Sermon: Parashat Vayechi – Why is Joseph crying (again)?
Written by Rabbi Nicola Feuchtwang — 3 January 2021
A number of you have been kind enough to reassure me that you don’t see it as a problem that my former life as a developmental paediatrician seems to find ways to creep into almost everything I teach or preach. So here is a question for you:
What do you think was the most important, indispensable item on the desk of my clinic room?
It wasn’t the stethoscope, the crayons, or even the wooden blocks. It was the box of tissues. Inevitably this was sometimes for the body fluids which are an occupational hazard when working with children, but far more often for the tears. The children’s tears of frustration or impatience or tiredness, the parents’ and carers’ tears of distress, of anxiety and exhaustion, and sometimes relief; and fairly often my own as I shared their emotional world.
I may have retired, but I am still using a lot of tissues, and I know I am not alone. This year has given us all plenty to weep about. We have all suffered fear; too many of us have lost family members and friends; we have wept about loneliness and about being confined; about cancelled simchas, and about the inability to be there for each other. I have cried with exasperation when the technology on which we have become so dependent won’t do what it should, … and so on.
It somehow seems very apt that as we mark the end of this difficult secular year, our Torah reading this morning is the very end of the book of Genesis, and includes the deaths of both Jacob and Joseph – and a lot of weeping. Later in Torah, the Children of Israel do plenty of collective crying, but nearly all the instances of an individual person weeping occur in Genesis, and most of them are about this father and son, Jacob and Joseph.
Jacob wept when he met Rachel for the first time; Jacob and Esau both cried when they met and reconciled after 20 years; and Jacob wept when his sons brought him Joseph’s bloodstained coat. But it is Joseph who is the real ‘frequent crier’, recorded as weeping on at least 7 occasions: he excuses himself to conceal his emotions when his brothers first appear before him; he cries when he reveals his identity to them and sees Benjamin; he cries on his reunion with his father; he cries when his father dies. Tears of distress, tears of relief, tears of loss. And then again in the section we read this morning:
(The brothers) sent this message to Joseph, “Before his death your father left this instruction: So shall you say to Joseph, ‘Forgive, I urge you, the offence and guilt of your brothers who treated you so harshly.’ Therefore, please forgive the offence of the servants of the God of your father.”
And Joseph was in tears as they spoke to him.[1]
Why is he crying this time? There is no record of Jacob actually giving such an instruction, but surely Joseph wouldn’t have cried, just because he knew his brothers were lying.
Perhaps we need to look back to the previous verse too:
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong that we did him!”[2]
The early rabbis and the medieval commentators of the 11th – 13th centuries tied themselves in knots over these verses: what might Jacob really have said? what did the brothers think Joseph might be thinking? They ask: What does it mean ‘they saw that Jacob was dead?’ What did they “see?” They had just returned from burying him, it is several weeks since he died, they already know that he had died. Why are they worried about Joseph bearing a grudge when he had previously and explicitly said that he did not? One Midrash[3] speculates that it was Joseph’s behaviour which worried them: perhaps he had stopped inviting the brothers to dine with him because of sensitivity about protocol, which they misconstrued as hostility. I prefer another story in Midrash,[4] which suggests that on the way through the desert to bury Jacob, the brothers had seen Joseph stop and stare into a deep pit, and they realised with horror that it was the same one into which they had thrown him all those years earlier….
… Either way, the brothers interpreted his behaviour to mean that Joseph had just been waiting for Jacob to die so that he could wreak his revenge on them….
So Rashi says: ‘They altered the facts…’ – in other words, in their guilt and fear, they lied, and invented the message.
Torah says ‘keep far from falsehood’[5] – but the verdict of Jewish tradition is that a lie can sometimes be justified if it is to save life, or to promote peace. (Even God is economical with the truth when reporting Sarah’s words to Abraham)[6]
So did Joseph cry because he knew the brothers were lying? Or because their lie revealed that they didn’t believe or trust him?
That Midrash about Joseph looking into the pit suggests that – far from planning vengeance – he was actually saying a blessing:
בָרּוְך הַמָקֹום שֶעָשָה לִי נֵס בַמָקֹום הַזֶה.
(Blessed be God who performed a miracle for me in this place)
The adult Joseph is able to look back at his life and see the bigger picture… He weeps because his brothers are not yet able to do so. The enormous gulf between them is the cause of his sorrow.
I have been reading some interesting studies about this, by the Israel bible scholar Yael Tzohar at Bar Ilan university,[7] and by the Canadian Rabbi Erin Polansky.[8] Polansky points out that we should also notice when Joseph doesn’t cry: He doesn’t cry in the pit, he doesn’t cry when he is framed by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into prison, not when he is frightened, or angry, or life is unfair… but he cries about family because, despite everything, that is what matters most to him. In the earlier episodes, he disguises his emotions, leaves the room, washes the tears from his face, but as the story progresses, the emotions are even stronger and he becomes able to acknowledge and express them even in public. Tzohar concludes her study by quoting:
Weeping is the song of the soul. It expresses that which is beyond words.
We can learn something important from this final weeping: Joseph understands his brothers much better than they understand him, and it hurts him that they are so fearful that they feel they need to fabricate a message from their father. Nevertheless Joseph ‘gets’ it, and is able to speak to their heart and reassure and comfort them.
Joseph said to them, “Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God?
Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.
And so, fear not. I will provide for you and your children.” Thus he reassured them, speaking to their heart.[9]
The secular year which has just ended has given us all plenty to weep about, and the next few months will also be tough. It is OK to follow Joseph’s example and be a frequent crier, unafraid to show emotion over things that really matter. All we can hope for is a bit of Joseph’s ability to see things in perspective, to look back into the pit and acknowledge that it was a terrible place, but that we were able to grow and learn from it. And as we start a new secular year, we can also repeat:
Chazak Chazak VeNitchazeik – Let us be strong and continue to strengthen one another.
(Shabbat Shalom)
[1] Genesis 50: 16-17
[2] Ibid v15
[3] Midrash Rabba – Genesis 100:8
[4] Midrash Tanchuma – Vayechi 37
[5] Exodus 23: 7
[6] Genesis 18: 12-13
[7] https://www1.biu.ac.il/indexE.php?id=14524&pt=1&pid=14395&level=0&cPath=43,14206,14372,14395,14524
[8] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/joseph-cries-lot-and-should-matter-us
[9] Genesis 50: 19-21