VaYiggash

Bereishit 44:18-47:27

Peshat and Derash: Reading Yehudah and Yoseph

Aryeh Bernstein, 5762

For the past week, we have dwelled in the strange break between the beginning of Yehudah's speech, at the end of last week's parashah, and the conclusion of his speech, at the beginning of this week's parashah. This oratory tour de force is the climax of the drama of Yoseph and his brothers; nevertheless, we interrupted it in the middle to wait a week. Last week, we discussed where Yehudah and Yoseph are emotionally as they arrive at the scene. This week, we will progress only a moment or two in the story in order to understand the cataclysmic change that transpires when Yehudah continues his speech as our parashah begins.

Here are the final verses of last week's parashah, Miqqetz, and the first verse of VaYiggash. The backdrop is that the brothers, on their way home, have been arrested and Yoseph's goblet has been "found" in Binyamin's sack, after being planted there clandestinely by Yoseph's aids. The brothers--specifically Binyamin--now stand accused before Yoseph.

[New parashah here.]

For the sake of brevity, I will not record the sixteen gut-wrenching verses of Yehudah's telling of their story--with emphasis on their father's suffering--leading up to Yoseph breaking down and revealing himself to his brothers. Read it in its entirety on your own.

The simplest read of these verses is that Yehudah, filled with trepidation, but also conviction, pleads eloquently for mercy. In legal terms, his plea is absurd: no legal principle could justify punishing an innocent person in place of his (allegedly) guilty brother. Yehudah acknowledges this and speaks only of the suffering of his father, begging Yoseph the viceroy to have mercy on that unknown, old man who would not be able to bear the loss of Binyamin. That is the simplest read of the verses.

For Hazal, it's not so clear-cut. A midrash in Bereishit Rabbah (93:6) brings three wildly divergent interpretations of the word "וַיִּגַּשׁ" - three ways to understand Yehudah's attitude in approaching Yoseph.

Meanwhile, we are left confused as to how to understand the verse. Yehudah approached either to threaten Yoseph, to appease Yoseph, or to pray to God for Yoseph to have mercy. Or maybe Yehudah approached Yoseph ready for various sorts of encounters.

This ambiguity is expressed powerfully in the following passage in Rashi's commentary:

This rich passage highlights a burning methodological question we must ask about Rashi and other commentators. Rashi includes two different genres of interpretation, peshat, the plain meaning, and midrash, some alternative meaning. We have to wonder, though, "What does Rashi really think?" What is the true meaning of the verse for Rashi? How he reads this half-verse affects the entire narrative. The peshat reading has Yehudah praising and pleading with Yoseph, while the midrashic readings have him threatening Yoseph, with increasing severity in each interpretative option. How can Rashi bring both alternatives?

Beneath every text are numerous subtexts. The text is readily apparent (more or less); the ability to decipher the subtexts rests with the reader. Which subtexts she finds depends on the lens through which she reads them. The midrashic readings Rashi proposes are all voices that Yoseph could have (must have?) heard in Yehudah's speech. " וַיִּגַּשׁ אֵלָיו יְהוּדָה--Yehudah approached him." As Yehudah draws near to make his words hit home more personally, whom does Yoseph see? We know that Yehudah is the strongest of the brothers, the leader of the group, and we know that they showed unanimous hatred for Yospeh as a child. Yehudah was the one who proposed throwing Yoseph into the pit; maybe he physically did the deed. Yoseph was not there when Yehudah was humbled by Tamar, so what sort of Yehudah do his eyes see approaching him? Despite Yoseph's awesome power now, can one ever shake the intense fear of childhood menaces?

When Yehudah speaks, he is begging for mercy from an international monarch, deferring humbly to Yoseph's great stature and authority. This is the peshat, the plain, contextual meaning. It is authorial intent, Yehudah being the author of the statement. What does Yoseph hear, though? He has been running away from himself since he came to power, as we saw last week. However, that does not mean that he has no conflicts about it. Remember that he named his first-born son Menasheh, "כִּי נַשַּׁנִי אֱלֹהִים אֶת כָּל עֲמָלִי וְאֵת כָּל בֵּית אָבִי" -- "because God has made me forget all of my hardship and my parental home" (41:51). One who has genuinely forgotten cannot make a statement like that. In Shakespeare's words: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" (Hamlet III, ii, 239). Yoseph's naming words are loaded with bitterness and a sense of triumph at having escaped his painful past. Now, the leader of his family comes and tells him that he is like Pharaoh.

What rings in Yoseph's ears when he, on the run from his past, hears his charismatic, powerful brother, approach him and tell him that he's just like Pharaoh? A shared association for Yoseph and Yehudah with the word "Pharaoh" is the story they grew up with (that perhaps Yoseph had buried until his brother unknowingly ripped it open) about God smiting Pharaoh with leprosy for holding their great-grandmother in his house (12:17). To be called Pharaoh by Yehudah bears the subtext of reminding him where he comes from. It is a subtext that he will hear as an attack because he feels unsettled in the narrative of his life. Another subtext is specific to the situation at hand--the question of Binyamin's future. It is quite meaningful for Yoseph to see his only full brother, Binyamin, the other favorite of their father. When older brother Yehudah approaches and says--regarding Yoseph's conduct with Binyamin--"You are like Pharaoh", Yoseph hears a subtext of, "You are not a brother, who must be loyal and loving and responsible; you are a whimsical, ruthless Pharaoh." Yoseph hears this as a belligerent threat to his fulfillment of love and responsibility. Another subtext is that Yoseph remains terrified of Yehudah. Maybe he thought that the brothers were trying to kill him when they threw him in the pit and that Yehudah was the ringleader. As Yehudah approaches, Yoseph's adolescent trauma erupts in its full fury: He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me! And he'll take down Pharaoh with me! "כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹה" - "like you, like Pharaoh": I'll kill you both!

In all three possibilities, Yehudah's words enter the lens of Yoseph's ambivalent, conflicted thoughts, to arouse all sorts of other "texts". This is Midrash. If, above, I analogized Yehudah to an "author", then Yoseph, here, is the "reader", and in this way, reading is life and life is reading and Midrash is the name of the genre. Yehudah's speech is delivered in conciliatory tones, but heard in combative undertones. Both the peshat and derash are "true" and present in the text and this is what Rashi is telling us.

Back to our original midrash, on the meaning of the word וַיִּגַּשׁ/"he approached": "R. Yehudah interpreted it as an approach of war" - this is how a haunted Yoseph experienced the approach. "R. Nehemiah interpreted it as an approach of appeasement" - this is how a desperate Yehudah intended his approach. "The Rabbis interpreted it as an approach of prayer" - this is an alternative way of staging Yehudah's conciliatory perspective. The final voice, of R. El‘azar, can perhaps serve as a poignant description of the midrashic process. "If for war, here I come; if for persuasion; here I come; if for prayer, here I come". "Here I come" is the common denominator of all texts. Although this "approaching" may be interpreted in various ways by Yoseph, the beginning of reading and the beginning of human relationship is in the fact of the approach, of an author reaching out and coming close to a potential reader. Yehudah's speech is one, but the fleeting moment in which he draws near to Yoseph creates a world of meaning for Yoseph. The ancient Masoretes, who established the graphic format of the Torah, already created Midrash by placing that space in the text, inviting us to pause and to "read" in that blank space the meaning of the approach.