28 Dec HAVING BEEN WRONG
The Great Chastisement Is Having Been Wrong
There is a Medrash in this week’s parsha on the pasuk [verse] regarding Yosef breaking down and revealing his true identity to his brothers. The Torah relates that the brothers were so petrified by Yosef’s ‘admonishment’ that they were left speechless. The Medrash comments, “woe to us from the day of judgement; woe to us from the day of chastisement.” This is what it will be like for each of us on our own day of judgement. After 120 years, when we will give an accounting for our life on this earth — this is what we will experience. We will be left speechless in the face of Hashem’s admonishment. The Medrash dramatically states that just as they could not answer their baby brother Yosef, we will certainly not be able to answer the admonishment of the Almighty.
The commentaries are bothered by this allusion to Yosef’s admonishment of his brothers. A cursory glance at the pasuk (“I am Yosef, your brother. Is my father still alive?”) does not seem to indicate a very harsh admonishment. Where is the chastisement?
I saw an interesting insight from Rav Pam (1913-2001) regarding this question. Rav Pam says that the chastisement is the words “I am Yosef.” When the brothers heard the words “I am Yosef,” they were taken aback. “You cannot be Yosef. Yosef was a wicked person. Yosef wanted to harm all of us. Yosef hates us. How could you be Yosef?”
They suddenly realized that if this person was Yosef, then they had it all wrong for all those years. They underestimated their brother. They did not understand who he was. They pegged him as a dreamer, a fantasizer, and a silly kid. They were totally taken aback by how wrong they were. He was not a dreamer — he was a prophet! The brothers realized that they “blew it!” This is the biggest chastisement.
Rav Pam says that during the course of our lives we are always evaluating people. We may think that this person is “no good” and that the other person is “a nothing.” When we will go up to the World of Truth and will see the truth about all these people, we will be in for a shock. “We were all wrong. This guy is not a fool; this guy is not an evil person. This fellow is truly important – look where his seat is in Gan Eden!” This will be a great chastisement.
Rav Pam continues by explaining that on the Day of Judgement we will not only be shown who our friends really were and what our spouses and children really were, we will be shown how we were evaluated in Heaven as well. That, too, may turn out to be a great chastisement.
The Talmud [Pesachim 50a] says about the World of Truth “An upside down world, I saw. The ones who we thought were the ‘big players’ (elyonim) are actually ‘low-lives’ (tachtonim) and the people who we did not even bother giving a second look to in this world, they are the elevated ones in that world.”