Parashat Vayigash- Yosef's "Rebuke" to His Brothers
Yosef's "Rebuke" to His Brothers
Parashat Vayigash tells the dramatic story of Yosef revealing his identity to his brothers, who had sold him into slavery twenty-two years earlier. Yosef declares to his brothers, "I am Yosef is my father still alive?" (45:3), and the Torah tells that the brothers were so terrified that they could not even respond.
The Midrash comments on this verse, "Woe to us on the day of judgment; woe to us on the day of rebuke!" If the brothers were unable to respond to the rebuke of Yosef, a mortal, and their younger brother, then all the more so will we be humiliated and put to shame on the final day of judgment.
The question arises, where in this verse did the Sages detect any indication of rebuke? Yosef simply revealed his identity and inquired as to the well-being of his father. How does this qualify as "rebuke," comparable to the rebuke we will endure when we are judged?
A famous answer to this question is cited in the name of the Bet Ha'levi (Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik of Brisk, Lithuania, 1820-1892), who claimed that the Sages refer here to the exposure of the inconsistency and hypocrisy with which many of us live our lives. Yehuda, the leader of the brothers, had just offered an impassioned plea that Yosef allow Binyamin to return home because otherwise his father, Yaakov, would suffer great anguish to the point where he would likely die. Yosef thus asks his brothers, "I am Yosef is my father still alive?" In other words, he asks them where their concern for Yaakov was twenty-two years earlier when they sold him into slavery. They speak now as righteous Sadikim, genuinely concerned for the emotional condition of their father, yet they themselves had sold Yosef into slavery and subjected Yaakov to years of mourning and grief. He showed them that the excuses they give to justify their conduct are hypocritical, that they have been living an inherently contradictory life.
This, the Bet Ha'levi explains, is precisely the kind of rebuke that we will have to face when we are judged in the next world. We give all kinds of excuses for why we do not involve ourselves in Torah learning, Misva observance and charity, generally pointing to our limited resources of time and money. Yet, we freely spend time and money on all kinds of less important activities. We will be shown that whereas we excuse ourselves from Torah learning because of our time constraints, we spend several hours a week in front of the television of computer. People complain about the price of Masa on Pesah, but have no compunction spending $30 for spaghetti at an Italian restaurant. "Woe to us on the day of judgment; woe to us on the day of rebuke!" On that day, we will be silenced; all our excuses will be exposed as false and hypocritical.
Others suggested a different explanation, namely, that Yosef "rebuked" his brothers by showing them how wrong they were in their assessment of him. They had felt justified in their mistreatment of him because they presumed he had attempted to defame or possibly even kill them. In their view, Yosef had to be eliminated for the sake of the family. At the moment when Yosef revealed his identity, the basis underlying their entire attitude was proven wrong. As viceroy of Egypt, he could have easily killed them on several different occasions. Their suspicions were thus completely baseless and misguided; he never harbored any ill-will towards them. This, perhaps, is the most crushing rebuke of all: to discover that a path one has chosen and followed for so many years is fundamentally flawed.
Just as Yosef declared to his brothers, "Ani Yosef" ("I am Yosef"), so, too, will the Almighty proclaim to each and every one of us in the next world, "Ani Hashem" "I am God." At that moment, we will face the harsh reality that we had led our lives on entirely erroneous assumptions. During life we think that we can achieve happiness and satisfaction through material possessions and physical indulgence, and we therefore tend to neglect our spiritual responsibilities and focus our attention on comfort, luxury and gratification. At the moment when we hear the words "Ani Hashem," we will suddenly realize that our entire lives were lived on error, that life in this world is about serving our Creator, and not about serving our physical and material cravings. This is the most humiliating and agonizing rebuke imaginable to suddenly realize that everything we had assumed during our life is fundamentally wrong.
Indeed, "Woe to us on the day of judgment; woe to us on the day of rebuke!" Unless we work towards correcting our assumptions during our lifetime, we will likely experience shame and humiliation when we stand judgment before God much like the embarrassment felt by the brothers as they stood before Yosef.
