Dramatic Disbelief
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
Parshat Vayigash brings the Yosef Hatzadik saga to a climax. Yosef Hatzadik Hatzadik reveals himself to his brothers and cryptically asks, “Is my father still alive?” After all, Yehudah had just pleaded with him that his father would die if Binyamin were to be lost. Nevertheless, Yosef Hatzadik instructs his brothers to tell their father that Yosef Hatzadik is still alive, and that he is the ruler of all Egypt. Instead of being overjoyed, Yaakov Avinu Avinu’s initial reaction is disbelief, complete rejection of this news. Only after the brothers relate the full conversation with Yosef Hatzadik and show Yaakov Avinu the wagons Yosef Hatzadik had sent did Yaakov Avinu finally accept this report and Yisroel said, “How great! My son Yosef Hatzadik still lives! I shall go see him before I die.”
The overriding question here is why would Yaakov Avinu refuse to believe such good news? Certainly, his sons would be incapable of foisting such a cruel lie on their father. How can we understand Yaakov Avinu Avinu’s incredulity?
Rabbi Bick in Chayei Moshe offers us our first possible answer. Rabbi Bick suggests that Yaakov Avinu believed them when they told him Yosef Hatzadik was alive. What he couldn’t believe was that his Yosef Hatzadik was the ruler of all Egypt. Yaakov Avinu knew the prophecy given to his grandfather Avraham, that his descendants would go into exile in a strange land. Exile usually means hardship and chains. How could Bnei Yisroel be going into this exile in pomp and honor? So, although he heard the words intellectually, adds Rabbi Grosbard, Yaakov Avinu could not accept them emotionally. He could know intellectually without believing in his heart.
Using this idea, the Chazon Ish instructs us to train ourselves and our children to ask Hashem for everything, even for something as mundane as a new pair of shoes, so that we begin to internalize hashgacha protis, that Hashem maintains personal care and concern over each of us. Then we can take that sense of faith in security in Hashem’s providence and infuse our mitzvah observance with a sense of joy. If we observe mitzvoth only with a sense of obligation, with the mantra of es is shver tzu zein a Yid/it’s hard to be a Jew, writes Rabbi Schlesinger, then you lose The Heart of Emunah and open up yourself and your children to the materialistic lures of society, ready to abandon the untasted sweetness of Yiddishkeit. Once the emotion is there, one can attempt intellectual understanding of the mitzvoth as well.
Yaakov Avinu was so emotionally blocked from believing the news of Yosef Hatzadik’s survival that the message could not penetrate his heart.
For twenty two years Yaakov Avinu had been deluded into thinking that Yosef Hatzadik was dead, yet he could not be comforted during all that time. Our tradition tells us that a mourner can be comforted only if his loved one has truly died, not if the loved one is actually still alive. In this scenario, Yaakov Avinu should have believed the information that Yosef Hatzadik was still alive. In Talmud Beyado, Rabbi Kram suggests that Yaakov Avinu knew that Yosef Hatzadik was indeed physically alive; what Yaakov Avinu continued to mourn was the probability that Yosef Hatzadik was no longer spiritually alive. How could Yosef Hatzadik remain spiritually pure in the corrupt and depraved Egyptian society? This also explains why Yitzchak, who knew Yosef Hatzadik was physically alive, could not share that information with Yaakov Avinu, for Yitzchak himself did not know if Yosef Hatzadik had remained righteous. As the Netivot Shalom adds, Yaakov Avinu never stopped thinking about Yosef Hatzadik, keeping him alive within his heart and thoughts, just as Yosef Hatzadik consciously and continually kept Yaakov Avinu alive within himself.
In a similar vein, Yosef Hatzadik also knew that his father was still physically alive. He argued with Yehudah, “Yehudah, how can you claim that the disappearance of Binyamin will kill your father when the disappearance of the other son did not?” What Yosef Hatzadik was asking his brothers was how has Yaakov Avinu not “died” from the disappearance of the other son? Now that Yosef Hatzadik has revealed himself to his brothers his question takes on a different significance. Is my father still alive? Did the Divine inspiration leave him when that son disappeared? What will kill Yaakov Avinu now is not the physical death of Binyamin, but the “knowledge” that Binyamin was a thief, that Binyamin succumbed to the evils of Mitzrayim.
Go tell my father, adds Rabbi Dunner, that I am still Yosef Hatzadik, that Hashem has made me master over [the enticement of] Mitzrayim, that I have kept the Name of Hashem in my speech and made Hashem Master in Egypt. It was with this reassurance that Yaakov Avinu was appeased, that he was reinvested with the elevated name Yisroel, and that he wanted to go to Egypt to see Yosef Hatzadik’s face and recognize the holy aura emanating from it.
Yosef Hatzadik’s words alone would not be enough to totally convince Yaakov\ Avinu, for a liar can deceive others. But a liar and evil cannot exist in the face of pure righteousness. One can mouth words that appear true even if they are not. That evidence Yaakov Avinu wanted to see on his own, says Rabbi Diskin.
An agunah, a woman whose husband had disappeared, once asked the Vilna Gaon to help her judge whether a man claiming to be her long lost husband was actually her husband or an impostor. In spite of the man’s giving her many details from her husband, she still had misgivings. The Vilna Gaon suggested taking him to shul and asking him where his seat was. This he did not know, and the man’s deception was uncovered. Yaakov Avinu wanted to reassure himself that this was truly Yosef Hatzadik and not an impostor.
Life must not be static. A Jew must continue spiritual growth, not live in stasis. That’s why if a Jew were ever to flee to an ir miklat/a sanctuary city, his Rebbe must go with whim so he continues to grow and not stagnate. Just as a body needs physical food to survival, so does the soul need spiritual food. The Torah must continue to beat within one’s soul to maintain its life force. One must continue to ingest Torah’s spirituality to remain alive.
We can, however, start with a very simple explanation for Yaakov Avinu’s disbelief of Yosef Hatzadik’s being alive. As Avos d’Rabbi Nosson states, if the brothers had lied to their father when they implied that Yosef Hatzadik was dead, why should Yaakov Avinu believe that now they were telling the truth? Truth and honesty are the very foundations of a proper life.
Yosef Hatzadik offered two proofs that he was indeed Yosef Hatzadik. He showed them that he was circumcised, and he spoke Hebrew to them. How do these prove the truth of Yosef Hatzadik’s assertion? A Jew shows his connection to Hashem through the brit milah/covenant of the foreskin. Through the brit, he is dedicating all his passions to Hashem’s service, writes Rabbi Lopiansky in Golden Apples. Speaking Hebrew, Yosef Hatzadik’s second sign, is called lashon hakodesh/the holy language. By bringing the bloodied garment to their father and agreeing that Yosef Hatzadik had been torn by wild animals, the brothers had corrupted the holy language with their lies. In contrast, Yosef Hatzadik’s tales to their father, however ill advised and misconstrued, were nevertheless true, as were the dreams he related to them. Additionally, his withstanding the seductions of Potifar’s wife proved his passionate commitment to the morality of Hashem’s words. It was not merely the Hebrew language, but rather the ring of truth, the hallmark of Yaakov Avinu, that convinced both the brothers and Yaakov Avinu himself of Yosef Hatzadik’s identity. We, as descendants of Yaakov Avinu, must work on ourselves both in strengthening our passionate commitment to Hashem and in honestly evaluating our middos so that we can perfect ourselves.
With the power of truth as our guide, we can see how Rabbi Zweig understands Yaakov Avinu’s inability to believe his sons’ telling him that Yosef Hatzadik was alive. Rabbi Zweig cites Rabbi Nosson in saying that a liar is not believed even when telling the truth. However, Rabbi Zweig notes that there are two different words for a liar in Hebrew. A shakran is one who knows he is lying for whatever motive he may have. A badai is one who fabricates a story and convinces himself of its truthfulness, often the result of rationalizations that present him or his actions as righteous when in fact they may not be so. A skilled listener can usually tell when the speaker is lying through certain tell tale signs, but the listener may not be able to spot an untruth when the speaker himself believes what he is saying. Even a lie detector test may not catch that untruth.
Yosef Hatzadik’s brothers had convinced themselves that indeed Yosef Hatzadik would not be able to survive his treatment as a slave in Egypt. Therefore, he must indeed already be dead, and they fabricated that untruth to their father. They were so convincing in their own truth that Yaakov Avinu could not discern the lie. Therefore, now when the brothers came to tell their father that Yosef Hatzadik was indeed still alive, Yaakov Avinu had no way of knowing which narrative was truth and which was a lie. Only the proof provided by Yosef Hatzadik himself who had remained true to his father’s teaching throughout his ordeal finally convinced Yaakov Avinu that Yosef Hatzadik was indeed alive.
Each of us has at times bent the truth or deluded ourselves with half truths or little (and sometimes big) lies. Only by looking uncompromisingly within ourselves with the powerful light of glaring truth can we overpower our human frailties and grow as human beings reflecting Hashem’s seal of truth and carrying forth Yaakov Avinu’s legacy of truth.