1.
What do we do when we face a dead end in our private or national lives? Judah has pledged himself to Benjamin and now watches in horror as the Egyptian ruler ensnares them and prepares to take Benjamin away. Will the son of Leah abandon the son of Rachel? Will Judah abandon Israel? Or, in contemporary terms, will the Jew abandon the Israeli?
Judah's exemplary speech is rich in psychological depth. He understands the Egyptian ruler's sensitivity regarding the aged father. But Judah is also speaking to future generations. The years that have passed since the sale of Joseph have taught him, and his brothers, that there is no future for the family without both of its branches together, that the Jew needs the Israeli and the Israeli needs the Jew.
2.
Joseph's dreams were the "inner guide" of the House of Israel, to borrow terminology from the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The House of Leah was meant to subordinate itself to the national idea represented by Joseph. The sale of Joseph was a surrender of the national dream and a retreat into bitter sectarianism, competing over who is the chosen son.
Facing a foreign ruler who threatens the family, the dispute is forgotten, and all unite. Joseph leads his brothers toward reconciliation and forgiveness while hiding behind a mask. The mission will be completed when he sheds the garments that conceal him and reveals his identity. This is the double vision that the Book of Genesis educates us toward: beneath the visible events pulses a deeper current, stronger than the froth on the surface of the stormy waters of reality. Standing before Judah and the brothers is, ostensibly, an Egyptian king. But within him lives and beats a Hebrew king, the master of dreams.
3.
At the core of the various dreams in the book lies a more encompassing dream, one dreamed by our forefather Abraham: that his descendants would go down to Egypt as a family and emerge from there as a people, on their way to the ancient homeland (Genesis 15). This vision propelled, generation after generation, the dream of the return to Zion: "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like dreamers" (Psalms 126:1). A dream not only in the sense of longing and yearning, but a deep historical current pushing reality toward its purpose, and our people toward their purpose and their natural place in their land.
This stands against all those who struggled against us during the long night that preceded our revival: "Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn" (Genesis 32:25). Even if we are left in eternal isolation and mighty forces struggle against us, we will remember that "He sets an end to darkness" (Job 28:3), and that dawn will rise. "A cry of joy shall rise,/ for the night has passed,/ and over the joy of destruction dawn has risen/ …perhaps once in a thousand years/ there is a dawn for our death," as Nathan Alterman wrote in Simchat Aniyim ("The Joy of the poor") during the darkest days of World War II, when Nazi Germany was at the height of its victories. He learned from our forefather Abraham to look, from the depths of catastrophe, toward the redemption of Israel.
There is a great historiosophical lesson here that the Book of Genesis teaches us. We can act through our willpower, confront the events that unfold in our private and national lives, but beneath the surface operate larger and deeper historical forces which, in a long-term perspective, create a different and more meaningful picture than the one we imagined.
4.
When, then, is the time for revelation? When is the moment to break through the current of unfolding events and remove the masks toward the intimate revelation of brother to brother?
Now.
When Joseph realizes that Judah, on behalf of all the brothers, is prepared to give his life for his brother Benjamin and to become a slave in his place, at the moment when all hope seems lost and sincere remorse for the sale has been fully revealed. Joseph can no longer restrain himself and reveals himself to his brothers.
Joseph, too, learns that not only the brothers bear responsibility for his sale, but that he himself had a part in it through youthful narcissism, the belief that everything revolved around him, and his desire to hasten the end and press his brothers into a corner. He understands that it was not the rivalry between Leah and Rachel that lay at the heart of the conflict, but the rivalry between him and his brothers, which he himself nurtured and inflamed. And now Judah stands before him and creates a repair: he is ready to sacrifice himself for the son of Rachel.
"Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person's neck, he should not refrain from mercy" (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 10a). Note when salvation occurs: when all hope is gone, when there seems to be no future, when facing a representative of the strongest empire in the world. And how does salvation come? Through self-sacrifice, through the understanding that there are values worth more than a person's life. Salvation arrives through Judah's recognition that in order to save the family and the Abrahamic vision, he must give up himself, his privacy, for the sake of the collective. Thus, before our eyes, the ideal model of the Kingdom of Israel takes shape, a kingship that has nothing of its own, but is entirely devoted to the people, in deep humility before the sacred task of leading all of Israel.
5.
When Joseph reveals himself to his stunned brothers, he says: "And now, it was not you who sent me here, but God" (Genesis 45:8). I was sent here to save you, "to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep you alive as a great deliverance" (Genesis 45:7). You thought you had rid yourselves of me, but in truth, through your actions you fulfilled the dreams without knowing it. And not only Joseph's dreams, but the dream par excellence of your forefather, the founder of our nation, to whom it was said: "You shall surely know that your offspring will be strangers in a land not their own" (Genesis 15:13). This was in order to bring the House of Jacob down to Egypt for a period of incubation in the womb of the greatest empire of their time, and from there to be born, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, as a people going out to freedom on its way to the promised land.
6.
Jacob had already once gone into exile out of fear of his red-haired brother. But now it is the extended family at stake. Therefore, just before he goes down to Egypt to see his son, God encourages him not to fear the descent to Egypt, "for there I will make you into a great nation" (Genesis 46:3). The House of Jacob will there become the People of Israel. God then promises him: "I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also surely bring you up again" (Genesis 46:4). Hidden here is an awe-inspiring promise that has sustained us and our ancestors: not only does the people go down into exile, God goes with them.
For 22 years, Jacob mourned Joseph as dead, and now before his eyes his son rises as if from the dead, and with him his father, "and the spirit of Jacob their father revived" (Genesis 45:27). The House of Israel is whole once again and ready for the greatest trial of all, exile. Now, as Abraham's fearful dream begins to be fulfilled and the House of Jacob is swallowed into the Egyptian womb, a fixed time remains for the Hebrew fetus until its days are complete and it is born.
During this time, our ancestors will do what we have done in every generation: contribute to the strengthening and prosperity of the land they lived in. The Egyptians, for their part, will do to us what many nations in history have done while denying our contribution: enslavement and murder, followed by expulsion. But we know that not only the Egyptians are acting on the stage, just as the brothers did not act alone: "For one higher than the high watches, and there are higher ones over them" (Ecclesiastes 5:7). Deep beneath the froth of the events that churn history, behind the masks and beyond the news screens, the dream has been at work for thousands of years, pushing us forward. "We were like dreamers" (Psalms 126:1).
