Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Mikketz: Facing Our Mistakes

When I was a student, I received one piece of advice from a teacher about studying that was simultaneously the most important piece of advice I received about studying, yet was also the most frustrating.  The piece of advice was this: When you are studying, always focus the most on what you understand the least.   On the one hand, I found this advice incredibly frustrating, because as a learner who loved to have the right answer, it was incredibly disheartening to spend all my studying time learning concepts where I would make mistakes or misunderstand the material.  On the other hand, what I came to realize was that immersing ourselves in our shortcomings as a learner is the only means by which we grow as a learner, for you can only see the fruits of your labor when given the opportunity to succeed in areas in which you previously failed, a lesson that we also learn in this week’s parasha.

The second half of Parshat Mikketz describes the encounter when Joseph, now at the heights of Egyptian society, sees his brothers come before him to beg for food because of the famine in Canaan.  However, in the moment when the brothers approach Joseph, we learn that Joseph recognizes the brothers, but the brothers do not recognize him.   The Torah then tells us the following:

“Joseph recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him.   Then Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed of them and said to them, “You are spies!  To see the nakedness of the land have you come”” (Genesis 42:8-9).

Based on these verses, we see Joseph question his brother’s loyalty to Egypt, and are left to ask several questions.  First, upon seeing his brothers, why does Joseph not simply reveal him to them immediately?  Second, even if Joseph chooses to remain concealed to his brothers, why Joseph choose to intentionally make the situation more difficult for them?   Finally, Do should we read this passage as Joseph’s revenge, plain and simple, and if so, what does that say about Joseph?

Commenting upon similar questions, the medieval commentator Isaac Abravanel is flabbergasted as to how Joseph could engage in this kind of deceit of both his brothers and his father.   Although Joseph did not go down to Egypt of his own accord, surely, Abravanel reasons, it would seem reasonable that Joseph should not sink to the level of his brothers’ previous acts.   Abravanel writes:

“Why did Joseph denounce his brothers?  Surely it was criminal of him to take vengeance and bear a grudge like a viper.  Though they had meant evil God had turned it to good.   What justification then had he for taking vengeance after twenty years?  How could he ignore their plight in a strange land and that of their families suffering famine and waiting for them, particularly his aged father gnawed by worry and care?   How could he not have pity on him and how could he bear to inflict on him further pain through the imprisonment of Simeon?” (Abravanel on Genesis 42:8).

According to Abravanel, Joseph’s actions in Parshat Mikketz can seem antithetical to what it means to be a righteous person, and it falls on our commentators to think about what other lessons we might learn from Joseph’s plan.

In her paper on the this week’s parasha, Nehama Leibowitz argues that Joseph did not tell his brothers or father about his true identity because Joseph recognizes that the brother’s appearing before Joseph was the opportunity for Joseph’s childhood dream to come to fruition, and thus Joseph needed to keep events progressing in such a way as to provide the opportunity for the brothers to show contrition.  She writes:

“[Joseph] He had to arrange for his older brother, Benjamin, the son of his mother Rachel, and like him, the beloved of his father to be brought into a similar situation.   This time the brothers would find themselves really faced by a valid excuse for leaving their brother to his fate.  For how could they fight the whole Egyptian empire?   If, in spite of that, they would refuse to go back to their father without Benjamin and would be willing to sacrifice their lives....” (Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, 461).   

According to Leibowitz, when the brothers bow down to Joseph, who they believe is a the mysterious Egyptian bureaucrat, the opportunity is placed before Joseph to see if the brothers have truly repented and changed since Joseph was a boy.   To support her reading of Parshat Mikketz, Leibowitz cites one of Maimonides’ texts on teshuvah, which states the following:

“What constitutes complete repentance?  He who was confronted by the identical thing wherein he transgressed and it lies within his power to commit the transgression but he nevertheless abstained and did not succumb out of repentance, and not out of fear or weakness” (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 2:1).

Maimonides argues that the only way to know if someone has truly returned from their state of sin is to construct a scenario where a person could repeat the same mistake, but, of their own free will, chooses to go down a different path.  Thus, Leibowitz argues that Joseph’s intention was to lead his brothers to have the opportunity to make the same mistake with Benjamin that they made with Joseph, yet this time, as we learn in Parshat Vayiggash, the brothers indeed have learned their lesson.   

No person thinks that it is “fun” to correct mistakes on an assignment, receive constructive criticism from teachers, parents, or friends, or engage in a true 360 degree self-reflection.   However, what Parshat Mikketz reminds us it that the reward of immersing ourselves in our mistakes, and then rising above them, is far greater than simply remaining in our comfort zone, and never attempting to improve in areas in which we previously fell short.  May we have the merit of teaching our children and students about the importance of honestly evaluating their mistakes, so that they might ultimately become better learners and human beings.   

Shabbat Shalom, v’Hag Urim Sameah!