Two Minute Torah Podcast

Vayehi 5771 by Joshua Rabin

Shalom, my name is Joshua Rabin, a senior rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and rabbinic intern at the University of Pennsylvania's Hillel. Welcome to Koach's Two-Minute Torah, a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

After Joseph reunites with his brothers and his father in Parshat Vayigash, we discover early in Parshat Vayehi that all may still not be well between Joseph and his brothers following Jacob's death, as Joseph is now solely in a seat of power. The text from Breishit states the following:

"After burying his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers, and all who had gone up with him to bury his father. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph hates us and pays us back for all the evil that we did to him!"¹

In this passage, we discover that in spite of Joseph's actions to make his family whole again, the brothers remain concerned that the evil actions that precipitated Joseph's descent into Egypt are neither forgiven nor forgotten.

But why are the brothers afraid of retribution following Jacob's death, as opposed to when Joseph revealed himself to them in Parshat Vayigash? A midrash tells us that when the brothers returned from burying Jacob, they saw Joseph making a blessing over the pit in which his brothers threw him. The midrash states:

"Joseph made a blessing over the pit, as a person should do over a place where a miracle was done for him: "Blessed be God, who made me a miracle in this place!" When the brothers saw they said, "Now that our father is dead, what if Joseph hates us and pays us back for all the evil that we did to him!" (Genesis 50:15)"²

Following Jacob's death, all of the brothers are forced to interrupt what it means for everyone to coexist in a new land without their father. In this midrash, the brothers do not hear what Joseph says in the pit, and are left to wonder whether or Joseph is reciting a blessing or a curse, and clearly the brothers assume the worst about Joseph's intent. However, the midrash reveals that Joseph is motivated at the pit by "the power of peace," for God "wrote such things in his Torah about the power of peace."³ The brothers may have pained Joseph at the pit, yet does that mean that Joseph needs to see the pit as only a source of pain.

In her analysis of this week's parasha, Aviva Zornberg writes in The Murmuring Deep that the above midrash demonstrates Joseph's ability to make "the blessing for a personal miracle, claiming this site of his trauma as the site of redemption."⁴ Joseph's descent into Egypt was traumatic and painful, yet ultimately transformative for both Joseph and his entire family. While he would never absolve the brothers of their guilt, Joseph is now mature enough to recognize the ultimate good he found in a bad situation. By blessing the pit, according to Zornberg, Joseph "rereads the pit as a space of rebirth, transforming pain into hope."⁵

Ultimately, the most important lesson we learn from Joseph is not the power of forgiveness, but the power of maturity. Joseph may not completely absolve his brothers of responsibility for their actions, but Joseph now understands how he turned tragedy into triumph from his maturation, and ultimately led his family to place God ultimately intended them to be. As such, Joseph has no reason to seek revenge.

Think about a moment in your life that began with a wrong done to you, but one you ultimately used as fuel for deeper personal growth. If you encountered the person who wronged you again, why would it make sense to get revenge, if you have ultimately moved on, and reshaped your life? Joseph teaches us that we can turn our tragedies into triumphs, and when we do, we should have the maturity to know that revenge will only bring us down, when we have already built ourselves up. May we have the merit of being able to look at significant moments in our lives, both ones of great triumph and pain, and have the maturity to see the good we can draw out of even the most difficult moments.

Shabbat Shalom.

¹ Genesis 50:14-15.
² Midrash Tanhuma, Vayehi 17.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (New York: Random House, Inc., 2009), 318-319.
⁵ Ibid.