It’s not Always Easy to Belong
by R. Gidon Rothstein

Parshat VaYigash

The Missing Member of Ya’akov’s Family

Ibn Ezra starts his comment to Bereshit 46;23 asking whether Chushim, the only son listed for Dan after the verse referred to benei, plural, was one or two. He thinks either possible.

He moves on to the much thornier problem of why the Torah says there were seventy members of Ya’akov’s family, 46;27, when a count shows only sixty-nine. Some thought the Torah rounds up final numbers, to which Ibn Ezra objects that it also “miscounted” Leah’s descendants, 46;15, saying there were thirty-three, when thirty-two are named.

He doesn’t like a Midrashic answer, Yocheved was born at the walls of the city of Egypt, because it would mean she gave birth to Moshe at age a hundred and thirty years. The Torah makes a big point of Sarah giving birth at ninety, Ibn Ezra thinks it definitely would have mentioned this.

Worse, paytanim, liturgical poets (whom Ibn Ezra takes to task in other places in his commentary as well), in a poem for Simchat Torah, claim she lived to 250!

He instead thinks Ya’akov is the missing family member, and is included with the first set of descendants counted. Verse seven supports his claim, when it says these are the names of Benei Yisra’el who came to Egypt, Ya’akov and his sons, Ya’akov part of the set. He dismisses Shemot 1;5, which says seventy offspring of Ya’akov came to Egypt, thinks it Scriptural inexactness, clear in 35;26, where Binyamin is counted among the sons born to Ya’akov “in Padan Aram.” Similarly, 46;27, in our context, says these were the offspring who came to Egypt, just like Devarim 10;22 says seventy forefathers went down to Egypt, when Menasheh and Efrayim were born in Egypt and never left.

Our missing person is Ya’akov, according to ibn Ezra.

Becoming Benei Yisra’el

On the way to Egypt, Hashem appears to Ya’akov, 46;3, and identifies Himself as the God of your Father. Sforno thinks Hashem was acknowledging His different commands to the two. Hashem told Yitzchak not to go to Egypt, is now sending Ya’akov there. Sforno spots an explanation in the continuaion, I will make you a great nation there.

Were he and his family to stay in Canaan, they would intermarry with the locals and assimilate. It’s not a worry in Egypt, because the Egyptians wouldn’t even eat at the same table .

Two verses later, the Torah says Benei Yisra’el carried Ya’akov, their little ones, and wives down to Egypt. Rather than sons of Ya’akov, a plausible reading of the verse, Sforno thinks the phrase shows this was the point where they began to act like a nation, Benei Yisra’el, to contend with challenges from God or people (emulating Ya’akov’s wrestling with the angel, where Ya’akov earned the name Yisra’el for this exact reason).

For Sforno, this was the moment. Hashem sends Ya’akov to Egypt to grow into a separate nation without mixing into the surrounding one, and Ya’akov’s sons here begin to function as the entity we still call Benei Yisra’el.

Conflicted Emotions

When he reveals himself to his brothers, 45;5, Yosef urges them not to be sad nor angry, emotions Or HaChayim thinks come from contradictory starting places. Sadness evinces a lowliness of soul, where anger comes from arrogance . To explain how the brothers could have conflicting emotions, Or HaChayim locates their origins.

The sadness starts with the brothers’ realization they had been wrong to sell their brother, as they had said amongst themselves in 42;21. Bereshit Rabbah 91 thought the brothers had brought significant funds with them, intending to redeem Yosef from whoever owned him. Yosef was now telling them they had achieved their goal, and no longer needed to be sad over the sale.

The anger was at themselves, for having caused all the trouble from selling Yosef. When people try to fix a problem and instead make it worse, self-anger is a common reaction. Yosef therefore told them they could now see the value they had in fact achieved with their act, his being in a position to support the family during the famine.

They need not be sad nor angry, it all worked out.

A Cheat and An Introduction

I have decided to add Emes Le-Ya’akov, the comments of R. Ya’akov Kamenetsky, to our weekly list. First, because too many times when I encounter him, I find him so thoughtful and interesting, why deny ourselves? Besides, the other commentators for this year write briefly enough to leave room for one more.

For this week, I’m going to cheat and use a comment of his from Mikeitz that’s still somewhat relevant to VaYigash, although I freely admit I’m cheating because I liked it so much. On 42;9, R. Ya’akov respectfully rejects Ramban’s theory of why Yosef pretended the brothers were spies.

Rav Ya’akov goes in almost the opposite direction, starting with a rejection of the premise, that it can ever be our responsibility to make sure a Divine plan comes true. He quotes a passage my teacher, R. Lichtenstein, Z”L, was wont to quote, Berachot 10a, where the Gemara has Yeshayahu (the prophet) upbraid Chizkiyahu for thinking he can know better than the predicted future. R. Ya’akov applies it here.

He suggests instead that Yosef was trying to show the brothers the fallibility of our best reasoning. They had judged him a danger to the family because of his dreams, and had every reasonable support to think so. From their perspective, they were absolutely right, R. Ya’akov thinks Yosef is saying to them. Yet they were wrong.

He taught them the lesson starting with himself, in his position because he was thought the wisest man in Egypt, who made the mistake of thinking them spies, which they knew was untrue. Where most rulers refuse to change their minds, he surprised them by changing his, letting them all but Shim’on free to bring food back to their family (for the idea of monarch’s refusal to admit error, R. Ya’akov cites Bava Batra 3b, where we also know the idea from the end of Megillat Ester, Achashverosh is willing to circumvent a previous decree, not revoke it).

At that point, the brothers began to recognize their guilt (it is there they say “But we are guilty,” R. Ya’akov points out).

Perhaps the drama with Binyamin was the last nail of the proof, R. Ya’akov says, because Shabbat 55b includes him among those who died completely sin-free, yet the brothers themselves were willing to believe he had stolen the goblet (a passage in Bereshit Rabbah 92;8 supports his view, he points out).

With Yosef’s big reveal, they finally saw it. All their best thinking, and they were powerful thinkers, took them down a path to error. Perhaps, he says, that’s what Bereshit Rabbah 93;11 meant when it detected a rebuke in Yosef’s words. For R. Ya’akov, it was all he had put them through, showing them again and again that even our best and brightest can get it wrong.

Rabbinic writers celebrate a remarkable insight with the words of Mishlei 24;26, lips should kiss those who give right (or good) answers. An insight as relevant today as it was in R. Ya’akov’s time, as it has been throughout history, too much confidence is the beginning of a bad road.

Ya’akov and his sons finding their places in the world, not an easy path to tread.