This week’s parsha is one of the most dramatic in the entire Torah, the climactic
conclusion of the story these past few weeks involving Jacob’s sons, in which
Joseph finally reveals himself as their lost brother whom they sold into slavery.
There is a lot that could be said about this story, but I wanted to focus on one
aspect of the text having to do with Joseph’s brothers’ reaction to his big reveal.
The text reads:
And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” but his
brothers could not answer him because they were shocked/terrified by his
presence/face.
The Talmud refers to Joseph’s statement here as a rebuke to his brothers, stating in
fact that if they were so shaken by his rebuke, how much more should we all be
scared of G-d’s potential rebuke of us (i.e., when we do wrong)? But this statement
in the Talmud begs the question, what was the rebuke? It seems as if Joseph simply
said “I am your brother Joseph.” How is that statement a rebuke?
There are a couple of classic commentaries on this question that argue that the
rebuke was not the statement “I am Joseph,” but rather what came next, namely “Is
my father still alive?” The hidden rebuke is ‘could my father still be alive after
everything you’ve done to him (namely abducting his favored son and pretending
that he had been killed)? I prefer another interpretation though, which I read
recently, that of Rabbi Avraham Pam (z”l), who was the Rosh Yeshiva of Torah
Vadaas in Brooklyn. Rabbi Pam says that the implications of Joseph’s remarks
were (and I’m paraphrasing here): ‘I am Yoseif. I’m the Yoseif that you hated and
denigrated. You never imagined that the dreams I shared with you would be
fulfilled, that I would end up being an Egyptian Viceroy and more importantly
G-d’s messenger, helping to save the entire land during these seven years of
famine. No, instead you sold me into slavery, completely disregarding what I
might someday become.’
Rabbi Pam’s teaching is that we are too quick to dismiss each other’s worth, so
caught up in our own needs and perceptions that we fail to see each other for who
we are and more importantly might yet be. This idea really resonates with me, both
personally and in my role as a Head of School.
As I commented recently, we all know that Joseph was an obnoxious know-it-all,
and gave his brothers more than a couple of reasons to resent him. But resentment
and dismissal are easy — we all can manage those without much thought. What is
harder is seeing beyond the negative patterns of our fellows, our teachers, our
students, to gain insight into who they really are and what they might yet become.
This is the job of a teacher, though, and I would add should be our default in all our
life interactions.
This idea reminds me of my very favorite quote from Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the
Fathers:
He used to say, do not disdain any person or dismiss anything, because there is no
one who doesn’t have his time and nothing that doesn’t have its place.
That is certainly a lesson we should all take to heart.
Rav-Hazzan Scott M. Sokol, PhD
Head of School, MetroWest Jewish Day School