TORAH SPARKS

 

Parshat Vayigash

December 31, 2022 | 7 Tevet 5783

Torah: Genesis 44:18-47:27 Triennial: 44:18-45:27

Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:15-28

 

Extra Tears

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah

Joseph takes things to their limits. He lives life to its fullest. As the kids say, he is a little bit extra. When life goes poorly for him, it is the worst imaginable. When life goes well for him, he is on top of the world. Joseph is the life of the party, even when that party is happening on top of a pit into which he s been thrown. He drives the narrative for the largest section of Genesis, all stemming from his dreams in Genesis 37. But it is Rachel who introduces his extremeness, his being extra, when she saddles him with the name Joseph. Literally, he is the one who adds. He is the one who increases the family into a nation. All of this is done with extra emotion, extra twists and turns of the narrative.

 

It is no surprise then to find that when Joseph cries in this parashah, he cries more frequently and with greater intensity than anyone who has come before him. Twice, before Joseph has revealed himself to his brothers, he removes himself from their presence to cry. Finally, just before he tells his brothers who he is, Joseph cries so loudly that all of Egypt hears him, even all the way into Pharaoh s household. It is a powerful image. The tears which Joseph has been holding back finally burst forth with such intensity that an entire country can hear them.

 

The question of who hears what, of how people gain access to knowledge, is important in the Joseph story. We don t know how much each of the characters know. We don t know their motives. We don t know if Jacob knows or suspects that Joseph is still alive. We don t know if Jacob knows what God told Abraham in the Covenant Between the Parts – that his descendants will be slaves in Egypt for 400 years. We don t know if Joseph knows that his brothers no longer intend to harm him. We don t know if Joseph believes he can trust his family.

 

Jacob and Joseph both make decisions based on what they hear, what they suspect might be the case. Jacob is notorious for his deceit, for lying to his father and stealing his family away from his father-in-law. Likewise, Joseph’s brothers are liars – first to the people of Shechem, then to their father. Joseph too learns deceit. He hides his identity from his brothers and sets them up to be accused of stealing.

 

In this world, words cannot be trusted. Truth can be made only through interpretation, whether it is of words or dreams. So it is striking when words break down. Joseph, who turns dreams into words, master of dreaming and interpretation, loses his words to release a cry so primal and so loud that it breaches walls. All of Egypt hears the truth of Joseph s identity not through his words, but through his emotion.

In Genesis, tears are shed during mourning and during reunion. In Joseph’s case, extra as he is, he combines both of these. He is reuniting with his brothers but he is also terrified of what he may have done to his father. He has already been assured that Jacob is still around; nonetheless, his first words after his cry and his reveal are Is my father still alive? Until the reveal, all the words, all the reassurances, could not be trusted. Moreover, perhaps Joseph is becoming aware of the impact of his actions on Jacob. He learns that by taking Benjamin, he may have killed his father. His crying reflects that possibility, the fear of mourning a father he may have killed. Thank God, Jacob is still alive. And through Joseph s great crying, we get our great nation. As we read in Bereshit Rabbah 93:12, As Joseph became reconciled to his brothers from the midst of weeping, so will the Holy One, blessed be He, redeem Israel from the midst of weeping. Reading the weeping as truth telling, it is through the telling of truth that communication is possible, that redemption is possible.

 

 

Unity? Not in My Backyard!

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah

Excitedly, Ezekiel, the prophet during the Babylonian exile, speaks of the glorious, united future of the people of Judah and Israel. This is a beautiful and easy-to-understand haftarah. What might be less clear is how Ezekiel s audience understood his vision, and whether they shared his enthusiasm. Some glorious dreams are just that dreams, and better left that way. We don t really want them to come true.

By the time Ezekiel spoke his prophecy, the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel had been separated for about four centuries and the Kingdom of Israel had been gone for over 100 years. The relations of the two kingdoms had at times been acrimonious, even leading to war. Now Ezekiel is speaking about a joint future, and unity to come.

Ezekiel demonstrates this unity visually, with the two trees or wooden planks that he brings together in his hand. The interpretation of the symbol has not been unanimous by the mefarshim (commentators); Radak brings both his own, as well as his father s understandings:

After you take two trees and you write on each one a separate name then you will bring them together one to the other and they will be in your hand together, as if they are one tree And my master my father of blessed memory interpreted: He told him to bring the two trees together and they will unite and become one tree by a miracle (Radak Ez. 37:17)

Two different visions are presented by Radak and his father. Radak suggests that unity could be a framework made up of several parts. He calls it as if they are one we might call this a federation. Such unity allows the parts to be distinguishable, retaining some of their separate identities.

Radak s father suggests a much more utopian reality: The two kingdoms will form a cohesive, united nation with no fault lines. He suggests that this would happen by a miracle, perhaps because it has never happened before. Jewish history, from its inception in this parashah, has been that of a nation that has functioned as a federation, a collection of tribes united in their general outlook but distinct in the details. At certain times unity was achieved sufficiently to create a united kingdom, but most of the time the fault lines were visible.

The people listening to Ezekiel watched his demonstration and asked: What are these to you? (Ez. 37:18) Their request for clarification of a simple visual prop might have been a question about the kind of unity he was speaking about, or they may not have liked either option. After all, unity, whether as a federation or as a cohesive nation, entails accepting others who claim to be like you but practice a little differently. It requires openness, tolerance, and some compromise by all involved. Some may not be comfortable with the future that Ezekiel paints. They prefer to live only with their own tree, leaving the prophecy as an [unfulfilled] dream.

Tension at the Table
Adventures in Mishnah with My Kids
Berakhot 8
Ilana Kurshan

In my house everyone is usually on different schedules in the evenings, with after school activities, music lessons, and youth group meetings. It is only on Shabbat that we all sit down to eat together, and it s always a special time. Well, not always. Although we enjoy one another s company, the kids are also very good at arguing with one another, and for better or for worse, Shabbat dinner is no exception. And so my kids were intrigued when I told them that the subject of the next chapter of Mishnah we were learning together, the eighth chapter of tractate Berakhot, consists of a series of disputes between the disciples of the first-century sages Hillel and Shammai relating to meals and to how we eat. Even back then, no one could agree at the table, my daughter told me with a smile.

 

My kids all look forward to Kiddush on Friday night, but they argue about it as well. Each kid wants to be the one to pour the grape juice first, and whoever doesn t get to pour complains that he or she got less than everyone else. Then someone storms off and misses Kiddush entirely, and cries when he or she is denied grape juice.

 

If you re not sitting at the table for Kiddush, you don t get to drink it, we tell the kids. Hillel and Shammai have their own argument about Kiddush, not about who gets more grape juice, but about which blessing we recite first (8:1). On Shabbat we recite two blessings in Kiddush — one over the wine, and one over the sanctity of the day. Shammai says we bless over the day first because if it weren t for Shabbat, we wouldn t be celebrating with wine in any case. Hillel says we bless over the wine first because there is a principle that we always make the more common blessing first; we might drink wine on other occasions, but Shabbat happens only once a week, as I like to remind my kids: We only get to eat Shabbat dinner once a week, I plead when they cry over spilt grape juice. Please don t ruin it by arguing.

 

Once they finish arguing about Kiddush, the kids move on to arguing about who gets to wash last. They all want the last turn because it is customary not to speak between the ritual washing of the hands and the blessing over the bread; no one wants to have to stay quiet for long. Shammai and Hillel would feel very much at home, because they too cannot get through Netilat Yadayim the ritual washing of the hands without arguing about the order of events (8:2). Shammai says that one washes hands before making Kiddush, because otherwise a person might inadvertently touch some of the wine with impure hands and render it impure. It seems that Shammai s concern is about wine that might spill out of the glass and land on a person s fingers, which happens all too often in our house. But Hillel maintains that first one should pour the wine and then wash hands immediately before eating, to ensure that one s hands are pure before the meal. Most people today follow Beit Hillel, but I wonder whether, at least in my house, a longer period of enforced silence at the table might be better for everyone.

 

In our home we don t have assigned seats at the table, because in theory the kids take turns sitting next to their father. (For some reason no one ever gets excited about sitting next to me. Sigh.) We use colorful napkins on Shabbat each kid has his or her own color and the kids designate their own seat by placing their napkin on their plate. I wonder what Hillel and Shammai would think about that. During Mishnaic times, it was customary to dry one s hands with a towel after Netilat Yadayim, and then to use that towel as a napkin throughout the meal (8:3). Shammai says that after washing, a person should rest one s towel on the table rather than on one s chair, because the chair might be impure and thus render the towel impure, which would in turn impurify the hands of the one who is eating. But Hillel says it s better to place the towel on one s seat even at the risk of rendering the towel and one s hands impure, because the table might be impure and that impurity might then be spread to the food through the towel. Shammai is concerned about impure hands; Hillel is more worried about impure food. My kids worry about both. Ew, she can t pass the ketchup, her hands are covered in gravy my son will whine, and then my daughter will respond, Your entire plate has that oily gravy on it, what do you care?

 

When the kids finish eating, they run off and play. Fortunately they enjoy one another s company and can play creatively for hours, building a synagogue out of Magnatiles or setting up a miniature bowling alley using a nerf ball and wooden blocks. But then it s always a struggle to get them to come back to the table for bentching, the recitation of the Grace after Meals. To address that problem, we instituted a rule of dessert after bentching. If you don t come back for bentching, you won t get dessert, we ve started telling the kids. But I m bentching on the floor while finishing my puzzle, my son insists, and I shake my head. I m going to hold my ground like Shammai, who insists that a person must bentch in the place where he or she eats (8:7). True, Hillel says that if you forget to bentch at the table, you can do so wherever you find yourself, so long as the food is not fully digested and the individual does not already feel hungry for another meal a time period the Talmud identifies as 72 minutes. OK, I m counting to ten, I say, giving the kids a lot less than 72 minutes. If you don t come back to the table now for bentching, you won t get dessert.

 

Sometimes on Shabbat everyone speaks kindly to one another and patiently waits their turn. But when I learn these mishnayot, it is the arguments that stand out in my mind. In fact, given all the arguing in our home at dinner time, sometimes I wonder whether we should go back to the practice during the times of Hillel and Shammai, when each person had their own small table all to themselves, as well as a cushion on which to recline. No one would fight about who sat where if they had their own tables; maybe we d give them each their own small bottles of grape juice as well. They d eat peacefully at their individual tables while my husband and I exhausted from all the nights of arguing at the table would recline on the cushions for a nice long nap.