Terror and Relief
Vayigash Drash by Marc Flitter
Despite Abraham Joshua Heschel’s portrayal of Judaism as being a religion of deeds in contrast to Christianity characterized as a religion of faith, we do have the enumeration of 13 principles of faith formulated by Maimonides. The eighth of these fundamental principles states “I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah now in our hands is the same one that was given to Moses our teacher, peace be upon him.”
It follows from this principle that it seems reasonable to proceed with caution should a particular word or phrase invite a level of critical analysis prompted by what might best be termed a sense of anomaly, a deviation from a pattern or precedent. When no word is considered as wasted in the Torah a seemingly minor variation resists any inclination to attribute that variation to simple literary license.
The opposite extreme invites similar caution. Although fascinating to contemplate, it is improbable that an anomalous word or phrase holds the secret to an event Martin Buber might have termed as an example of the “experiential amazement” resulting in prehistoric saga.
How do we deal with our version of the astonishing, an encounter in Torah that strikes us, to paraphrase T.S.Elliott, as having read a verse again we have come to know it for the first time?
There are two such anomalies that occur in the narrative of Joseph that merit attention.
The first is placed in partial context in Parsha Vayigash, chapter 46, verse 2.
“God spoke to Israel in night visions and he said Jacob, Jacob, and he said hin-ne-ni, here am I.”
Hin-ne-ni is also the word spoken by Moses in the episode of the burning bush, responding to God’s “Moses, Moses.“ In fact with one exception, each time hin-ne-ni is uttered in the Pentateuch, whether it is by Abraham or Jacob or Moses it is understood as expressing an unquestioby willingness to accede to God’s will.
The pattern is established by Abraham at the Akeida, by Jacob when he is instructed to at long last depart with his family from his brother-in-law, Laban, and again as Jacob is commanded to descend to Egypt with his entire family.
However there is a notable exception to this pattern that appears in parsha Vayigash, chapter 37, verse 13, where hin-ne ni is Joseph’s reply to Jacob who has told his favored son, with perhaps a hint of uncertainty, “are not your brothers pasturing in Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.”
And noteworthy, Joseph’s hin-ne-ni, his “here am I,” is answered before hearing the “I will do” specifics of Jacob’s command. “Look into the welfare of your brothers and the flock and report back word to me.” was the command.
It soon becomes apparent that Joseph has not acceded to a simple reconnoitering. His willingness to serve will take over two decades to complete. But when his assigned task has concluded, Joseph will have not only insured the welfare of his brothers but their families as well. And his report back to his father, transmitted by his brothers, is equally astonishing.
“God has made me master of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not delay. You will reside in the land of Goshen and you will be near to me, you, your sons, your grandchildren, your flocks, your cattle, and all that is yours.”
However what was not included in Joseph’s report and what leads to the discovery of an additional anomaly, are the travails Joseph suffered in fulfilling his father’s directives.
Omitted are the details of his being cast into a pit by his brothers, then extracted by them only to be sold into slavery, and subsequently unjustly imprisoned by his Egyptian master.
There is a palpable oppressiveness we suffer with Joseph as he is subjected to these indignities. And just as his fate appears to be turning, as emissaries of Pharoah are dispatched to rush him from the prison where his extraordinary ability to interpret dreams has been provided by God to be the agent of his release, the Hebrew word employed in that saving verse, Parsha Mikeitz, chapter 41 verse 14, is not the word for prison used to describe the place where Joseph “enjoyed the full confidence of the warden of the prison and where he had full custody of all the inmates of the prison and everything that was done there, and whatever Joseph did in that prison Hashem made successful,” as related in Parsha Vayishev , chapter 39 verse 21. Instead, as the text reveals, Pharoah’s emissaries rush him back from the “pit” designated by the same Hebrew word employed for the pit into which his brothers had thrown him, the pit from which he had been extracted only to be sold into slavery.
To review the morphology of both words, ha-bor for pit, and a has-so har for prison confirms that they do not share a common root. And so this reversion to the original Hebrew word for pit not only diminishes what should be an unqualified relief at his deliverance, but returns readers for however briefly to the despair of his initial terror. It seems similar to what Thomas De Quincey described as the extraordinary effect that the knocking at the gate in the drunken porter scene in Macbeth had upon him. Whether the horror of a King’s murder or the despair occasioned by fraternal abandonment, it seems each can be reimposed upon us with a simple act, or a single word change.
In the end what seems to matter is that however relentless the Torah may appear and despite whatever details might strike us as anomalous, we can find respite in the words of the psalmist, “The Torah of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.”
