Miketz 5774
This week’s parasha ends with possibly the greatest cliffhanger in the entire Torah. At the end of Miketz, Joseph orders his silver goblet to be planted in Benjamin's sack. As the brothers leave Egypt, Joseph has them all arrested and returned to his palace. Joseph declares that he will put Benjamin in jail, and the rest of them may go home. And it is at this point that we are left with the ultimate question, the ultimate test:Will the brothers stick up for Benjamin?
Will they stick their neck out for their youngest brother, their father’s favorite, second only to Joseph?
Or will they leave Benjamin, the new favorite, with a strange man, in Egypt?
The parashah leaves us with the cliffhanger, unsure of what will happen with Joseph and the brothers.
I asked some of our Religious School students this past week about their thoughts. First, they all said that they would try and help out their siblings, despite a possible assumption that they maybe would not care and leave their sibling in Egypt.
So I posed another question that also lay before the biblical brothers: if your sibling were to be wrongfully imprisoned, and you wanted to help, what would you say to defend them, to get them out of trouble?
Their answers included:
There must be evidence that can get them out of trouble.
Everyone makes mistakes, and even if they did it, they should get a second chance.
My sibling must be innocent!
I like my sibling a lot, and I would say that you can take me in my sibling’s stead.
These students articulated exactly how the brothers, and specifically Judah, defends Benjamin. It is only in next week’s parasha (spoiler alert!) that we read the eloquent speech of Judah – one that Dr. Nahum Sarna lauds as “deferential yet dignified, spirited but not provocative, full of pathos and passion, yet restrained and transparently sincere.” It is in this speech that he utters the key phrases, all shared by our religious school students:
1) He apologizes,
2) He tells the family’s story,
3) He describes how this will be damaging to Jacob, their father,
4) And possibly the most important piece: that he, Judah, will take Binyamin’s place.
As we spend time with our families during this week of Thanksgiving and Chanuka, I hope that we all have time to recognize what a gift the children in our community are – that so many of them identify with this later character trait of Judah, a person who stands up for his brother in need. And I hope that we can learn from them, so that whenever we see our literal or figurative siblings in trouble, that we can stand in the breach to protect them, as Judah did for Benjamin so many years ago.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi David Russo
