The Torah as an eternal treasure and guidebook of the Jewish people has constantly demonstrated its ability to offer new inspiration and wisdom as it is reread in each generation. As we enter a highly-charged period of weeks (and perhaps months) in which our nation will experience a complex cocktail of conflicting emotions – joy, grief, fear and frustration – I sat down to review a particularly poignant passage of the Torah with a new perspective. A perspective from the last 15 months in which hundreds of faces of people who had previously been strangers now plaster public areas and inhabit the deepest recesses of our minds; whose families’ unbearable pain and suffering is never far from our thoughts even when we temporarily turn our minds to other mundane matters.
In the opening weeks of the war I attended a gathering at the Kotel of shell-shocked hostage families where we prayed and cried together and tried to find words of support to somehow strengthen those vacant faces suffering unimaginable pain. Pain, and anguish which many of those who I stood with that day have now been suffering for well over a year.
In recent weeks we read once again the episode of Yosef’s 17-year disappearance, the unending grief of an inconsolable Ya’akov and, finally, the tear-filled reunion in Egypt. Having been informed of his son’s disappearance we are told that Ya’akov refused to be comforted; in Rashi’s telling he had a strong intuition that his son was still alive – somewhere – with no idea how or where he was being held, lacking any notion of how to begin to search for him. Unable to grieve or move on with his life, Ya’akov is stuck in a never-ending hell. Barely believing he would see his beloved son again – as he later tells him: “to see your face I never considered possible” – yet unable to set his mind on anything else.
When Ya’akov was eventually informed that his son is alive and that he will reunite with him, his heart skipped a beat in this moment of overwhelming emotion and his “spirit lived again”. Yet a careful reading of the text reveals that he was forever scarred by the experience.
Pharaoh is clearly impacted by Ya’akov’s age and appearance asking him “how many are the days of the years of your life?”. Ya’akov replies “few and bad have been the days of the years of my dwelling”. This strange combination of words is often taken to show that righteous people utilize each and every day of their life. But I believe there is more going on here. While Pharaoh inquires of the length of Ya’akov’s “life”, Ya’akov responds that his “dwelling” has been bad. Rav S. R. Hirsch interprets this to imply that he has not fully lived for much of this time – just dwelt and existed. I would add that the “days of the years” of his life can be taken to mean that each and every day of the years of his life was a separate source of agony and suffering.
As for the moment of reunion itself, the account is both simple and profound. Reading the verses of the Torah we see Ya’akov and Yosef embracing and crying on each other’s shoulders. The overpowering emotion of the moment transcends speech or attempts to capture their thoughts and feelings in words. Digging below the surface, however, we find Rashi citing a tradition that Ya’akov “recited Keriat Shema”.
Whether or not we understand this to refer to a literal recitation of the words, I believe that it encapsulates the religious response to this overwhelming and sensitive moment. The unfathomable joy mixed with the painful realisation that they have lost so many years together – Ya’akov struggles to recognise and relate to Yosef’s new position and family. How can they even begin to understand the role and possible purpose of God in such difficult and complex times – especially while experiencing such powerful emotions. The midrash appears to be teaching the correct response – Shema represents accepting the yoke of Heaven. Accepting and pronouncing that, whether or not we can understanding why things occur or what God’s plan might be, we can have the humility and clear-headedness to recognise that there is a greater plan and a higher wisdom at play.
With such a response, Ya’akov as our forefather has embodied a fundamental example which has guided his persecuted descendants through to this very day.
This post specifically wants to avoid the complex and ongoing debate over the wisdom of the hostage deal, recognizing the very legitimate concerns over the dangers and threat that it creates – there are plenty of places on Facebook and elsewhere where this has, is and will continue to be debated.
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