vayechi: it is permitted to change
hello friends,
What a ride Bereishis has been this year! Thank you all for joining me for it. We're closing up the semester here as well this week, so there's been a real mood of completion and excitement (and also sleepiness) pervading my life.
I wanted to let you all know that I have edited together these commentaries (with some expansions), some related stories and poems, new source-sheets, and gematria tutorials into a nice little digital book with 49 pages of queer Torah and, just for you nerds, 125 footnotes (I'll admit, I did some shenanigans to make it exactly 49=7x7 pages and 125=5*5*5 footnotes). It's available on a pay-what-you-want basis, which absolutely includes "pay nothing". If you do want to toss me $1 or $2, it is of course appreciated (I have to work for the next month to prep classes, but I don't get paid until February, because academia is a functioning and supportive environment).
With that out of the way, let's talk Vayechi. After Yaakov dies, Yosef's brothers begin to worry that maybe Yosef didn't really forgive them for tossing him in the pit, and they invent a story to try to control the situation:
So they sent this message to Joseph, “Before his death your father left this instruction: So shall you say to Joseph, ‘Forgive, I urge you, the offense and guilt of your brothers who treated you so harshly.’ Therefore, please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father.” And Joseph was in tears as they spoke to him.
The Talmud uses this as a prooftext to support lying for the sake of peace:
אָמַר רַבִּי אִילְעָא מִשּׁוּם רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בְּרַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן מוּתָּר לוֹ לָאָדָם לְשַׁנּוֹת בִּדְבַר הַשָּׁלוֹם
Rabbi Ila said in the name of Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Shimon: it is permitted for a person to change/alter [the truth] for the sake of peace [lit: in a matter of peace]
I have to wonder, however, if the lie was really necessary to maintain peace in this case. After all, Yosef had already forgiven his brothers and sustained them through famine. And while it is natural for his brothers to still worry and blame themselves (especially since Yosef had forgiven them unprompted and without any retribution), there's no indication in the text that they could not have approached Yosef from a place of honesty. I'm not alone in noticing this. Indeed, throughout midrash the Rabbis invent all sorts of incidents that would justify the brothers' behavior. For example, in Bereishis Rabbah, Rabbi Levi offers a midrash that, after Yaakov died, Yosef stopped inviting his brothers to dine with him. Midrash Tanchuma tells a story in which Yosef and his brothers stop at the pit on their way back from burying Yaakov in Canaan, thus prompting the brothers' concern.
But in the absence of any such events, I have to wonder if the brothers could have had a little more trust in Yosef. I have to wonder, as I have these past many weeks, what would be possible if we all resisted the urge of personal midrash and interacted with each other as equals.
There's a somewhat mysterious word in this story. When Yosef's brothers say "perhaps Yosef will hate us and return upon us all the evil we did to him", the word translated as "perhaps" is לו. Or haChaim teaches that this is the only place in the whole Torah where this word has that meaning:
In this instance the word לו means "perhaps," though there is no other such instance in the Torah where the word לו is used in that sense. We need to understand why the Torah uses the word לו here in a sense which is the opposite of its regular meaning. Although it is quite impossible to mistake the meaning of this word in our context, why did the Torah not use such words as פן, or אולי if the intention was to describe the brothers as saying "perhaps?"
The numeric value of לו is 36, which is twice the value of חי, or life. Maybe this לו is the "perhaps", the uncertainty, of those moments of such intense weight that they split our lives into two lives: life before, and life after. The uncertainty of those moments where whatever happens or does not happen will fundamentally change the course of our lives. For example, a moment of rage where you throw your brother in a pit.
But I wonder if this לו could also be the two lives someone leads after being lied to, as Yosef's brothers lie to him. There is the life Yosef understands himself to be living, in which his father asked him to forgive his brothers, and then there is the life Yosef's brothers know him to be living, in which such an event never happened. Even if the lie was necessary to preserve peace, there can be no real repair or growth in their relationship when their version and Yosef's version of Yosef's own story, of Yosef's own life, are so different. Lies are sometimes necessary, but these kinds of lies introduce fixed points in our lives, blocks that cannot be changed.
The Gemara on altering the truth for lies does not explicitly mention truth. It only tells us מותר לו לאדם לשנות: it is permitted for a human to change. I started off Bereishis by thinking about the inherent violence of forcing other humans to be just one thing, to fill just one role. And (by accident) this has become, for me, the theme of this cycle through these parshas: what would happen if we had the courage to trust, to let ourselves and others be many things, to relinquish our need for control. What if we stood at moments of transition and had the courage to welcome change. What if Avraham had not been forced into the role of patriarch, what if Yitzchak had not been bound. What if Esav had been free to be his hunter self. What if Yosef had trusted ordinary people, and Yosef's brothers had trusted him?
Thanks for wondering with me.
חזק חזק ונתחזק!
gut shabbos,
ada