Parasha "Miketz"

Hashem constantly sends us messages, through his Hashgajá pratit , his ‘Divine providence’. Now what do we need to understand his messages clearly from him? The saga of Iosef and his brothers gives us a crucial understanding to decipher the messages that the Creator sends us.

After Joseph's brothers accused him of being a megalomaniac, with extravagant dreams where he ruled over them, they sold him as a slave. Joseph was separated from his beloved father for 22 years and eventually became viceroy of Egypt. There was a famine in the land that forced the brothers to go down to Egypt for food. Seeing them, Joseph devised a plan to make them understand that they had misjudged him, and thus help them do teshuvá .

Joseph's brothers were great men, the future progenitors of the Jewish people; they lived in constant awareness of God's presence in their lives. They knew that life is not simply a series of random events, but that everything that happens is orchestrated by God and contains a message.

But for some reason, regardless of the events that both Hashem and Joseph orchestrated, the ten brothers never understood that Joseph's dream messages were truly prophetic. It never occurred to them that they had misjudged him when they believed him to be a usurper who was trying to keep them out of the bnei Israel , the ‘children of Israel’.

A series of partial acknowledgments

The first recognition they had that they had done something wrong is recorded in the Parsha Vaieshev, when Yehuda was removed from power: "And it happened at that time that Yehuda descended from his brothers" ( Bereshit 38: 1). Rashi comments: “Why was this section located here, interrupting the section dealing with Yosef? To teach us that [Yehuda's] brothers brought him down in his greatness when they saw the pain of his father. They said, 'You told us to sell it. If you had told us to return it, we would have obeyed you. '”

However, they did not recognize that selling Iosef was a mistake, only that they were wrong to cause his father such pain.

The second time they recognized that they were wrong was when they went to Egypt to buy food, after God brought a famine to the region. "And Joseph's brothers, ten of them, went down to buy grain" (ibid. 42: 3). Why does the Torah refer to them as "the brothers of Joseph" and not "the sons of Yaakov"? Rashi, based on the Midrash ( Bereshit Rabba 91: 6), explains: “They regretted selling it and decided to behave with it with brotherhood and rescue him at any price they ask. " Twenty-two years after selling Joseph, they understood Hashem's message: they must seek him out and rescue him. The pain they had caused was too great, and now they wanted to correct their mistake.

In Egypt, they were falsely accused of being spies. The ten brothers were put in prison for three days until Yosef decided to keep only Shimon, the brother who had thrown him into the well, while the others returned with Yaakov. Again, they realized that Hashem was sending them a message, and they wondered: “Why is this happening to us? Which is the message?" The Torah says: "And each one said to his brother: certainly we are guilty for our brother, because we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we did not listen to him, that is why this anguish came upon us" (ibid. 42 :twenty-one). Nine of the brothers said it was his fault for not having mercy on his brother. They got part of the message. Reuben, the older brother, went one step further and told them that they were wrong in their judgment of Joseph.But they had not yet put all the pieces of the puzzle together: they did not realize that Iosef was before them

After discovering the money in each of their bags, they were again falsely accused, this time of stealing. "Then his heart was startled and each one turned with a shudder to his brother, saying: 'What is this that God has done to us?'" (Ibid. 42:28). They were afraid, they realized something was happening, but they couldn't put the pieces together.

Then Joseph did something that only someone intimately familiar with Yaakov's children could do: he seated them around the table according to the order of their birth. “They sat opposite him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. The men looked at each other in amazement. ” (ibid. 43:33). How likely were they to be seated in the correct order? Who else could have known this information, besides a member of Yaakov's family? How obvious could it be? But the brothers still could not imagine that the viceroy in front of them was their brother Joseph!

And finally, Benjamin was set up with the viceroy's cup and he was taken captive. The brothers mistakenly assumed he was guilty, but warned that they must fight for him. Seeing the commitment to his brother, Yosef could no longer hide his identity and finally revealed himself to them: “Aní Iosef, ha-od aví jai? ‘ I’m Iosef, is my father still alive?’ ”.

Why didn't they understand the message?

The ten brothers were great men, continually striving to understand the deep meaning behind Divine providence. Why didn't they understand what God was saying to them? Why didn't they notice that the viceroy was none other than Joseph?

If only one question had been asked, it would have been impossible to ignore the message. That question was: Is it possible that Joseph's dreams were truly prophetic? If they had asked themselves that question, they would have had to ask themselves: 'If the dreams were prophetic, and we were meant to revere ourselves before Joseph, could it be that the man who somehow knew the order of our births, the man before whom we revere ourselves, as described in Joseph's dream, was actually Joseph? '. Suddenly, all the pieces would have fit together, and they would have realized how badly they judged Joseph 22 years earlier. They would have understood that the viceroy chose to leave Shimon behind bars because he was the one who had thrown Joseph into the well and said to Levi: “Look! The dreamer is coming! " (ibid. 37:19). It would have explained all the false accusations they received, as well as why they were being forced to defend Benjamin.

If they had, at some point, reconsidered the original judgment they made on Iosef and considered the possibility that he was not really a usurper, they would have recognized it immediately.

The brothers' main mistake was their unwillingness to reevaluate their fundamental assumptions. Once they made their judgment, 22 years earlier, that verdict became sacrosanct. His opinion became an immovable pillar of truth that supported an entire edifice of subsequent decisions. They were unprepared to dismantle that building, defying the assumptions that underpinned it, and that blinded them to what was clearly obvious.

Reevaluate your guesswork

If Iosef's brothers fell into the trap of folly, then surely we must keep our guard up to avoid being caught by myopia. By human nature, we refuse to question the axioms on which our global vision is based and to listen to messages that contradict our beliefs.

There is an old joke about a town receiving a flood threat:

As soon as the storm begins, all the inhabitants flee, except for one man. A soldier passes by with his jeep and says: “Friend, come. A flood is coming! ”

" Okay," says the man. "I trust God, He will save me." Shaking his head at him, the soldier continues on his way.