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Parshat Vayigash: A Sign or a Sin?

By: SFW Students & Alumna
Leora Bernstein, SFW ’04-‘05

(Adapted from Ner Uziel by Rav Milevsky ah”as)

Last week, we were left hanging in suspense as Yehuda aproaches Yoseph. Initially he and his brothers all bow down to Yoseph and says, “What can we say to my lord? How can we speak? How can we prove our innocence? G-d has uncovered our guilt.”
Although Yehuda’s speech is indeed very stirring, a close examination of his words reveal a blatant inconsistency. Initially Yehuda insists that he is innocent and yet in the next pasuk he says that Hashem has uncovered the brothers’ guilt. Is he pleading innocent or guilty?

The mefarshim explain that Yehuda is insisting that he and his brothers never stole Yoseph’s goblet. Yet he claims (almost to himself) that he and his brothers are indeed guilty of a much greater crime—namely selling Yoseph into slavery. Yehuda claims to see the Divine justice as a punishment for selling Yoseph into slavery, he and his brothers will now all become slaves. In fact it is he who tells Yoseph that all of the brothers should become slaves even though the goblet was only found in Binyamin’s bag. (Bereshit 44:17)

This seems to enforce the idea that we can use “heavenly signs” to direct our everyday actions. This isn’t the only place where the Torah reports of great people relying on signs to direct them in life. Eliezer also used signs to determine that Rifka should marry Yaakov. Yet this seems to contradict the more traditional view that although Hashem created and controls the world we must not use mystical signs as a compass for our day-to-day decisions. Even Yehuda seems to contradict himself— when he hears that Yoseph only wants Binyamin as a slave he no longer accepts this as a “sign” and begins to argue with Yoseph. How then do we understand this confusing and seemingly contradictory behaviour?

Chazal explain that we have indeed been given certain rules on how Hashem governs the world such as “midah kneged middah”. So people have indeed been given the potential to understand the spiritual cause to the physical reality. Yet we are so-called “spiritually blind” due to our low level. It would be foolish to continue to pretend that we are not blind. If a blind man pretended that he could still see, he would get nowhere. However if he humbly admitted that he can no longer see, he would soon find his way around using his other senses. This does not mean that we should totally ignore the small signs in life, rather we must find a balance between the two lifestyles. If chas vesholom something bad happens to someone they should examine their deeds and see if perhaps there is something that mandates teshuva. This allows us to see bad events in a constructive light and will hopefully cause spiritual growth.

This is a bit of a one way street, however. If chalilah a bad thing happens to someone, they shouldn’t say that it is because they did a mitzvah and conclude that they should no longer perform this mitzvah. In this scenario, one must remind themselves of our incapacity to understand Hashem’s ways. We can only use these “signs” as a motivation to become better people.

This is a very hard balance to keep. Some of our greatest leaders sinned due to this reasoning. David Hamelech saw Batsheva and even had ruach hakodesh that he and Batsheva would get married, however since he acted on these heavenly signs he was greatly punished for the rest of his life.

Originally Yehuda felt that their punishment was midah kineged middah. However, when he heard that Yoseph only wanted to punish Binyamin who did not even deserve to be imprisoned he realized that this can’t be midah kinegged middah and he therefore viciously attacked Yoseph. But perhaps it was something more that motivated him to take a stand. Perhaps he realized that although it may seem like a sign that they would all get punished, he still was not allowed to sit back and just say that that is what Hashem wants. Instead, it is our job to do our hishtadlut and the rest is up to Hashem. We always must be in tune and looking out for Hashems’ signs and messangers, and yet simaltaneously we must humbly admit that ultimately we are blind to the ways of Hashem and the best we can do is to do our best.

Shabbat Shalom.