

For how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me? Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father!”

The Judah we meet this week is wildly different from Judah as we previously knew him—jealous of Joseph’s gifts and favor with Jacob, and willing to recruit his other brothers into faking Joseph’s death and selling him into slavery. This week’s Judah, pleading with Joseph to understand how the enslavement of Benjamin—Jacob’s only remaining son with his wife Rachel—will break his father’s heart, and might even lead to his death. He’s unwilling to undertake a long journey, carrying the bad news back to Jacob, if there’s a way to avoid it, so he pleads with the Egyptian vizier.

I’d like to think that I understand something of what Judah was going through in this moment, torn between his desire to bring food back to Jacob, and his certainty that leaving Benjamin behind would be devastating blow to Jacob. In my own life, as regular listeners know, I’ve just wrapped up a whirlwind family tour, one that involved four separate PCR COVID tests each for my wife and I, spread over five weeks, and this week I’ve been enjoying a mandatory quarantine, having just returned to Massachusetts on Monday, until results from the fourth test come back.

The reason we’ve been tested so many times, of course, is that were terrified of as terrified of introducing COVID to our families as Judah was of bringing news of Benjamin’s enslavement to his father Jacob.

My wife and I both have parents in high-risk categories for COVID, quite high-risk for a couple of them. So we took every precaution we could, doubling up on masks and limiting stops along the way. Unlike Judah, we don’t have the luxury of being able to beg the virus to leave us alone, and even with so much testing there’s still risk of picking it up enroute, especially with so many people refusing to wear masks at rest stops along our 1000 mile drive through the Eastern United States.

“Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father!” says Judah, as he begs the Egyptian vizier to free Benjamin, or to at least let Judah take his place as a slave in Egypt. Skipping over the irony of Judah’s begging to be made a slave just a few generations before the Israelites are enslaved enmasse by the Egyptians, Judah’s plea is heartfelt, and ultimately it works. Joseph, close to loosing his composure, dismisses his servants and reveals himself to his brothers. Upon hearing the news, Pharaoh welcomes the brothers to return with their extended family, Jacob included, and dwell in the land of Egypt.

The news reached Pharaoh’s palace:

“Joseph’s brothers have come.” Pharaoh and his courtiers were pleased.

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Say to your brothers, ‘Do as follows: load up your beasts and go at once to the land of Canaan.

Take your father and your households and come to me; I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you shall live off the fat of the land.’

And you are bidden [to add], ‘Do as follows: take from the land of Egypt wagons for your children and your wives, and bring your father here.

And never mind your belongings, for the best of all the land of Egypt shall be yours.’”

It’s the beginning of the Israelite’s long saga in Egypt, falling from privilege position to slaves of the empire, to a freed people journeying to a new land, one where their forefathers had lived before the global famine. And being on this side of the journey, in the midst of our own global crisis which, like the Israelites during the famine, has forced millions to change course in their lives and face the challenge of new situations and unknown outcomes. For the Israelites, what seemed like a no-brainer decision—leaving Canaan to join Joseph in Egypt—would have lasting consequences for future generations of Israelites all the way through to today’s community if Israel.

And of course, we’re also still just at the beginning of our own long saga, as we look to an uncertain future. Even as a vaccine is being distributed, economic repercussions of this pandemic continue to devastate businesses and individuals alike, and the long-term health consequences of having COVID-19, even if you’re a-symptomatic, are still unknown.

But that’s still in the future, and Shabbat is almost here, so let’s take another note from the Torah’s storytelling, and end this week the way our Torah portion does, with a focus on the good we have at hand presently, even though we know hard times are coming for our people. We’ve just finished Hanukkah after all, the season of light, and many people in the Jewish community, including me, are looking forward to celebrating Christmas this week with their interfaith families, or at least ordering Chinese food and watching a movie on Christmas Day.

Genesis 47:27

“Thus Israel settled in the country of Egypt, in the region of Goshen; they acquired holdings in it, and were fertile and increased greatly.”

Shabbat Shalom, and if it’s your family practice to celebrate it, Merry Christmas.