Love from Afar

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Saturday, January 7, 2006

Hugs and kisses. We have seen quite a few of them this morning. But the bimah is not the only place where we see emotion. Our Torah portion, Vayigash tells of the many hugs and kisses exchanged between Joseph and his brothers.

As Sam explained in his d’var Torah, these signs of affection are the result of the reunion and reconciliation that occurs between the siblings, a reconciliation that comes after years of separation. Though the separation was precipitated by the brothers’ decision to sell a youthful and boastful Joseph into slavery, the interactions we see in this week’s Torah portion, between a more mature Joseph and his brothers, who, it seems have finally come to understand what it means to be a brother, appear genuine and heartfelt.

After revealing his true identity to his brothers Joseph brings them close, insists that they tell his father that he is alive and well, and then, one by one, beginning with Benjamin, embraces his brothers and cries on their shoulders, as Genesis 4:15 states “Vayinashek Kchol E-chav va-yevch a-leichem, “He kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.

The brothers, with provisions provided by Pharoah, follow Joseph’s instructions and head up to Canaan so they can return to Egypt with their father Jacob. The Torah tells us Jacob’s strength is reinvigorated by learning that Joseph is alive. Together with their father, their wives, and their children, the brothers journey back to Egypt.

It appears that the family will live together in peace for years to come, having put the past behind them. One would assume that Joseph, with his close connections to Pharoah, will be able to get his brothers jobs working in the government. They could all live and work together, making up for lost time. The brothers would be able to share the responsibility of caring for the aging father and ensure that their extended family, numbering 70 in total, became a close clan.

This is what the brothers probably expected would happen when they returned to Egypt, but Joseph had something else in mind.

When Joseph learns of his brothers’ return to Egypt he directs them not to Pharoah’s court but instead travels to where they are, meeting them in Goshen. He then gives them explicit commands about what to say when they meet with Pharoah, instructing them to identify themselves as shepherds and to say this has been the family’s profession for generations.

The brothers follow Joseph’s instructions and their meeting with Pharoah, as Joseph had hoped, results in them being sent to Goshen to tend their flocks on the best pasture land in Egypt.

But why would Joseph chose this path of action? As the commentator Isaac Arama observes “there is no doubt that if he had wanted he could have appointed them to high positions.”

Rashi proposes that Joseph was simply doing God’s will. He writes that Joseph was anxious to send his brothers to the Land of Goshen as it needed them. Goshen, some of the best pasture land in the world was going to waste because, as Joseph points out to his brothers, shepherds are abhorrent to all Egyptians.”

Another explanation is offered by the Netziv, an early Zionist commentator. He suggests that Joseph’s brothers were sent to Goshen not because the land needed them and not because Joseph didn’t trust his brothers enough to have them work along side him at Pharoah’s court. No, he suggests that Joseph arranged for his brothers to be live in Goshen for their own good.

The Netziv explains that Joseph was afraid that his brothers, if given jobs in Pharoah’s court, would get too comfortable in Egypt, that they would abandon their ancestral land, Canaan, and more importantly, abandon the singular God of the Jews for the myriad of Egyptian deities.

For these reasons, the Netziv explains, Joseph set his brothers up in the Egyptian backcountry, locking them into a profession that would keep them isolated from their Egyptian neighbors.

In his d’var Torah Sam explained that Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers was no small feat, requiring honesty, bravery and courage. Joseph’s decision to settle his brothers in Goshen was also a test of his character.

Judging by the emotion he showed when reconnecting with his brothers and later with his father, Joseph loved his family and would have liked to have spent more time with them. But he knew being in Pharoah’s court was not what was best for his family and the future of the Jewish people, and so he put their needs above his own and did all he could to protect them.

Like Joseph, we as parents, teachers, and friends do all we can to protect those we love. And so like Joseph we shield our loved ones from things we deem dangerous or corrosive. We pay attention to movie ratings and monitor what our children our doing on the internet. We keep track of who they are hanging out with and ask questions about what they do with their free time. We do what we can to protect them, but as was the case with Joseph, this comes with a cost.

Joseph’s decision to settle his brother’s in Goshen prevented them from developing the type of friendship that might have flowered with the family all living together. So too our desire to protect our loved ones, particularly our children, means that we can’t always be their best friends.

Fortunately many of us are still willing to make this sacrifice. But if we are not careful, our efforts to protect our loved ones can extract another cost, one most of us are not willing to pay.

The brothers, while willing to accept Joseph’s assistance, never asked their powerful brother to control the rest of their lives. But this is essentially what Joseph does. Instead of sharing with his brothers the wisdom he gained during years in Egypt and then allowing them to decide what is best, Joseph, trying to protect his loved ones, essentially decrees where they will live and what they will do for a living.

There is no way of knowing what the brother’s would have chosen for themselves. Whether they wanted to remain shepherds or would have preferred different professions. Whether the choices they would have made might have spared their descendants 400 years of slavery.

We will never know how their lives would have turned out, but most of us agree that, even with all the mistakes they made during their youth, they should have been able to shape their own lives.

So too our loved ones, our children, our siblings, and our parents, should be given the freedom they need to shape their own lives.

Reading this week’s Torah portion I couldn’t help but think we want the same thing for our families that Joseph wanted for his. We want them to know we love them. We want them to be safe and successful. But there is something else we want that Joseph wasn’t able or didn’t succeed in giving his brothers. We want them to be themselves, to do the things they love and enjoy. And so this Shabbat, as we hug and kiss, and celebrate with our families, we pray for wisdom to find the balance of protection and freedom that our loved ones need as we do all we can to make ensure their safety and happiness.

Shabbat Shalom