Parshas Vayigash
The word Vayigash, “he approached,” is used when one is challenging, with little leverage or bargaining power, an adversary far more powerful than oneself, where it is the injustice of the case that propels one to do so. We find the expression used in similar circumstances when Avraham challenged G-d who was determined to kill the people of Sodom. Avraham argued that it would be unjust to kill the righteous alongside the wicked (Bereishis 18:23). In emphasizing the injustice, both Yehudah and Avraham before him addressed their counterparty with a title that reminded them of their duty to put justice ahead of all other considerations. Yehudah addressed Yosef with the title of Pharaoh – “you are like Pharoah” – and like the king himself, it is your obligation to uphold justice. And Avraham addressed G-d with the title “Judge of the World” as he pled, “Shall the Judge of the entire world not act justly?” (18:25).
Yehudah charged Yosef with disingenuously trapping the ten brothers into disclosing that they have a younger brother called Binyamin. Yosef did that by accusing his brothers of entering the city like spies, through twelve different gates. The brothers rebutted this accusation of espionage by explaining that they did so because their father, who had already lost one of Rachel’s children and had only one remaining child of hers, was afraid. He worried that ten powerful, handsome men walking through one and the same entrance to the city would attract the evil eye and jealousy of the Egyptians who might kill them and he would be bereft of even more children.
Having elicited the existence of Benjamin from them in this tricky way, Yosef then embarked on several ruses designed to get the brothers to deliver Binyamin into his hands so that he could imprison him. First, he surreptitiously returned to the brothers the money they paid for the food they purchased (42:28). Then he hid his silver cup in Benjamin’s sack and insisted that only Benjamin, the thief, was to be incarcerated, not any of his ten brothers (44:10). If Yosef would not release Binyamin, Yehudah was ready to expose all of Yosef’s deception.
Finally, Yehudah told Yosef that he had personally guaranteed the return of Binyamin to his father (43:9 and 44:32), and that as a guarantor, it would only be just to imprison him in place of Binyamin.
It was at this point that Yosef, who now saw that Yehudah had repented for the way he had treated Yosef in past and was prepared to give himself up to protect Binyamin, finally identified himself.
But even in this emotional moment, Yosef showed compassion. He could not bear to embarrass his brothers in public. He knew that they would be stunned into shame for their past conduct (Rashi to 45:1). So he dismissed everybody from the room except for his brothers. Only when he was alone with them did he tell them whom he was.
After revealing his identity, the first question Yosef asked was, “Is my father still alive?”
But Yosef was told at the outset by the brothers that his father was alive (42:11-13). Furthermore, Yehudah in his speech that preceded Yosef disclosing his identity confirmed this repeatedly. But what Yosef was really asking was whether Yaakov had believed all these 22 years that Yosef was alive or whether he had given him and the paternal relationship up for dead.
In fact, we know that Yaakov never referred to Yosef as having died. He referred to Yosef in the same way as he referred to Shimon after he was imprisoned (42:36). He said Yosef is gone and Shimon is gone, but not dead. Yaakov refused to be comforted because, as Rashi points out (37:35), one does not accept consolation for someone living but missing. Furthermore, what Yosef was asking was how Yehudah could be so sure that Yaakov had not succumbed and died even this very moment from the cumulative effect of the suffering his brothers had put him through for the past 22 years.
“And they told Yaakov, Yosef is still alive and he rules over the land of Egypt, but Yaakov doubted it in his heart for he did not believe them. But when he saw the agalos (the wagons) that Yosef had sent to transport him, his spirit was revived. And Yaakov said, “My son Yosef is still alive” (45:26-28). What was it about the wagons that convinced Yaakov that Yosef was alive?
We are told (Rashi 45:27) that just before Yosef was sent to his brothers in Shechem, he studied with his father the Torah chapter of Eglah Arufah, the calf which the elders must slaughter when they find a corpse of lying between two cities, slain by an unidentified killer. The elders of the cities must declare, “Our hands have not spilled this blood” (Devarim 21:7). “Would anyone suspect the elders of killing the victim?” asks the Gemara (Sotah 45b). Rather what the elders are saying is we did not let the victim leave our town without accompanying him on his way.
No harm will befall someone who is escorted by another on his way out of town. Murderers would rather target someone who leaves town alone than someone who is accompanied by people who care about him and will look for him if he goes missing.
When Yaakov sent Yosef from Hebron to seek out his brothers in Shechem, he remembered the teaching of the Eglah Arufah they had just studied together and the importance of accompanying a traveler on his way out of the door. We are told “Vayishlacheihu me’eimek Chevron,” Yaakov sent Yosef from the valley of Chevron. The verb lishloach, to send, is generally translated by the Targum to mean to accompany someone on his way out (Bereishis 18:16.)
When Yaakov saw the wagons that Yosef had sent, he remembered how he had accompanied Yosef on his way out to meet his brothers in Shechem. He understood that as a result of this caring gesture, no harm could have befallen Yosef. It was therefore, only when he caught sight of the wagons that he believed the brothers’ tidings that Yosef was still alive. He also understood that Yosef had never forgotten the bond forged between father and son learning Torah together. And so, Vatechi ruach Yaakov (45:27), the spectacle of the revolving wheels of transmission of Torah from father to son, lifted Yaakov’s spirits again.