Vayigash - What Is Remorse?

Yosef intends to detain his brother Binyamin in order to fulfill his prophetic dream, and to meet as soon as possible with his father. But, the brothers have no inkling of his plan. They are terrified. What will become of their father upon news of the arrest of his youngest son?

The parashah of Vayigash (“And [Yehudah] approached,”) continues the present dialogue between Yosef and his brothers. Its development is dramatic. Yehudah begs Yosef to agree to take him, Yehudah, as a slave instead of Binyamin.

This tense scene is very expressively portrayed in the Midrash.

Yehudah gets angry, and his eyes fill with blood and the hairs on his chest above his heart stand stiffly on end and pierce his shirt.  He attempts to persuade Yosef fervently: “In carrying water, chopping wood, or serving, Binyamin can’t even compare to me!” Yehudah kept speaking louder and louder, and had it gone a little more, he would have taken up his sword. But, the more Yehudah shouted and boiled over, the more Yosef liked seeing him riled up. He saw how deeply Yehudah regretted what he had done.

What is remorse? A person is considered to have remorse if, in an identical or similar situation, he does not repeat the original bad deed.

So here, the original circumstances of Yosef’s disappearance reiterate themselves: Yaakov is now threatened with the loss of Rachel’s second son. So, Yehudah asks for one thing: to be taken as a slave himself instead of Binyamin—despite being over 40 with three children! It is obvious that this time (unlike the first time), Yehudah is ready to give his life for his brother.

So Yosef decides it’s time to confess.

Yosef now declares: “Yehudah, you lied when you said that one of your brothers died! The Egyptian Secret Service has information that he is alive—and is in this building.”

Now, Yosef walks with Yehudah through the palace, with the brothers following. He approaches one of the rooms and calls out: “Yosef, son of Yaakov, come out!” The brothers watch. But, no one appears. Yosef is already on to the next room. The brothers approach—and again the same scene. 

Yosef now cannot contain himself. He cries out, “What are you looking at?  I am Yosef!”

They “could not answer him because they were startled by his presence.” So Yosef called his brothers closer and began to calm them down. He said to them:

“… ‘I am your brother Yosef, whom you sold into Egypt.  But now do not be sad, and let it not trouble you that you sold me here, for it was to preserve life that G-d sent me before you. For already two years of famine [have passed] in the midst of the land, and [for] another five years, there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And G-d sent me before you to make for you a remnant in the land, and to preserve [it] for you for a great deliverance.’”

“‘And now, you did not send me here, but G-d, and He made me a father to Pharaoh, a lord over all his household, and a ruler over the entire land of Egypt. Hasten and go up to my father, and say to him, “So said your son, Yosef: ‘G-d has made me a lord over all the Egyptians. Come down to me, do not tarry. And you shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near to me, you and your children and your grandchildren, and your flocks and your cattle and all that is yours. And I will sustain you there for there are still five years of famine lest you become impoverished, you and your household and all that is yours.’” And behold, your eyes see, as well as the eyes of my brother Binyamin, that it is my mouth speaking to you. And you shall tell my father [of] all my honor in Egypt and all that you have seen, and you shall hasten and bring my father down here.’ And he fell on his brother Binyamin’s neck and wept, and Binyamin wept on his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them, and afterwards his brothers spoke with him” (Bereishit 45:4-15).

Having said, “Your eyes see, as well as the eyes of my brother Binyamin,” Yosef makes it clear to the brothers: “Just as I have no grudge against Binyamin, who was not involved in the sale, so I have no grudge against you either.” And the words “it is my mouth speaking to you” indicate that up until now, Yosef spoke to his brothers through an interpreter, but that now, he spoke to them in their sacred language of Hebrew. Yosef also provided his brothers with carts and supplies for the road and, in addition, gave each of them a suit.

But, to Binyamin, he gave 300 silver coins and five suits.

It would seem that Yosef here is repeating the mistake of Yaakov, who presented one of his 12 sons with a special shirt that caused so much trouble—after all, he is now giving his brothers a reason for envy!

But, the Talmud reports the words of R’ Binyamin Bar Yefet: Yosef is hinting to Binyamin that in future generations, he will have a great descendant (namely, Mordechai) who will receive five robes from the hands of the king. As it is said in Megillas Esther (8:15): “And Mordechai left the king’s presence with royal raiment, blue and white and a huge golden crown and a wrap of linen and purple, and the city of Shushan shouted and rejoiced,”—that is, the verse that lists five descriptions.

The Vilna Gaon asks: “Now, granted that the five garments that Yosef gave Binyamin may be a symbol of the future. But still, he gave more to one than he gave the others! Doesn’t the Talmud (Tractate Shabbos 10b) warn us: “A person should never distinguish [one of his sons [from] among [the other] sons [by giving him preferential treatment]. As, due to the weight of two sela of fine wool [meilat] that Yaakov gave to Yosef, beyond what [he gave] the rest of his sons, [in making him the striped coat,] his brothers became jealous of him, and the matter unfolded, and our forefathers descended to Egypt.”?  But the Gaon answers, “Yosef gave Binyamin five inexpensive suits. Together, they cost no more than one of the brothers’ suits—so there was no offense here but only a hint.”

We find the basis for such an answer in the parashah itself. 

The spelling of a word in the Torah with the Hebrew letter vav denotes greater importance or value of the subject. Thus, to refer briefly to the earlier parashah of Chayei Sarah, before Efron collected payment from Avraham for Sarah’s grave, the Torah writes his name with a vav: וְעֶפְר֥וֹן.  However, when he then collected money from Avraham—and a considerable amount, 400 coins—he fell in importance. Hence, from that point on, the Torah writes his name as simply עֶפְר֛וֹן, without the vav (see 23:13-14, 16). Likewise, in this parashah, when the Torah talks about the changes of clothes that Yosef gave his brothers, we are told that Yosef gave each of his brothers חֲלִפ֣וֹת, or “changes,” of clothes—note the vav being the second-last letter of the word. But to Binyamin, the Torah says, Yosef gave five חֲלִפֹ֥ת, but without the vav—meaning that Binyamin’s changes of clothing were greater in number, but lesser in value.

Now, why did Yosef give Binyamin 300 coins?

The famous tzaddik, the Ostrovtzer Rebbe, Rabbi Meir Yechiel HaLevi Halstock, of righteous memory (1852-1928), explains that Yosef reasoned: “We are 12 sons. We all have a duty to serve our father. This means that each has 30 days of service a year. For 22 years, I could not look after my father.  But, I do not want to lose the right to this merit. With praise to the Almighty, I now have money—so I will now reimburse the ones who did that work for me all those years. Now, 11 brothers worked; divide 22 by 11 and you get two—meaning, each of the brothers who worked in my stead, did so for two months. But, whom should I pay? Those who knew about my sale? Those who let it happen?”

In the end, Yosef decided to pay only those of his brothers who were not involved in his sale—which was only Binyamin.

So now, in those days, an employee was paid five coins a day for his labor.  Multiply five coins by the 30 days of one month, and you get 150—and 300 for two months. Thus, Binyamin was paid for two months, or 60 days, of work, with 300 coins.

And thus, Yaakov with all his family went down to Egypt, where they settled in the region of Goshen.

***

Meanwhile, the famine continued. The parashah ends with an account of how Yosef handled the situation.

In the first year of the famine, Yosef sold grain for money. But after a year, the buyers ran out of money. In the second year, Yosef fed the entire population in exchange for livestock. People donated horses, donkeys, cows, and small livestock and took grain in exchange. But now, even the cattle are gone. The people came to Yosef and said:

“We will not hide from my lord, for insofar as the money and the property in animals have been forfeited to my lord, nothing remains before my lord, except our bodies and our farmland. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our farmland? Buy us and our farmland for food, so that we and our farmland will be slaves to Pharaoh, and give [us] seed, so that we live and not die, and the soil will not lie fallow” (Bereishit 47:18-19).

And Yosef replied to the people:

“Behold, I have bought you and your farmland today for Pharaoh. Behold, you have seed, so sow the soil. And it shall be concerning the crops, that you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and the [remaining] four parts shall be yours: for seed for [your] field[s], for your food, for those in your houses, and for your young children to eat… So Yosef made it a statute to this day concerning the farmland of Egypt for the one fifth. Only the farmland of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh’s.”

In other words, Yosef ensured that the peasant tax did not exceed a fifth of the harvest. I wonder where else slaves received such a healthy and uplifting share 3,500 years ago!  Moreover, the land was state-owned; they only used it while remaining slaves themselves. None of us would mind if our total taxes did not exceed 20 percent of our total income. 

This, of course, also begs a comparison with the collective farm system in the most “advanced” society of the twentieth century, in which we lived so recently!

By Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber ztk”l, Founder, Toldot Yeshurun