Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Vayigash: The Self’s Response to Tragedy

Since last Friday, when all of us were forced to think about a nightmare broadcast live from Newtown, Connecticut, I have been thinking a great deal about what it means for us to learn from a tragedy, and how we can “do” good, even if we cannot “find” good, in moments of communal despair.   In truth, the way in which we do good in the face of tragedy is by allowing the tragedy to call us to action, whether through comforting those in mourning, reflecting on how we can make our community safer, or speaking out against societal ills at the root of the inciting event.    The possibilities of acting in the face of tragedy is alluded to in this week’s parasha, where Judah’s approach of Joseph signals Judah’s desire to reshape himself after a tragedy of his own making.

Parshat Vayigash opens with an impassioned plea by Judah, who steps forward as Benjamin is about to be jailed by the mysterious Egyptian official the brothers do not know is Joseph.   The Torah records the following encounter between Judah and Joseph:

“And Judah drew close to him [Joseph] and said: “Pardon your servant, my lord, let me speak a word to my lord. Do not be angry with your servant, though you are equal to Pharaoh himself.  My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’  And we answered, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age. His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him’...“Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. One of them went away from me, and I said, “He has surely been torn to pieces.” And I have not seen him since.  If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in misery’” (Bereishit 44:18-20, 27-28).

In this passage, Judah passionately tells Joseph of the family’s struggles, and is vulnerable enough to tell Joseph, the mysterious Egyptian official, “Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father” (Bereishit 44:34), a striking change in character and tone for Judah, the brother who reasoned it would be better to sell Joseph into slavery than kill him.   Given Judah’s dramatic appeal, our commentators focus a great deal on what we can learn from Judah’s “drawing close” to Joseph and making this plea.

In a commentary by the Sefat Emet, Judah’s approach of Joseph is more than a plea from a desperate to one he believes is a complete stranger; it is the transformative act of an individual in their relationship to God and the brother he presumes is still dead.   The Sefat Emet writes:

“And Judah drew close to him”: that is, to Joseph.  But also, to himself, his true self.   And also, to God.   The meaning is that although Judah said nothing new in his speech and had no real claim to make on Joseph, yet since he clarified the truth of the matter, salvation came to him, as we find in the idea that “Truth springs up from the earth”” (Sefat Emet on Bereishit 44:18).

According to the Sefat Emet, in standing up for Benjamin, Judah reveals himself to Joseph as a changed man, for Judah’s own understanding of responsibility and guilt changed since that fateful day when Joseph was thrown into the pit and sold into slavery by his brothers.

Commenting on the psychological implications about the above commentary in her book The Murmuring Deep, Aviva Zornberg writes that both Judah decision to plead before Joseph and the specific words contained in that plea reveal Judah’s unconscious transformation as a human being.   She writes:

“With startling simplicity, Sefat Emet unfolds Judah’s achievement: with his words, he accesses not only Joseph but equally his true self and God.  He approaches the other who is the capricious ruler, his innermost self, and the invisible, silent God.  He does this by a specific kind of truth-telling-one that begets the truth in the very process of speaking-that restores his relationship with the enigmatic others of his life.   I would call this a psychoanalytic form of testimony.  A movement-Vayigash-brings him in contact with lost parts of his world.  The midrash tells that Truth is shattered into a thousand pieces when God throws it down to earth.  Judah’s speech testifies to the fragments of truth that he unconsciously composes in the very anguish of brokenness” (Aviva Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep, xiii).   

Faced with the fear that his father might lose another son, and that he, once again, will feel responsible for a trauma placed upon his family, Judah is unable to restrain himself, and speaks before this mysterious man, who turns out to be Joseph, with profound honesty.   

As I watched communities across the United States attempt to grapple with the events in Newtown, what I found was that this horrific tragedy evoked emotions and events in people that we normally keep hidden, until the real world breaks our silence.  We are worried about the safety or our children, of the role of guns and violence in our culture, and of the far too many instances when we hear about this violent acts in communities across the United States, yet many times we do not fully recognize how much these concerns affect us until we stare face-to-face with yet another tragedy.   However, Judah’s approach of Joseph in Parshat Vayigash reminds us that even if we did not seek nor invite this tragedy, we can allow this tragedy in Connecticut to call us to fix that which we know is broken, and whose repair might stem the tide of future tragedies.   May we answer the call, and act.

Shabbat Shalom.