In last week’s Parshat Vayeishev, Yosef, while in prison, interprets the dream of Pharaoh’s wine steward that the sommelier will be set free. Yosef asks him to mention him to Pharaoh and hopefully Pharoah will choose to free Yosef as well. And yet, last week’s parsha ends with the sommelier being freed but forgetting about Yosef. This week, Parshat Miketz opens with Joseph now being recalled by the sommelier to Pharaoh when no one else can interpret Pharaoh’s dream. Yosef is suddenly plucked from prison and brought to Pharaoh’s court, called upon to now interpret the ruler’s dreams in which Yosef predicts seven full years and seven lean years for Egypt and the need to prepare for those seven years of famine. Pharoah is so impressed with Yosef that now begins the second chapter of Joseph’s rags to riches rise in Egypt. He becomes a powerful viceroy in Egypt, is given an Egyptian name, and it appears that the “Hebrew” has now become fully Egyptian with a new wife, a new life and two sons—one of whom he even names Manasseh— “because God has made me completely forget my hardship and my parental home.”
As we know, one day, Yosef’s brothers show up unexpectedly in his court, having arrived from a famine-afflicted Israel, looking to buy food in Egypt. Many years have passed, and the 17-year-old lad has now turned into a bearded Egyptian with regal clothing. When the brothers arrive, they bow to Yosef. Yosef recognizes them, but he doesn’t reveal who he is. He acts like a stranger to them and speaks harshly to them: Where have you come from? They tell him from Canaan. And then, we see a repetition in another verse that Yosef recognized his brothers but he didn’t recognize them. The question is: Why does the Torah repeat this? We know already from the earlier verse that he recognized them and, by inference, they didn’t recognize him.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, zt”l, explains that the first reference refers to actual recognition. Yosef realizes who these visitors are— they look the same as they were adults when he last saw them —but they don’t recognize him because he is now older and bearded.
But the second reference refers to something much deeper. What Yosef had to repress now bubbles to the surface, including his long ago dreams which predicted that they would one day bow down to him. The memory of their hatred and jealousy towards him no doubt also comes rushing back which must lead him to wonder: Do they still hate me? Have they repented of their feelings and their thoughts and their actions? When they were last together, they called him in a derogatory fashion, “Oh, here comes the dreamer.” Their hatred and jealousy was so intense that it led them to consider killing him and finally throwing him in a pit as they cruelly ate their meal, while he languished, suffering from hunger and thirst and the reptiles that inhabit pits. What must have been going through Joseph’s mind as he sees them in his court? Will he see them as his brothers or his tormentors, deserving of revenge? But as he recalls his own long ago misery, he now realizes that while he is now at the pinnacle of success, it is now his brothers who are the ones suffering. Here they are trying to be loyal to their father, searching for food. Do they feel guilty for what they did? The second reference to him recognizing them is an existential recognition. He now recognizes their pain but they don’t yet recognize what is in store for them, nor is it clear if they recognize his pain from long ago.
At this moment, Joseph is faced with assessing what they are really like and if they too have put the past behind them. But resolving family blood feuds is never that easy. There is an old Jewish joke in which a spouse complains about the other spouse becoming historical when they fight. A friend hearing this says: “Don’t you mean hysterical?” “No,” the spouse replies, “I mean historical—because everything I have ever done wrong, every offense, no matter how slight, gets drudged up!” I always think of how family fights over the slightest thing can set off a chain of events that leads to siblings and relatives never speaking to each other again, long after the original offense might even be forgotten.
But here in Miketz, Joseph doesn’t become hysterical but becomes historical—with a twist. As he continues to remain unknown to them, he decides to take the past history and see if it is still current as he seeks to discover who they really are now. Unbeknownst to them, he decides to first test them by putting them in a very similar position as he was many years ago and gauge their reaction. As Rabbi Shmuel Goldin explains, if he revealed himself right away, their shared past would haunt them forever. He would see them as criminals, they would resent him because the prophecy came true, and the guilt and recriminations would remain unresolved. So he designs one elaborate scheme after another to see if indeed they have changed. We learn from Maimonides that in order to do true repentance, we have to face the same situation but respond differently. Will they risk their freedom to save Benjamin? Or will they act towards Benjamin the way they treated Joseph when he was thrown in the pit? This parsha is a reminder that miracles such as recreating family harmony can happen not only in biblical times, but hopefully in our lives as well. Joseph becomes known in our tradition as Yosef haZaddik— Joseph the Righteous One. He has evolved into that righteous individual who becomes the catalyst to take the tortured history of rupture with his brothers and see to it that it becomes a transformed history of repair. This is a model for all of us to emulate, whether within our own immediate family or within the larger Jewish family of Am Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah!
Rabbanit Adena Berkowitz, a practicing therapist, is Scholar in Residence at Kol HaNeshamah NYC, an organization dedicated to reenergizing the spiritual life of both affiliated and not yet affiliated Jews. She is the author of the bestselling The Jewish Journey Haggadah and can be reached at [email protected].
