VAYIGASH
By Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum
Torah Reading: VAYIGASH Gen. 44:18-47:27; Haftara: Ezekiel 37:15-2.
"AND
JUDAH
STEPPED FORWARD."
The key to the dramatic
encounter between Judah and Joseph with which our parshah of VAYIGASH begins is
to be found in the Haftara our sages attached to this parshah: Ezekiel's vision
of the joining of the two sticks. One stick the prophet was to inscribe with
the names of Judah and the Children of Israel his friends -- the kingdom of Torah Law and spirituality under David.
The other stick he was to inscribe "to Joseph Tree of Ephraim and all the
House of Israel his friends" -- secular, assimilated Israelite might:
economic, political, military, involvement in the material world. The prophet
was to join the two sticks and make them one, signifying that they will become
--
"One nation in the
earth in the mountains of Israel,
and one king will be over all of them as King, and they will no longer be two
nations and they will no longer be split into two kingdoms. And my servant
David will be king over them and one shepherd will be for them all [King
Mashiach]. And they will go in My laws and guard My
statutes and do them. And they will dwell in the land that I have given to My servant Jacob in which your fathers dwelled, and they and
their children and children's children will dwell upon it forever, and David My
servant will be Prince to them forever. And I will cut for them a Covenant of Peace, an eternal Covenant will be for them. And I will give
them and multiply them and I will put My Holy Temple within them forever. And
My Dwelling will be upon them and I will be G-d for them, and they will be My
People. And the Nations will know that I am HaShem who sanctifies Israel that My
Sanctuary should be among them forever " (Ezekiel
37:28).
The encounter in our
parshah between Judah and Joseph is the paradigm of this necessary joining
between the two aspects of Israelite being in the world, spiritual and
material. For its own existence, the Torah "kingdom" depends upon the
successful material presence of Israel
in the world, be it in the Land of Israel or in "Goshen". ("Goshen" would include all historical and
present-day centers of Jewish sojourn in exile and dispersal east or west.) For
"if there is no flour [bread to eat], there is no Torah". Likewise,
material Israel
cannot survive without true Torah leadership -- Melech HaMashiach. Jacob saw
this, which is why "he sent Judah
ahead of him to Joseph to rule before him to Goshen" (Gen. 46:28). It is the Torah
leader who must rule over Israel, and Torah leadership must direct Israeli
worldly power to the nation's prophetic mission of being worthy of building the
Temple in the Land of Israel from which the Law will go forth to all the
Nations.
* * *
THE POWER
OF WORDS
Judah's heart-rending appeal to Joseph
(standing there before him as a hard-hearted Egyptian tyrant) is the prototype
of the Tzaddik (which may be any one of us) facing MIDAS HADIN (the aspect of
G-d's harsh judgment) and using prayer to turn it into RACHAMIM (compassion). Judah appealed
to Joseph's heart and to a fundamental sense of FAIRNESS that exists everywhere
in the world including among the Gentiles (see "Rabbi Nachman's
Wisdom" #78 for a profoundly insightful discussion of this subject.) At
some point there is a universal loathing for blatant unfairness
This is because even the
Seventy Nations are at root vitalized by a spark of G-dliness deriving from
KETER, the "Crown" of G-d's will, which gives life and sustenance to
the side of evil, as represented in Egypt. For the duration of history,
this vitalizing root is contained in the Seven "Crowns", the seven
Commandments of the Son's of Noah, which come to rectify the Seventy Nations as
exemplified in Egypt
(Ham) under the rule of Joseph (Shem).
Judah's appeal to Joseph is a
heart-to-heart appeal, man to man. Judah is willing to sacrifice his
entire life and submit himself to slavery in order to save his younger brother
Benjamin. Judah
is the true AREV ("guarantor") for his brother - the ultimate in
loving your fellow as yourself.
From the way we appeal to
the heart of a fellow human, we are to learn how we should to appeal to G-d in
prayer. This must be "face to face", as to a friend, even all seems
clothed in MIDAS HADIN, the power of strict judgment. From Judah's appeal to
Joseph we are to learn how in prayer we are to plead and offer to sacrifice our
very selves in servitude to G-d, in order to turn G-d's DIN, strict judgment,
into RAHAMIM, mercy.
Judah's eloquent appeal to Joseph's sense
of fairness can serve as an exemplar to all of us in the art of prayer and
entreaty, particularly in times of stress and danger. Eloquence in prayer is a
good trait for all of us to cultivate -- it comes by speaking from heart to
heart. We need to be bold and speak out our complaints and requests to G-d from
our hearts.
* * *
"NOT
YOU SENT ME HERE BUT G-D"
After revealing himself
to his brothers, Joseph provides them with a peace-making way of re-perceiving
the past, even where negative, as part of a divinely-prepared plan -- in this
case to draw the Children of Israel down into Egypt. "Not you sent me here
but G-d" (Gen. 45:8) -- "for sustenance G-d sent me before you"
(ibid. v. 5).
In all circumstances,
understanding that all the various humans who surround us are in reality agents
of G-d, Who is behind and within all phenomena, is one of the main keys to
understanding our personal situation in the world.
As expressed by the great
early-20th century Polish Breslover Chassid, Rabbi
Yitzhak Breiter (in his "Seven Pillars of
Faith"):
"Other people are
also free agents, yet everything they do is ultimately controlled by God. If
someone insults you or in some way harms you, know that this has been sent by
God as a way to cleanse your soul. If things go against you, be patient. When
you accept everything as God's will, this causes the veil of concealment to be
removed, thus manifesting God's control over all creation..
"..,.Everything we experience is actually a communication from
God. This includes our inner thoughts and feelings. Even negative thoughts and
feelings - heaviness, lack of enthusiasm, depression and the like - are from
God. Everything you hear, see, or experience in life, whether from people you
know or from complete strangers, is a call to you from God. Even unclear or
contradictory messages are sent with a purpose: to give us choice and free will
in order to test us. The way to sort out which messages we should follow and
which we should ignore is by evaluating everything in the light of Torah teaching
Pillars #4 and #6).
* * *
FORCED
BY THE MOUTH OF THE WORD
"Forced by the WORD
OF THE MOUTH of G-d -- "ANOOS AL PI-HADIBUR" -- is a phrase from the Haggadah explaining why Jacob and his sons went into exile.
Historically, exile was forced on the Jews as a kind of "rape" of the
Shechinah, the Jewish Soul, by the material world, making it necessary to go
out to "slavery" in the "Egypt" of the Seventy Nations
for sheer survival. Again and again in Jewish history, economic needs ("famine")
caused Jews to migrate.
G-d's plan in sending
Joseph down to Egypt to prepare for the subsequent Israelite slavery and
ultimate redemption may be seen unfolding repeatedly in the later history of
Jewish exiles. For example, the Jews who spread wide in Poland and what was once its empire, the very
centers of Ashkenazic Jewry, (Ukraine, Belorussia,
Lithuania, Galitzia, etc.) were originally enticed there in the 11th
Century and thereafter from Germany
by Polish kings (Pharaohs) who wanted to enrich themselves with industrious
Jewish managers (Joseph). The Jews of Germany had themselves been enticed there
in better days from France, the original "Ashkenaz".
For centuries the Jews of
the "Four Lands" of the Polish empire were practically an independent
Torah kingdom within the kingdom, even after the dispersal of another Torah
kingdom, the Jewry of "Sepharad" -- Spain, remnants of whom
reached Israel.
For Polish Jewry, the tide changed from the times of the Chmielnitzki
Massacres of 1648-9 and thereafter, when Jewish worldly influence and actual
Torah practice among the Jews of Russia,Poland and its
former empire declined to the point of near extinction under communism.
Meanwhile the Jewry of Europe was rapidly assimilating. For generations from
the 1800's onwards, Jews were looking westwards, especially to America. The
culminating points were the Pogroms, the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust,
which annihilated European Jewry spiritually and physically. After the Second
World War most of Sephardic and Oriental Jewry migrated to Israel or to
the west. Thus the main world Jewish centers shifted to Israel and America, both of which contain an
uneasy balance of "Judah" and "Joseph" Jews -- Torah
observant and secular.
Israel was built up by the returnees to the Land from the East
and from the West and is today the key to ultimate Jewish survival and victory
-- Israel
is LAND: it is THE Land. The holocaust appears to have been the
"price" for the birth of the State of Israel, which today is
confronted by an existential struggle for survival, under attack, directly or
in disguise, by all of the Seventy Nations.
The key to Jewish
survival today is the bond between "Israel"
under the leadership of Judah -- Torah, Melech HaMashiach -- and
"Joseph", "Ephraim", the main body of Jewry in Israel and
throughout the world.
* * *
CONNECTION
TO THE LAND
The concluding section of
our parshah of VAYIGASH, recounts how in the years of famine in Egypt, Joseph
"purchased" the Egyptians' land, their livestock and their very bodies
for Pharaoh (Genesis 13-27).
One point found in the
commentators is of special note in UNIVERSAL TORAH, which focuses on aspects of
Torah that apply to all humanity. It is that Joseph worked assiduously for the
benefit of Pharaoh and did not seek to use his position as Viceroy for personal
enrichment. He could have sent sacks of silver back to store for himself in Canaan, but he did not. He worked diligently for his
employer and was an exemplar of service.
The "purchase"
by Joseph of the land and the very bodies of the Egyptians for an annual tax of
20% -- one fifth of all income -- institutes fundamental principles of the
modern state. Military power is controlled by the "king" or
government, who is expected to protect the population and alleviate
"famine", providing everything necessary for general wellbeing
("health of the economy").
One of the features of
modern history has been great migrations of people of all nations from country
to country and continent to continent. This has tended to separate the population
from connection to the land in the form of land-ownership, while urbanization
has separated over 50 per cent of the world's population from direct connection
with nature.
The only people on earth
who have a continuous historical link with one and the same country going back
thousands of years is the People of Israel and the Jews. Israel is the
only country on earth that belongs to the Jews.
The Twenty Percent Tax
Joseph instituted for Egypt
alludes to the 20% of net income that a person should ideally separate for Tzedakah (just as Jacob said, ASOR (10%) A-ASRENAH (10%)
"I will surely tithe" -- Genesis 28:22, Maaser
Rishon ("the first tithe") and Maaser Sheni ("the second tithe").
"And Zion will be redeemed
through justice and her returnees through charity" (Isaiah 1:27)
Shabbat Shalom!
Avraham
Yehoshua Greenbaum
