Rabbi Reuben's Weekly Torah Commentary

Weekly Torah Commentary

Vayigash
(Genesis: 44:18-47:27)

This week we encounter one of the most emotionally powerful portions in the entire Torah.   After being separated from his brothers and father for many years as a result of the treachery of his brothers who tossed him into a pit and sold him into slavery, Joseph is now second in power only to Pharaoh in all of Egypt.   In this portion after using his power to strike fear into his brothers who no longer recognize him, he is suddenly overcome with emotion at hearing Judah, the very same brother who sold him as a slave now volunteering to become a slave himself in order to save the life of Benjamin.

Joseph breaks down in tears, sends his Egyptian servants out of the room and in speaks directly to his brothers for the first time in their own language (prior to this he had been using an interpreter as if he didn't speak Hebrew).  "I am Joseph. Is my father still well?" he cries, and his brothers are dumbfounded with shock.   As he continues to explain that he really is Joseph their long-lost brother, we learn from his speech one of the most important lessons in human behavior in all of the Torah.

For Joseph teaches us that human beings are above all else, meaning makers.  We take the experiences of our lives, even the ones we wouldn't have chosen to have happened - the difficult experiences, the painful experiences, and we look back at them and create our own sense of meaning and purpose.  In this case he tells his brothers, "Don't be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. God has sent me ahead of you to insure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. 

Joseph has used what I would call, "20X20 hindsight" to look back at his life and believe that God had a divine plan both for him and his entire family.  Because he is able to discover a sense of personal destiny in the twists and turns of his life, he no longer has to hold on to his anger and resentment toward his brothers who sold him into slavery in the first place. Perhaps we can learn in our own lives from Joseph how to look at the bigger picture when it feels like someone has hurt us and be able to discover that there is meaning and purpose in our lives that we might not have felt is we hadn't had this experience in the first place.