In this week’s Torah reading, parshat Mikkeitz, ten of Ya’akov’s sons face the task of convincing their father to release Binyamin from his care. Only by taking Binyamin, their youngest brother, down to Egypt with them will the brothers be able to receive food from the storehouses of Egypt in order to survive the seven year famine they are in the midst of. But as Binyamin is the only remaining son of Ya’akov that was born to him from Rachel – his most beloved wife – Ya’akov resists departing with him out of fear that a tragic death may befall Binyamin, similar to the one that (he believes) befell Yosef. Therefore it is up to the two brothers that seem to be the leaders of the pack to try their hands at convincing Ya’akov to let them descend into Egypt with Binyamin. These brothers are Reuven, the eldest, and Yehuda.
First,
Reuven offers to be the protector of Binyamin on their journey, but Ya’akov rejects
his offer unequivocally: My son must not
go down with you, for his brother is dead and he alone is left. If he meets with disaster on the journey you
are taking, you will send my white head down to Sheol in grief (Bereishit
42:38). Yehuda then, in a much longer
conversation with his father, makes an offer similar to that of Yehuda: to be
personally responsible to watch over the wellbeing of their youngest brother,
Binyamin. Despite the similarity of the
offers, however, Yehuda succeeds where Reuven did not. He successfully convinces Ya’akov to let
Binyamin travel to Egypt with his brothers: Take
your brother too; and go back at once to the man [Yosef, in Egypt]. And may El Shaddai dispose the man to mercy
toward you, that he may release to you your other brother [Shimon, who is held
in captivity], as well as Binyamin. As
for me, if I am to be bereaved, I shall be bereaved (Bereishit 43:13-14).
A
cursory reading of the Torah’s text makes one wonder why Reuven was rejected,
while Ya’akov accepts Yehuda’s offer.
But, I believe, the answer to this question can clearly be seen by
looking at the specific actions of each brother.
First,
let us look at Reuven’s short and simple promise to his father: You may kill my two sons if I do not bring
him [Binyamin] back to you. Put him in
my care, and I will return him to you (Bereishit 42:37). In context, it appears that Reuven is
recognizing the grief his father feels at losing Yosef, having Shimon held in
captivity, and the thought of losing Binyamin.
Therefore he offers his own sons as collateral of sorts, so that Ya’akov
will realize how dedicated he is to ensuring Binyamin’s safety on the journey
to Egypt. Of course Reuven guards the
lives of his sons as precious, but he seems confident that their lives are not
at stake since his mission will ultimately be successful. But this is not soothing to Ya’akov, who has
been promised offspring as numerous as the stars. He does not want his own grief – that of
losing a child – to be shared with others but rather to be limited as much as
possible. He doesn’t want Reuven to
experience his own grief, or to see his own grandchildren dead. He wants an end to the loss of sons – whether
through death or captivity. Therefore
Reuven’s offer is unappealing to Ya’akov.
But I think this, coupled with Reuven’s role in Yosef being sold into
Egypt, shows us why Ya’akov ultimately rejected Reuven.
Earlier
in the Torah, when the brothers are planning the killing of Yosef, Reuven
speaks up to save his younger brother.
As the Torah says:
He [Reuven] said, Let us not take his life. And Reuven went on, Shed no blood! Cast him into
that pit out in the wilderness, but do not touch him yourselves – (he was)
intending to save him [Yosef] from them and restore him to his father. (Bereishit
But
when Reuven separates from his brothers and later returns to find Yosef missing
from the pit, we are told:
Reuven rent his
clothes. Returning to his brother, he
said, The boy is gone! Now what am I to
do? (37:30)
We
see from these verses that at this point Reuven has, unlike his brothers, a
sense of right and wrong. He has
feelings of remorse and understands that even though Yosef is the favored child
and sometimes gets on the nerves (to put it lightly) of his brothers, these are
not reasons to warrant his killing. But
we also see that despite Reuven’s moral conscience, he is not a leader amongst
his brothers. He doesn’t stand up to his
brothers and say: No! We cannot kill our brother. He is our brother and we must treat him as
such. Instead he tells his brothers
that, yes, disposing of Yosef is the right thing to do, but let’s just do it
another way. [This could be reminiscent
of Aaron who tries to delay the sin of the Golden Calf at the foot of Mt Sinai
but doesn’t outright tell the people it is wrong, as he is afraid the people
would kill him for disagreeing with them.
Perhaps Reuven also thought his brothers would kill or sell him into
slavery with Yosef if he was perceived as not sharing their hatred of Yosef.] So despite his good intentions, Reuven was
not the strong leader that his brothers needed to unite them (i.e. to unite the 10 brothers
with the "other" two, Yosef and Binyamin). And because
Ya’akov was able to see this weakness in Reuven’s leadership he was unwilling
to entrust him with Binayamin’s life.
So
now the original question becomes: what about Yehuda gave his father Ya’akov
the faith (even if very begrudging) that Yehuda was capable of being entrusted
with the mission of guarding Binyamin, while Reuven was not. After all, it was Yehuda’s idea to sell Yosef
into slavery (after Reuven convinced them to spare his life):
…They saw a caravan of
Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, their camels bearing gum, balm, and ladanum to
be taken to Egypt. Then Yehuda said to
his brothers: What do we gain by killing
our brother and covering up his blood?
Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let us not do away with
him ourselves. After all, he is our
brother, our own flesh. His brothers
agree. (Bereishit 37:25-27)
Here
it is Yehuda that is the lead thinker in the group. He seems to be the progenitor of the actions
of the majority of brothers, leading them in their hatred towards Yosef. Yehuda seems to be the last son that Ya’akov
should trust to watch over Binyamin’s safety!
But Yehuda appears to be a transformed man when, years later, he must
convince his father to let Binyamin go into Egypt with the rest of the brothers:
...Their [the
brothers’] father said to them, Go again
and procure some food for us [from Egypt].
But Yehuda said to him:
The man [Viceroy of Egypt] said to us,
‘do not let me see your faces unless your brother is with you.’ If you will let our brother [Binyamin] go
with us, we will go down and procure food for you; but if you will not let him
go, we will not go down, for the man said to us, ‘Do not let me see your faces
unless your brother is with you.’
And Israel [i.e.
Ya’akov] said, Why did you serve me so
ill as to tell the man that you had another brother?
They replied, but the man kept asking about us and our
family, saying, ‘Is your father still living? Have you another brother?’ And we answered him accordingly. How were we to know that he would say, ‘Bring
your brother here’?
Then Yehuda said to his
father Israel, Send the boy [Binyamin] in
my care, and let us be on our way, that we may live and not die – you and we
and our children. I myself will be
surety for him; you may hold me responsible; if I do not bring him back to you
and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever. For we could have been there and back twice
if we had not dawdled!
Then their father
Israel said to them: If it must be so…
Ya’akov
(who is also called Israel) clearly does not find it easy to part ways with
Binyamin, even in a situation of necessity to avoid starvation. But, when pressed by his son Yehuda, he is
convinced. Why? Yehuda offers himself as the assurance that
Binyamin will return safely – not his life, nor his son’s life, but his
honor. Yehuda already shares the pain of
a lost son with his father. Yehuda has
already lost two sons – Er and Onan – to death, just as Ya’akov lost Yosef (who
he believes is dead) and Shimon (to captivity in Egypt). Yehuda does not offer his third son,
Shelah’s, life as Reuven offered his sons’ lives because Yehuda understands the
suffering of a parent who has lost a child.
This understanding has radically changed the way he feels towards his
brothers. Through his words, he tells his father that he is not willing to give
up life, to leave any of his brothers behind.
He shows that he feels it is his duty as a brother, as a leader of his
brothers, to guard the life of Binyamin and return him safely to Ya’akov. A loss of pride and being forced to stand
guilty before his father – that is the most severe punishment for Yehuda; it
shows the ultimate value of life and deeply-felt familial obligation that he
feels. In this, Ya’akaov is able to
trust.
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