Saturday, January 04, 2025
Elder of Ziyon |
| Joseph Converses With Judah, His Brother, James Tissot c. 1896-1902 thejewishmuseum.org |
Most would say that it is was his offer to have himself imprisoned instead of Binyomin (Benjamin) that convinced Yosef that he had truly reformed and repented from his sin of selling Yosef. But something I only noticed today in his speech seems to me to be more powerful.
Later our father said, ‘Go back and procure some food for us.’We answered, ‘We cannot go down; only if our youngest brother is with us can we go down, for we may not show our faces to the man unless our youngest brother is with us.’Your servant my father said to us, ‘As you know, my wife bore me two sons. כִּ֥י שְׁנַ֖יִם יָֽלְדָה־לִּ֥י אִשְׁתִּֽיBut one is gone from me, and I said: Alas, he was torn by a beast! And I have not seen him since.If you take this one from me, too, and he meets with disaster, you will send my white head down to Sheol in sorrow.’
In Yehudah's retelling, he quotes Yaakov (Jacob) as saying that his wife gave him two sons. But Yaakov had twelve sons from his two (four) wives.
The sons of Leah and the two other wives were always sensitive to the favoritism that Yaakov gave to Rochel (Rachel) and her sons. And this is understandable - they didn't want their own mothers to be considered second class. But when Yehuda gave this speech - and keep in mind that there is no record of Yaakov telling him these words - he was saying that he was accepting that Rochel was the wife that his father loved, something that must have been enormously difficult for him to say to the Egyptian leader.
That, I believe, is what convinced Yaakov that Yehudah and the other brothers (who didn't protest) did a true repentance, and that is what caused Yosef to break down and admit who he was before he could finish his plan to fully fulfill his dreams of the brothers and father bowing down to him.
It was Yehudah's humility and willingness to admit this very uncomfortable truth that is what qualified him and his descendants to be the political leaders of Israel.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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