Parshat VaYigash: Yosef and Yehuda

The only brother’s with any significant individuality assigned to them throughout Bereishit are Reuven, Yehuda, and Yosef.  Fairly little is known about the other brothers without referring to other Jewish texts.  And among the “big three,” Reuven is largely relegated to a tertiary role in both the length of time the Torah spends related to his speech/action and the impact he has over his brothers.  So we are left with Yehuda and Yosef as the most prominent of the twelve sons, descended from Ya’akov, who are to become the Twelve Tribes of Israel.  Rav Ya’akov Medan points out here that Yosef and Yehuda are the most important sons both in the Torah and in other Jewish writings.  Of all the things he mentions, the one thing that really stood out to me as separating them from the other brothers is, quoted directly:

…Yosef and Yehuda resemble the forefathers, concerning whom the Torah details the circumstances of their marriages, the names of their wives, the circumstances of their children’s births, and the reasons for the name given to them.  As for the rest of the tribes, we have no idea what Yissakhar’s wife’s name was, or why Zevulun called his children Sered, Elon, and Yachle’el.

My initial question based on this is: What is it about these two brothers, more than then others, that demands so much attention?  But without knowing the details of the 10 “minor” brothers’ lives this is impossible to answer.  So I must instead ask the question of “why these two brothers”, without posing any comparisons to nine of the other ten brothers about whom too little is known.  As for Reuven (the tenth “other” brother), however, I think that my parsha blog from last week (which asks and answers the question: “why did Ya’akov allow Yehuda (and not Reuven) to be the caretaker of their youngest brother Binyamin in Egypt?”) sufficiently answers why Yehuda is important.  His transformation as a leader of his brothers to do evil (selling Yosef to Egypt) to true repentance and winning over his father’s faith and trust is certainly a captivating storyline with many lessons to be learned.  I also think that understanding Yosef is fairly simple.  Two weeks ago I wrote about a little about Yosef’s progression as a person, evidenced by his speech, which provides some explanation as to why he is an important figure.  But even more fundamentally, Yosef is the foundation of the Jewish people.  His descent into Egypt is the catalyst for the Jewish people (a mere “seventy souls” at the time of this week’s parsha) who become slaves in Egypt and ultimately experience the Exodus from Egypt. 

Another question that arises about these two brothers is: Why two?  There was Avraham.  He had multiple children, but only Yitzchak was selected by God to carry on His covenant.  Yitzchak also had multiple children, but only Ya’akov was the chosen one.  Ya’akov then has 12 sons and all of them are included in the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Levi is separated for the Temple service and Yosef’s sons – Menashe and Ephraim – become two tribes, leaving us with twelve).  Not only are all of them a part of upholding God’s covenant, but two of them take on a special prominence similar to that of the three patriarchs.  What is the reason?

We know that in Judaism there is Moshiach ben Yosef (a messiah to be descended from Yosef) who will essentially prepare the way for Moshiach ben David (the messiah to be descended from Yehuda, though Kind David).  I discussed the two messiahs and the essence of each last year, based on the Vilna Goan’s idea that Moshiach ben Yosef will bring about Tikkun Olam, a rectification of the world, while Moshiach ben David will bring about Tikkun Adam, a rectification of man/mankind.  Given this thought, I think we have an explanation as to why Ya’akov has two prominent sons that will ultimately produce the leaders of the Jewish people in the messianic time (and we already see their leadership abilities in the Torah with Yehoshua from the tribe of Yosef and Kalev from Yehuda).  It appears that it is necessary for two individuals to accomplish two specific tasks.  Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov perhaps contained the ability to accomplish one element, perhaps even possessed an element of both messiahs…but ultimately even they were unable to wholly unite the tasks of tikkun Olam and tikkun adam into one goal.  May the Moshiach by Yosef and the Moshiach ben David that are able to accomplish these tasks come speedily and in our days.