Shalom Chaverim,
The calendar new year and ‘New Year’s Eve’ are approaching next week. Due to this, the idea of opening a champaign bottle comes oddly to mind in describing the crucial event in this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash.
Quite a lot of effort is involved in opening a bottle of champaign: The foil must be removed, then the wire basket securing the cork untwisted and taken off. Next, while holding a towel over the cork, one twists and pulls the cork with great strength yet at the same time applies downward pressure with resistance to prevent its flying out and hitting someone or something. Despite the anticipation, it seems a surprise when the cork will suddenly eject with a satisfying ‘pop’ sound. A feeling similar to ‘relief’ is felt by all who have watched this bottle-opening take place (people seem drawn to watching it). They say ‘mazal tov’ and ‘lechayim’, toasts are made, and the hearts of the guests are brought closer together.
For two weeks already, the story of Joseph and his brothers has been building up the pressure and tension to this week’s Torah reading. It is unbearable. It can be restrained no longer. Joseph’s intricate manipulation of the situation has removed all the coverings and unwound the defenses within which the brothers have wrapped themselves. They are now forced to reckon with the crime they committed 22 years ago. They are faced with the same situation, and Joseph – their victim, though they do not know it is Jospeh – is watching how they respond: Will they again sell their brother Benjamin into slavery, just as they did Joseph? Will they again break the heart of their father? Have they learned anything? Have they done teshuva?
Vayigash eilav Yehudah – this is the cork popping. “Judah approached him.” It sounds simple, but this ‘coming close’ or ‘taking steps toward him’ makes all the difference. Recall that it was when the brothers saw Joseph ‘from a distance’ that they hatched the idea to kill him. He was sold into slavery instead, but still, the idea to harm him came from out of that ‘distance’, that separation, that seeing the idea of him – that representation of him, him as an ‘object’ – rather than seeing Joseph as another human being, Joseph as someone who is ‘close’ to them, as their brother Joseph.
Judah leaves the solidarity of the other brothers, the ‘group think’ that has kept the situation as it is for so long a time. He bravely takes the first step in daring to try to overcome the status quo, to change the direction that all momentum is driving them toward, to challenge what seems inevitable. He ‘takes steps towards Joseph.’ In most any relationship challenge, no side is 100% right or 100% wrong. One side has to go first in making some kind of concession, untying that first knot…
Judah approaches Joseph. The physical reflects the emotional closing of that long-ago distance. He appeals to Joseph’s assumed sense of humanity, and in doing so he reveals his own humanity…his own vulnerability, his and his brothers’ imperfections, his worry, his pain, his caring. He speaks from the heart to the heart.
In the end, the brothers are reconciled. The bottle is ‘uncorked’, as it were, and ‘lechayim’ is toasted. Just in time, too, because the brothers will need each other for life very soon. Unity of the 12 brothers is required to survive the slavery in Egypt which is fast approaching. The nationhood of Am Yisrael needs everyone, each one, and the survival of all depends on the unity of all. ‘To life’ is serious business with no time to waste. Both then and now.
This is a good time to take any steps you can to come closer to those from whom you have grown distant. Even if you have given up, try to approach those in your life who are no longer in your life…with the humility and vulnerability this entails and needs in order to overcome so much. It’s not simple, no. If you can truly speak from the heart aiming to speak truly to the heart, there is at least a decent chance that something will be heard. It might be the sound of the ice breaking…or the cork popping.
SHABBAT SHALOM,
Rabbi Michael Schwartz