31 Dec PARASHAT VAYIGASH: YOSEF AND HIS BROTHERS

Parashat Vayigash
features one of the most
dramatic stories in the
entire Torah – Yosef’s
revelation to his brothers.
Many years earlier, when
Yosef was just seventeen-years-old, his brothers
threw him into a pit, with the intention of killing
him. They then decided to lift him from the
pit and sell him as a slave to merchants, who
brought him to Egypt. Miraculously, Yosef
ended up becoming the vizier of Egypt, who
was responsible for distributing grain during the
years of famine. His brothers came from Eretz
Yisrael to Egypt in order to purchase grain, and
they stood before Yosef. They did not recognize
him, but he recognized them – and he proceeded
to accuse them of coming to Egypt as spies. He
forced them to return home and then come back
with their youngest brother, Binyamin, and thus
prove their innocence. When they came back
to Egypt with Binyamin, Yosef ordered his
butler to plant his silver goblet in Binyamin’s
bag. Then, as the brothers began making their
way back home, Yosef sent his butler to chase
after them. The goblet was found in Binyamin’s
bag, and Yosef commanded that Binyamin
must remain in Egypt as his slave. Yehuda,
who had promised Yaakob to bring Binyamin
home safely, pleaded with Yosef to allow him
to remain in Binyamin’s place. After hearing
Yehuda’s impassioned plea, Yosef told his
brothers who he was.

The commentators address the question of why
Yosef revealed himself to his brothers only now,
after hearing Yehuda’s petition. Why did he not
tell the brothers who he was right when they first
came down to Egypt? And why did he force
them to bring Binyamin, and then try to keep
Binyamin with him? For that matter, already
when Yosef rose to the position of vizier, why
did he not contact his family to tell them that he
was alive and well?
One commentary, called the Leb Melech,
answers these questions by clarifying why
the brothers decided to eliminate Yosef in
the first place. He explains that the brothers
wrongly suspected Yosef of thinking of himself
as the only heir to Hashem’s covenant with
Abraham, Yishak and Yaakob. Just as only
one of Abraham’s sons – Yishak – inherited
the blessings to Abraham, and then only one of
the Yishak’s sons – Yaakob – inherited them,
the brothers thought that Yosef planned to be
the sole inheritor of G-d’s covenant. Knowing
that this was wrong, that they were all included
in the covenant, and would all take part in the
formation of Am Yisrael, the brothers saw
Yosef as a real danger to the family and to the
future of the special nation that was now being
established. The brothers concluded that Yosef
needed to be expelled because he threatened the
development of the Jewish Nation.
Yosef knew this, and this is why he never
contacted his family – or even revealed his
identity to his brothers when they arrived. He

had good reason to fear that if the brothers
knew that he had risen to a position of power,
and was no longer a lowly slave, they would do
everything they could to kill him. And if just
two of the brothers – Shimon and Levi – were
able to destroy the entire city of Shechem, then
all ten of them could find a way to assassinate
him in Egypt.
Yosef therefore devised a plan to help the
brothers recognize their mistake. First, he had
them imprisoned for three days – so they would
feel the pain of captivity, which they had caused
him to experience. Then, three days later, he

took them out of prison, explaining, “I am G-d-
fearing” (Bereshit 42:18). He told them that he

had changed his mind, and instead of keeping
them all in jail and sending one of them home
to bring Binyamin, he would keep only one of
them in jail and send the rest of them back. Yosef
wanted to model for his brothers the humility to
reconsider and rethink one’s assumptions. He
hoped that this would inspire them to reflect, to
reevaluate their decision to expel him from the
family. Sure enough, the brothers immediately
expressed their regret, realizing that they made
a mistake by selling Yosef (42:21).
Then, Yosef arranged that the brothers would
have to put themselves on the line for Binyamin.
When he wanted to keep Binyamin with him
forever as a slave, the brothers realized what it
meant to permanently lose a brother, and thus
truly regretted what they had done to Yosef. At
that point, Yosef revealed himself. After hearing

Yehuda’s plea, Yosef felt confident that the
brothers changed their mind about him, and that
it was safe to tell them that he was Yosef.
I once heard an addition to this insight, which
highlights one particular part of Yosef’s plan.
When the brothers came to Egypt, Yosef
accused them of being spies. His intention was
for them to feel what they had done to him –
falsely accusing him of rejecting them, of
planning to drive them out of the family. They
now felt what it was like to be wrongly accused,
to be unfairly maligned, to have people make
assumptions about them that weren’t true.
Many times, in our interactions with people, we
fail to recognize the hard feelings that our words
could cause. We talk on impulse, and with our
emotions, without thinking carefully about how
what we say is impacting the individual we’re
speaking with. In all our interactions, we need
to try to place ourselves in the other person’s
position, to try to imagine how we would feel
if people spoke to us the way we are speaking.
This sensitivity will help us be humbler, more
considerate and more refined people, and will
help us build healthy, happy and meaningful
relationships with the people around us.