{Originally posted on author’s website, createconnectprotect}
Immediately after Yosef is given his new Egyptian identity and position, he does something remarkable. The Torah says not once, but twice, that he tours the land. Clearly, he isn’t taking his new role lightly. He isn’t content to have a great plan, give a few orders and watch everything fall into place.
In last week’s reading, he showed himself to be a master of marketing – giving Pharaoh a purpose beyond his own life. Here, Yosef shows that he is also a leader in management. He travels through the land, he makes sure everything is running correctly. He doesn’t simply trust that Hashem will deliver the necessary results. He is continually and fully engaged in his task.
Yosef is so involved in his task that when corn is stored for the years of famine, the Torah doesn’t say that the Egyptians store it. It says Yosef does it. And when the world comes to Egypt for food, they come to Yosef.
During this whole time, there is no mention of the brothers. There is no mention of preparing for them or for the children of Israel. What we have is a man who has taken on a new Egyptian identity and a new Egyptian mission.
Yosef takes on this new identity with zest. He doesn’t forget where he comes from, his children have Hebrew names, but he embraces where he is going. He names his first son “because Hashem has helped him purge the memory of his father’s house.” The name itself shows that that memory hasn’t yet been purged. But Ephraim’s name contains no mention of this history.
To me, Yosef is not just drifting away from a future with his family – he is running. His reinvention is so total that his brothers fail to recognize him. He was 17 when he left, not 10. With a little extra maturity, his appearance might have changed, but not so much that he would be unrecognizable. Yosef has changed himself.
And I think we can sympathize.
We might look at our extended families or extended communities and look at their problems and say “they are dysfunctional, so I’m walking away.” But Yosef didn’t simply walk. His family was so dysfunctional that they seriously thought about killing him. They ended up effectively selling him into slavery. They may have seen him as an uppity punk who was constantly favored by their father, but they didn’t give him many reasons to stay.
Yosef’s entire life in Egypt seems colored by the betrayal of his brothers. It is why he doesn’t “phone home.”
Yosef has a vision of the future that extends beyond Egypt. His family has fundamental problems, but it was hardly unusual. Yosef’s generation was the third generation of these struggles. First there was Ishmael and Yitzchak and then there was Esav and Yaacov. But mankind’s history started with these rivalries. It is a very old story.
But Yosef is committed to these struggles ending with his own children. He is committed to finding that greater purpose – just as he did with Pharaoh – and using it to make brothers into something other than rivals. Ephraim and Menashe are the first siblings in Torah who do not fight. As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs points out, when Yaacov and Yosef battle about who gets the primary blessing, the two brothers say not a word. I like to believe that they recognize that they have more worthwhile goals than one-upping each other.
The change Yosef creates in his children might have been enough for him.
But then the brothers appear. Even then, Yosef has the option of continuing to stay away. He has no need to reconnect. But when they bow to him, he remembers his dreams. The first was that their sheaves would bow to his. It is a dream in which their agricultural wherewithal would depend on his. And with their arrival, that dream has been realized.
But he remembers the second dream as well; the dream of their stars bowing to him. This is a dream of their spiritual existence being dependent on him. It is this dream that motivates him to do what he does next.
Yosef creates a test for his brothers. Like the tests of Hashem, it does more than test character, it builds it. Bit by bit, and with a heavy dose of adversity, Yosef molds his family into something more than competing brothers. He starts with accusation and terror. He drives them to tie the test to their sin against him. He deprives them of Shimon and sees that they do nothing to rescue him. But, bit by bit, he enables them to join together and rise above their troubles. They first take the initiative when they bring an influence offering (a mincha) made up of the zimrat haaretz (‘the song of the land’). The joint offering is gathered by Yaacov and prepared (twice) by the brothers as a group. It strengthens their bonds to one other – as well as their collective connection to the land and their father. Even after that, then he gives Benjamin five times as much food – tickling their jealousy.
But they do not rise to the bait. Again and again, they grow in the face of the adversity. In the end, Yehuda offers himself up in the place of Benjamin. Yehuda, from the rejected children of Leah, stands up for Benjamin – the favored child of Rachel. He puts his own pride and jealousy behind him and he does what he does for the sake of his father. He does it for the sake of Israel.
With this act, Yehuda and the brothers are able to be something more. They are not 12 brothers fighting for primacy. They are not the children of four women battling for relevance. That recipe was a recipe for a string of prominent men, but not for a nation. For a family to grow into a nation, they need to tolerate one another. They can’t constantly be breaking away.
As discussed last week, the dream of the bread-maker represents the future of Egypt, the inventors of effective yeast. It represents three centuries of serfdom (after Yosef takes their land) followed by their head being lifted with the death of Pharaoh. The dream of the wine-maker represents the future of the Jewish people, whose land is a center of wine-making. They will also be imprisoned for three centuries, but they will emerge to have their head lifted to prominence when they serve their king.
I believe Yosef saw these interpretations. I believe he saw the three centuries of slavery that were coming. And when the brothers bowed before him, he realized that they needed to be something more than brothers if the children of Israel were to survive. His plan, meticulously managed, was a recipe for his family’s survival as an enslaved people in a strange land. When Yaacov dies, the Torah records “These are the 12 tribes of Israel.” It is Yosef who orchestrates the fundamental transformation from 12 brothers to 12 tribes and, eventually, to one nation.
This is more than a good story. It is a challenge that faces us even today. There are many causes of fracture, but pride and jealousy are often close by. Because of these forces, our individual families and the family of the Jewish people are constantly breaking apart. We need to resist these forces – those who remain within the family must learn and develop like Yehuda and the brothers. Only by doing so can we knit together our families and grow our people.
Once we do this, there is another lesson we can learn. The first brothers who fought were not Avraham and Yishmael, they were Cain and Hevel. The brotherhood of nations is constantly at war. While there have been regrets and moral voices, the brother of nations has tried to kill us and enslave us. Even as we return to our land, we are exiles from mankind. We’d be justified, like Yosef, in wanting to turn our back on their problems. We’d be justified in wanting only to serve our King. But we too have a dream. We have a dream of a world repaired, of a world where nations do not kill one another. We have a dream of a world where swords are made into plowshares.
Perhaps, it is our obligation to imitate Yosef. Perhaps, it is our obligation to test the nations and grow their character. Perhaps, it is our obligation to lift the nations above their jealousies and their struggles for primacy.
Perhaps, as Yosef did with Ephraim and Menasha and even Pharaoh himself, we can teach the world to pursue a higher purpose.
Shabbat Shalom.