Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse. This is Ari Levisohn here today with Rabbi David Fohrman.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Hey, Ari, nice to see you.

Ari: So, Rabbi Fohrman, I noticed some really cool stuff on Parshat Miketz. I wanted to talk to you about it. Honestly, I don't know where this is going to go, but the noticings are really cool, and I think together we can make something really interesting out of it.

Rabbi Fohrman: I think it's really cool how we've coined a new word. I don't think “noticings” works as a noun in regular English, but for us, it's all part of a day's work. 

Ari: I've had to beat Google Docs into submission to accept “noticing” as a word.

Rabbi Fohrman: As a noun. Okay, so what is your noticing? 

I Heard You

Ari: It starts in perek mem-bet (chapter 42), in Parshat Miketz. To set the scene: There's a great and terrible famine throughout the entire Middle East, and of course, we know in Egypt Joseph has been storing up food. He's the viceroy there. He has this whole grand, genius plan to save up food from the times that are good because he knows the famine is coming. And so everyone comes to Egypt to get food.

So, back in Canaan, Yaakov and his children are starting to get hungry as the famine worsens. And Yaakov turns to his children and says: הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי כִּי יֶשׁ־שֶׁבֶר בְּמִצְרָיִם — Behold, I have heard that there is food, there is sustenance in Egypt (Genesis 42:2).

So, that language of הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי really sparked something for me, because that language sounded familiar; actually a previous time in Yaakov's life, where someone said הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, “Behold, I have heard.” Rabbi Fohrman, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

Rabbi Fohrman: I do. You're saying that when Yaakov tells his children הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, “I heard that there is food in Mitzrayim,” it reminds you of another הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי in Genesis. The other הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי in Genesis, to my knowledge, is another story involving Yaakov; but this time, instead of Yaakov telling his children הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, Yaakov was told הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי by his mother. And that's the moment when Rivka, his mother, tells him, “You know, I overheard your father saying that he wants to give a bracha to Esav. Here's what I think you should do…”

Ari, let me just ask you a question. Without looking at any other connections you may have, did you bother checking how many times that phrase, הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, appears in the Five Books of Moses?

Ari: I did, and, Rabbi Fohrman, can you guess how many other times it appears in the Five Books of Moses?

Rabbi Fohrman: These are the only two times.

Ari: These are the only two times.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's definitely intriguing. It's enough to raise an eyebrow. Could the הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי’s, in each case, have something to do with each other?

Losing Children

Okay Ari, so what else did you find here which makes you think that these things have anything to do with each other?

Ari: Yeah, so here's another thing which really felt remarkably familiar; in Genesis 27, verse 45.

Rabbi Fohrman: So now we're back in Toldot; we're back in the story of Yaakov and Esav and that stolen bracha. So, Genesis 27:45. So, this is way at the end, the whole end of the story.

Ari: So, this is after Jacob steals the blessing and Esav’s mad, wants to kill him, and he wants to run away. Rebecca tells Jacob to run away, and the reason she gives is: לָמָה אֶשְׁכַּל גַּם־שְׁנֵיכֶם יוֹם אֶחָד — Why should I lose both of you the same day? This word אֶשְׁכַּל means to lose your children. So, “Why should I lose both of my children in one day?”

The way most of the commentators understand this is that, if Esav ends up killing Yaakov, Esav is also as good as dead. She'll, like, lose them both in the same day.

Rabbi Fohrman: Because Esav will have committed such a terrible crime that there's no coming back for that in a moral sense.

Ari: Exactly. And so, that reminds me of someone else who was facing this threat of losing two sons.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, so in other words, you're saying, here is Rivka, a parent expressing a fear to Yaakov about losing her two sons on a single day; and you notice that, in that same story of Yosef that involves the food that is so desperately needed from the family, when there's this issue, when Yosef insists on keeping Shimon prisoner and Yaakov is trying to figure out whether he's really going to ever send anybody to go try to pick out Shimon, he's worried that the demand to bring Binyamin is going to cause him to lose Binyamin,

Yaakov says these words: וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם יַעֲקֹב אֲבִיהֶם אֹתִי שִׁכַּלְתֶּם, right? And that's that same unusual word, “you have made me childless.” Same word that Rivka uses. “Look at my situation. יוֹסֵף אֵינֶנּוּ — I've already lost Yosef, וְשִׁמְעוֹן אֵינֶנּוּ — I've already lost Shimon. And now you want to possibly take Binyamin? That's a terrible thing. I can't stand that.”

And here, what, indeed, is Yaakov talking about? He's talking about the loss of two children that he's experienced, just like Rivka has talked about the loss of two children, together with that word shakal.

So, here we have both of these stories. In a way, you could argue that in each story something has gone badly. There's been some sort of twist in the story of the brachos. Yaakov has stolen Esav’s bracha; Esav's mad about it. That's our twist, leading to this fear that Rivka says, “Oh my gosh, I could be childless. I could lose two children,” you know, “at the same time.”

And similarly in the story involving Yosef, Yaakov had originally wanted his children to go down to Egypt and get some food, but it wasn't so simple. There was a twist. In this case, the twist is that Shimon ends up getting imprisoned, and all of a sudden there's this fear. “What if I lose two children, all at once? Not just Yosef but Shimon, and how am I supposed to deal with that?”

Okay, so that's interesting, Ari. Anything else you found?

Can You Recognize Him? 

Ari: A lot more that I found. Here's another thing. In the first story, in Toldot, Yaakov came to Yitzchak disguised; he's dressed up as Esav, he's wearing this goatskin. And in 27, verse 23: וְלֹא הִכִּירוֹ — Yitzchak didn't recognize him.

So okay, I'm thinking, where else do you have someone not recognizing someone else? That exact same language in our parsha in Miketz, when the brothers come to Yosef for food. Yosef, you know, the viceroy in charge of all the food, and instead it's them not recognizing him. And the language in 42:8 It's: וְהֵם לֹא הִכִּרֻהוּ — And they didn't recognize him.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep, so you've got that exact same language, basically, of לֹא הִכִּרֻהוּ. [Yitzchak] is unable to recognize the disguised Yaakov, and now, the same happens with the brothers, Yaakov's children. The brothers are unable to recognize, in a way, the disguised Yosef. Okay.

And Ari, one of the things I noticed that, as you've now found three connections between these stories, I just want to point out that not only are these three connections between the stories, but they proceed in order, which is also something that just sort of adds to the sense that maybe I'm not looking at something coincidental here. Maybe these stories are proceeding, in a way, along the same lines.

I'll just say that I'm almost sold, but not quite. I'm just curious if you have anything else that makes you think that these two stories are connected other than the three connections you found thus far.

Ari: How about I give you two more connections? That sound good?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, hit me. Go ahead.

We’re Not Finished Yet

Ari: Okay, so let's look at chapter 43, verse two, in Miketz. The brothers come back unsuccessfully the first time; in fact, Shimon was taken prisoner. And they make an appeal to Yaakov to go and bring Binyamin back so that they can bring Shimon back and bring the rest of the food back. It's unsuccessful. The famine worsens.

And then, in the beginning of chapter 43, it says: וְהָרָעָב כָּבֵד בָּאָרֶץ — And the famine was really heavy, וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל אֶת־הַשֶּׁבֶר אֲשֶׁר הֵבִיאוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם — And behold, it was when they finished eating all of the food that they brought back from Egypt, because they brought back a little bit that first time. וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם אֲבִיהֶם שֻׁבוּ שִׁבְרוּ־לָנוּ מְעַט־אֹכֶל — So the father then says to them, “Go bring some more food. We've run out of all the stuff you've brought back.”

But that language of וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ, it reminds me of when something was finished in the previous story, in the blessing story.

In 27, verse 30, right after Yaakov leaves from getting his blessing from Yitzchak and Esav comes in. Verse 30 starts off: וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלָּה יִצְחָק לְבָרֵךְ אֶת־יַעֲקֹב — And when Yitzchak finished blessing Yaakov, וַיְהִי אַךְ יָצֹא יָצָא יַעֲקֹב מֵאֵת פְּנֵי יִצְחָק אָבִיו וְעֵשָׂו אָחִיו בָּא מִצֵּידוֹ — and just when Yaakov was leaving from getting his blessing and Esav was coming in from the field.

So there you have וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל, “when they finished eating,” reflects וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלָּה יִצְחָק לְבָרֵךְ אֶת־יַעֲקֹב, when Yitzchak finished blessing Yaakov, with the same language, “and behold, it was finished.”

Rabbi Fohrman: So that's pretty striking. וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל in the Joseph story mirrors וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלָּה יִצְחָק לְבָרֵךְ, “and it happened that after Yitzchak finished blessing Yaakov…” And I haven't done a search here as to how many וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ’s or וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלָּה’s there are in Chumash, but I'd be willing to bet my dollars to donuts, as they say, that these are probably the only two in the Five Books of Moses. So this is another striking connection between the stories.

Does This Break the Pattern?

I will just say that this breaks the pattern a little bit. It's not exactly in order, because וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל in the story of Joseph happens at the very end.

Ari: Well, I'll save your order for now because there's a second time that the word shakal comes up in the second story. Yaakov does say it the first time, but he repeats it in verse 14.

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, very good. Yeah, and וַאֲנִי כַּאֲשֶׁר שָׁכֹלְתִּי שָׁכָלְתִּי actually is kind of interesting because it sounds a lot like לָמָה אֶשְׁכַּל גַּם־שְׁנֵיכֶם.

Ari: Right. It's like a double language.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. “If I lose Binyamin in addition to losing my two sons Shimon and Yosef, then let that be.” Okay, so let's use that one.

That brings us to four connections in order. So. Ari, I'm pretty convinced. It seems to me that there's a connection between these, but just because you mentioned two, let's hear your second.

Only These Two Times

Ari: Yeah, so let's give one more, and it's another phrase that only comes up two times in the entire Tanach, and that's the phrase זֶה פַעֲמָיִם, which means “these two times.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep, I remember that phrase in the Yosef story. This is Yehudah telling his father, “Look, why are you dallying around until we starve? If you had only agreed to send Binyamin, right, כִּי־עַתָּה שַׁבְנוּ זֶה פַעֲמָיִם. We could have been back and forth to Egypt twice already, and we could have had the food that you're looking for.”

And let's look at the זֶה פַעֲמָיִם in the Jacob-steals-the-blessing story. This is at the, sort of the tail end of the story. So, Esav is shocked, he comes back, he wants the blessing. His father Yitzchak says, “I already gave it away.” And he says, “Your brother came in with deception and took your blessing.” And Esav screams out and says: הֲכִי קָרָא שְׁמוֹ יַעֲקֹב — That's why they call his name Yaakov, וַיַּעְקְבֵנִי זֶה פַעֲמַיִם — he's tricked me these two times.

So Esav saying “Yaakov has tricked me these two times” seems to be similar to Yehudah saying “We could have been back these two times,” saying that to Yaakov.

So, I've got no less than one, two, three, four, five connections which are all pretty strong; but not only are they pretty strong, they're in exactly the same order in both stories.

Ari: All right, Rabbi Fohrman, you ready to bet your house on this?

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm ready to bet my house on this. So that's the kind of thing I'd bet my house on, guys. You understand? הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי is interesting, even if it's the only two הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי’s. Could be coincidental, but this kind of stuff can't be coincidental. This indicates that the Writer wants you to see these events together.

What Could It All Mean?

And now the question turns to “why.” What in the world does the story of the Purloined Blessing, when Yaakov steals Esav's blessing from Yitzchak, what does that have to do with the story of the Children of Israel going down to get food in Egypt, right? It seems like those are different things. There doesn't seem to be any blessing in the story of Yosef with the food, but somehow these two stories are meant to map up upon each other. So the question is, what does this mean? Or even better, the question is, how would we go about figuring out what it means?

And so, Ari, I'm all ears. Do you have any theories, and if so, how did you sort of get to your theory?

Ari: Yeah, so whenever you see all these parallels, the first thing that you have to ask yourself is, okay, what is matching up to what here, right? As we often call it, the Cast of Characters? Who are the characters? And sometimes even the inanimate objects here.

Rabbi Fohrman: So, Ari, let's try that out. Let's look at our Cast of Characters in the Miketz story.

Ari: So one I think is pretty straightforward is, the Dispatcher; the one who hears of this existence of a thing, turns to their children and says, “I want you to go get this thing.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, so that is Rivka, in the case of the blessing. Rivka is the one who says: הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי — I overheard Father telling Esav, “Could you go bring me food before I die?”

So over here, Rivka in the blessing story is going to pair up with Yaakov in the Joseph story because Yaakov is the one who says, “Hey, I heard rumors that there is food in Mitzrayim.” There's something coveted.

And if I can just jump in, Ari, I'm going to add to Cast of Characters, because my brain is saying, okay, so if Rivka is dispatching Yaakov to go get something coveted, and the something coveted is the blessing, right, that seems to match up with Yaakov overhearing that there is something coveted that he wants, right? And he is telling people to go get it.

But what's most intriguing is, what is the thing that's coveted that, in each case, the person being dispatched is meant to get? Well, in the case of the blessing, the thing that's coveted is a blessing, right?

Well actually, no; it's not so clear.

“I heard your father say, ‘Bring me food so that I could bless you before God.’” And here, it's, “I heard that there is food in Mitzrayim. Go bring me some.” What my brain is saying is, okay, so both stories are about food, about bringing food. Jacob wants food before he offers a blessing, and in the Joseph story, Yaakov wants food so everyone could live and not die.” But what flummoxes me a little bit is that in the Jacob-blessing story, the food isn't the real thing. The food is just a way of getting something, right?

Ari: I think the food in the first blessing story might be a red herring, because it's really not the central part of the story; it's a vehicle towards the blessing.

Rabbi Fohrman: But I'm going to push back because הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, “I overheard…” what? I overheard Father say, “Bring me food. Bring me the prerequisite so that I can bless you,” right? And here in the Joseph story, it's “Bring me food,” but there is no prerequisite. It's “Bring me food so that we should live and not die.”

I don't know. To my end, what's striking here is the absence of a blessing. In other words, in one story, it's “Bring me food,” but the food isn't the main thing, right? It's not because he's starving. It's not because he's going to die. Intriguingly, he talks about dying, right? But for him, the imperative isn't that I need the food so that I won't die. I need the food to spur me to give a blessing, and the blessing has to happen before I die.

But what's remarkable is the lack of a blessing in the other story. It's a much less complicated case. It's like, “Okay, guys, we can't be thinking about blessings. We've got a much more significant issue, which is, we literally have no food.”

And it's almost as if, in my mind, the difference between the two stories is that in the Joseph story, there's a famine. And if there is a famine, then there is no luxury to be worried about things like getting luxury food to be able to power a blessing. You literally need food to live. And when you think about food to live, you can't be thinking about blessings anymore.

Ari: Right, but let me ask you this though, if you're trying to match these things up. So in the blessing story, there’s basically two rounds of going to receive blessing. Yaakov goes to receive blessing and Esav comes afterwards looking to receive blessing. 

Rabbi Forhman: True. 

Ari: When Yaakov is finished getting that blessing, it uses the language of וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלָּה, “And behold, when Yitzchak finished blessing Yaakov.”

Now, in the second story with Joseph and his brothers, there's also two rounds of going to get food. They go the first time, they come back with a small amount and then Yaakov sends them to go get some more. And in between, that first food they brought back gets finished up, with this language of וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל. And so there, it seems to be that thing that gets finished up is the blessing itself.

Highlighting the Differences Between the Stories

Rabbi Fohrman: I hear you, that's very clever. But I'm going to push back and just say, that just only highlights the distinction between the two stories. Because, in the blessing story, what gets finished up is not food, it’s the blessing.

So what the blessing story is about is a blessing, and the food is just ancillary. But in the second story, you also have two rounds to try to get something, but the something that you're getting is not blessing. In each case, it's just food, and what gets finished up is not a blessing that gets finished up.

It's not that you finished giving a blessing; it's that you finished eating the food. The blessing is like this black box that's simply entirely missing from the Joseph story. That's what it seems like to me.

I'll grant you that the blessing in one story, in the Jacob story, matches up with the food in the Joseph story, right, but at least to the untrained eye, it looks like it's not there.

Phantom Puzzle Pieces

Now what I will say is this; what do you do when you have a situation like this, right? We have a situation where two stories match up, but they're not matching up, right? So what you have is, I sometimes call these phantoms, right? What you have in the Joseph story is a phantom blessing, or the possibility of a phantom blessing.

In other words, if I overlay the two stories on one another, it seems like I should be seeing a blessing in the Joseph story, but I don't. I see the food in the Joseph story, right? But I don't see a blessing.

Let's just be clear. In the Jacob story, right, a parent goes and says, “I overheard something and I'm dispatching you to do two things; to get food, but the food isn't the really important part. The food is really just a heicha timtza, as we say in Yeshivish. It's just a way that I can go and get something even more important than that — the blessing.

Now, you would expect, if you overlay this on the Joseph story, that the same thing would happen in the Joseph story. But the problem is, at face value, I'm missing the blessing part of it. All I see is that there's a father, Jacob, the same one who received this blessing, right? But now he's not interested in blessings. He's just interested in food, right? So I have what's called a phantom blessing. In situations such as this, sometimes what the overlay teaches you is that you can't see the blessing, but it's really there, right? 

In other words, none of the characters see that this is about blessing, right? But in fact, you, the reader who's intuiting the connections between them, need to see that there is a blessing that's not really there.

So there's a hidden blessing. There's a phantom blessing, right? So now the question: What's the phantom blessing?

And here, I think, is where you get to real gold on this story. Because maybe the whole point of these parallels is to show you that in the Joseph story, no one understands that this is really about blessing, but it really is.

So over here, what you have is, everyone's so preoccupied with food, right, that they aren't focused on the really important stuff. Because food isn't why we live, we just need it to live. But if I don't have it, it's the only thing I can think of, right? But really, I eat in order to do something greater, right? And there's blessing.

So in the Jacob story, there's the luxury of seeing food, because we're not in famine, as a path towards blessing. Like, hey, get me a nice steak; I need to be inspired to bless, right?

What this may suggest that really, in the Yosef case, what Jacob is really sending the brothers down to do, the algebra would suggest, is actually to get a blessing the same way he got a blessing, and that's the most important thing they're getting. But they can't see that because they're so focused on the food. So all you see is food, food, food, right, but the parallels show you that there's a phantom blessing.

Ari: Right, so, this is really cool because one of the things I was thinking about is, you know, okay, so we're asking, where is this blessing here? Well, let's look at the actual language of the blessing and let's see if we see that blessing come up in this second round of the story.

Rabbi Fohrman: Sure.

Ari: So in chapter 27, verse 28, here is the blessing that Yitzchak gives to Yaakov: וְיִתֶּן־לְךָ הָאֱלֹקים מִטַּל הַשָּׁמַיִם וּמִשְׁמַנֵּי הָאָרֶץ וְרֹב דָּגָן וְתִירֹשׁ — God should give you from the dew of the heavens and the fat of the earth, right? Much grain and produce. יַעַבְדוּךָ עַמִּים וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ לְאֻמִּים — Nations should serve you, and people should bow down to you. הֱוֵה גְבִיר לְאַחֶיךָ — You should be mightier than your brother, וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ בְּנֵי אִמֶּךָ — and the children of your mother should bow down to you. אֹרְרֶיךָ אָרוּר וּמְבָרְכֶיךָ בָּרוּךְ — Those who curse you should be cursed, and those who bless you should be blessed.

And just to keep going, later on when Yitzchak tells Esav what he blessed Yaakov with, in verse 37, he says: וַיַּעַן יִצְחָק וַיֹּאמֶר לְעֵשָׂו הֵן גְּבִיר שַׂמְתִּיו לָךְ — I have made Yaakov your brother mightier than you, וְאֶת־כׇּל־אֶחָיו נָתַתִּי לוֹ לַעֲבָדִים — and I've given all his brothers to him as slaves. וְדָגָן וְתִירֹשׁ סְמַכְתִּיו — and I have placed grain and produce in his hand. 

Who Received the Blessing?

So here we have this image of everyone bowing down to him, his brothers bowing down to him, grain and produce being at the palm of his hand. What does this sound like?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, well, it is pretty spooky. My mind is going to a lot of different places at once, so I'll try to slow this down.

So it's not just the content of the blessings, but the other thing that's interesting is that you mentioned that there's two rounds of blessing in each story. Now, what you didn't say is that the two rounds of blessing go to different people in each story.

In other words, in the Jacob story, the first round of blessing goes to Jacob. And once that's given to Jacob, strangely enough, right, it's like you’ve got to turn around. And it's like, oh my gosh, there's this other blessing I need to give to Esav, but I have nothing left to give him, because I already gave the zero sum blessing, right? And so therefore I say, what can I possibly give you? I already made everybody your slaves.

Now, I wonder if something similar is going on here, which is, all right, so there's a…what's the essence of the blessing? The essence of the blessing is a blessing that you should have food, but people bow to you. If I would say, well, did anybody get that blessing in the Joseph story? The answer would be, yeah, but it's not the person that Jacob is talking to now. It's actually Joseph, right? Joseph is the one who has that blessing. Joseph is in charge of all this food.

There are nations bowing down to Joseph now, they're so desperate to give him food. That seems to come true for Joseph. And there's brothers bowing down to him, almost as if to say in a sly, cynical kind of way, that now, if we read הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, right, we can actually figure out what the phantom blessing is, and it's pretty spooky. What is the phantom blessing?

Your brother, who already has this blessing, has a blessing that's going to force you to bow to him and become his slaves. Which is prophetically what's about to happen. It's almost like he's dispatching them not to get food, but little does Yaakov realize in dispatching them to get food, he's really dispatching them to become servants to their brother and to bow to him. Because little does anyone know that their brother is the one who already has this blessing.

And later on, when Yehudah comes and says, “Dad, you know, וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר כִּלּוּ לֶאֱכֹל, it's time for the second round of the blessing. כִּי־עַתָּה שַׁבְנוּ זֶה פַעֲמָיִם, we could have been back, you know, already twice.” And then you hear וַיַּעְקְבֵנִי זֶה פַעֲמַיִם. It's almost as if Yehudah is crying out, if we play Cast of Characters there, that Yehudah is the character crying out, like, “I've been tricked twice, I've been tricked twice,” right?

In a way, Yehudah sort of has been tricked. Joseph didn't reveal himself the first time to Judah, and what's going to happen next time Judah comes and meets Joseph? Well, Joseph's going to pull another fast one. Not only is he not going to reveal himself, he's going to take Benjamin, right? And Judah's really up the creek without a paddle twice, כִּי־עַתָּה שַׁבְנוּ זֶה פַעֲמָיִם.

And this time, who is Judah playing? Judah's playing Esav. Judah’s playing the character that there's just no blessings left for, and all you can do is submit to this notion that כׇּל־אֶחָיו נָתַתִּי לוֹ לַעֲבָדִים.

Which, by the way, Judah will say this to Joseph when he says, “Oh, you know what? Let's all be your slaves,” right, in order to get Benjamin back, you know. He says, “No, I'm just going to take him as my slave. The rest of you can go.” And so it's almost as if Judah is playing Esav in this story, and Joseph is playing Yaakov.

Ari: And by the way, wait, why does no one realize that Joseph has already taken the blessing? He's living out the fulfillment of this blessing.

Rabbi Forhman: Because they don't know Joseph is there. לֹא הִכִּרֻהוּ.

Ari: וְהֵם לֹא הִכִּרֻהוּ, they didn't recognize him. Just like Yaakov was in disguise, no one recognized him.

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah interesting, right. So, same way someone came and snuck the blessing, here too, someone came and snuck the blessing. So Joseph's already got the blessing. So it's almost like the blessing's already been gotten by another brother, and all you guys can do is go get the food. That's really Esav. Esav is the guy who goes and gets the food, but there's no blessing left to give him.

And that's sort of Yaakov to the brothers. הִנֵּה שָׁמַעְתִּי, you'd expect this blessing, but the blessing is already gone.

The Response to Receiving Blessing

So Ari, let's bring this to a close with one final observation that I want to make and then maybe we'll say goodbye for the day. And I know there's much more we could do here, right? I'm sure you've got a zillion more parallels but here's one thing which I want to suggest as a possibility.

There is one key difference between these stories, which may be a reason for hope, because, let's face it, these stories end badly, right? The story with Esav ends with Esav being so upset that Esav wants to devote the rest of his life to killing his brother in rage and in anger for taking this blessing that was really meant for them.

But would it be so crazy if the way this story ended is the same way the Esav story ends? Imagine, here I am playing Yosef, right? And, like, I finally reveal myself to you after I, like, made your life hell. I didn't reveal myself the first time, and really I'm your brother, right? And then I literally framed Benjamin and you thought I'm going to kill you all, and you're terrified, right?

And then, imagine, I reveal myself to you and I say, “Guys, by the way, I just want to let you know…really, I'm Joseph. This is a little practical joke this whole time.” How do you feel realizing that really I'm Joseph? You could imagine a situation in which you are so enraged that I was Joseph, and that I went and had all this food that should have been yours, went and took this blessing. You could imagine that, with this, that the brothers might have been so angry about being deceived by Joseph that, you know, that now maybe they couldn't express that anger immediately because Joseph has all the power, but deep down in their hearts they'd be so enraged that they want to take revenge upon him.

And you don't see that in the brothers. The brothers are scared, maybe, but they don't seem to want to take revenge, and they eventually reconcile, more or less, with Joseph.

To me, the difference between these two stories is this; is that Joseph's immediate response when he reveals himself to his brothers is to immediately share the blessing. What his immediate response is is like, “Guys, I've got this blessing. Not only do I have this blessing, I know I have it on loan from God, and I know the reason I have it on loan for God. You know why I have this blessing? It's not for me; it's for you. The real reason I have this blessing is כִּי לְמִחְיָה שְׁלָחַנִי אֱלֹקים לִפְנֵיכֶם.

Joseph, the second he reveals himself, says, “And now, אַל־תִּרְגְּזוּ, don't be angry.” And, you know, we normally understand that as, “Don't be angry amongst yourselves that you threw me in a pit,” but part of it might be, “Don't be angry with me. In general, don't let rage color your emotions here, because let me tell you why this all happened. לֹא־אַתֶּם שְׁלַחְתֶּם אֹתִי הֵנָּה, right? You didn't send me over here to get this blessing. כִּי הָאֱלֹקים, this is really God's doing that I've ended up with this blessing. This wasn't just a choice that you or I made.”

So, A) This is God doing this, not us; and second of all, the reason why God gave me this blessing was for you.

It says, כִּי לְמִחְיָה שְׁלָחַנִי, right? “It's all so that I could make you live, and that I can make you into a great nation.” And that is a great moment of reconciliation and generosity in terms of how Yosef sees himself.

One might say, you know, how would it have been different if Yaakov himself had seen things that way with Esav? What if Yaakov, instead of running away from Esav, right, had sat down and had a little talk and said, “Look, you know, it looks like there was just a whole bunch of…like, I'm sorry for my part in this here, but neither of us can discount the hand of God, right? God gave me this blessing, but let me just tell you something. Dad said, like, I should have this blessing, but whatever Dad's intent in giving me this blessing is, I'm telling you that I see this blessing coming from another source too. Not just Dad, but God.”

The same way that Joseph says, “I see this blessing coming from another source, coming from God. And not only do I see the blessing coming from God, I see a purpose in me getting that blessing, and the purpose of me getting that blessing is to be someone who takes care of you and everybody else in the world.”

“My whole point is to take care of everybody else in the world, but the person who's most dear to me is you, and I think I'm here to take care of you. And therefore, Esav, I may have the blessing of all of this fruit and all this thing, but I'm there to share it generously with you. And the whole reason why I have this blessing is to be able to take care of you and the world.”

It would have been a different ending. You wouldn't have Esav pledging himself to destroy everybody. And maybe that's the moral of the story, at some level, which is like, this is what Jacob could have done, even after the fact. He didn't have to run away. He could have said, “Here's this blessing to share.”

Ezekiel’s Vision of the Messianic Era

If I can just leave you with one other thought. If you look at the end of Yechezkel, the very last verses and chapters of Ezekiel, there is a vision of the Messianic era at the end of days. And in that vision, Israel gets a blessing, and the blessing actually is this river that starts from underneath the Beit Hamikdash itself, underneath the Temple itself, and flows in two directions; to the Mediterranean to the west, and to the Dead Sea to the east, transforming the entire landscape and making it lush.

And the text is very clear that the purpose of that blessing is not just for Israel, but that river then goes and transforms the entire Middle East, right? And all the other nations are beneficiaries of that river.

And the message is loud and clear. You may be the recipients of blessing, but that blessing is for the benefit of, as God said to Abraham: וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה — That through you, blessing will come to all of the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:3).

You begin to see that in Joseph; Joseph understanding that I have blessing, but it's as a caretaker to establish blessing for others and for my brother. And that seems to be this key towards destroying this terrible animosity. And at the end of days in the Messianic era, there's this notion that Israel may be special, right? But if they see the meaning of their blessing as something as to be able to caretake that blessing that comes from the Heavens for the benefit of their brethren nations around them, it transforms their role in the Middle East.

So, very fascinating. I really appreciate this, Ari, and thank you for including me in this. It's a very exciting piece of research.

Ari: Always fun to get together and see where things go.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep, excellent. Thank you.

Credits

This episode was recorded by: Ari Levisohn together with Rabbi David Fohrman.

This episode was produced by Evan Weiner.

Audio editing was done by Shifra Jacobs.

Audio editing was done by Shifra Jacobs, with additional edits by Hillary Guttman.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our production manager is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.