Rabbi Rael Blumenthal

The story of Yosef’s revelation to his brothers is amongst the most dramatic in all of Tanach. As the Medrash records (תנחומא ויגש ה), it is our closest description of the emotions we will all feel at the time of Geulah.

With a single statement – I Am Yosef – all the questions and paradoxes of the brothers’ lives were instantaneously resolved. In a fraction of a moment, everything made sense.

But before reaching that clarity, our Parsha opens with the heroic attempt of Yehuda to secure Binyanim’s safety. His speech, as it is recorded in the pesukim is a straightforward summary of the events that had lead up to the confrontation taking place in the moment.

Reading between the lines, however, our sages revealed a rich and vast tradition of the fight between Yosef and his brothers.

Consider the moment that Yosef imprisoned Shimon in last weeks parsha. The Medrash Tanchuma (ויגש ד) relates that Shimon turns to Yosef defiantly crying: “Do whatever you wish, but I challenge anyone to imprison me.”

Yosef then orders seventy of Pharaoh’s strongest men to arrest Shimon. The Medrash conintues:

As they were approaching him, Simeon let forth a roar, and when they heard the sound, they fell to the ground, and their teeth were shattered: The lion roareth, and the fierce lion howleth—yet the teeth of the young lions are broken (Job 4:10).

With no local options left, Yosef turns to his son Menashe to complete what the Egyptians could not:

Menashe arose at once, struck a single blow, dragged Simeon into prison, and put him in chains. Whereupon Simeon called out to his brothers: “Would you say this was the blow of an Egyptian? It is none other than the blow of one from our father’s house.” When Joseph’s brothers saw that Menashe was able to drag Simeon into prison and bind him with chains, they became terrified.

These incredible feats of strength are limited to Shimon and Menashe. If anything, they are dwarfed by the prowess on display in Yehuda’s arguments. At the moment it appeared that Binyanim would be taken as a slave, Yehuda threatens that the sons of Yaakov would lay waste to the entirety of Egypt. It begins with addressing Naftali (תמחומא ויגש ה):

“Go and count the number of central markets in Egypt.” He hurried away, and on his return informed Judah that there were twelve markets in Egypt. Judah told his brothers: “I will destroy three of them, and each of you will destroy another. Do not permit a single soul to survive.” His brothers retorted: “Judah, Egypt is not Shechem. If you were able to devastate Egypt, you would destroy the entire world by doing that.”

While it is certain that the details of these Medrashim are replete with secrets, there is one thing we can see throughout: Chazal knew of some hidden reservoir of unimaginable strength that the Shevatim possessed. Perhaps this strength is as literal and physical as it is described; or perhaps it is all allegorical. Either way, in revealing these stories to us, Chazal are trying to teach us something important about our ancestors, and inviting us to understand something about ourselves.

I would like to suggest that these Medrashim are not simply descriptive; they are instructive. Our Sages are painting a picture as well as the road map to rediscover our national power. To understand this, however, we need to consider the story of the ten lost tribes.

Where are they? What happened to them? Will we ever reunite with them? These questions have been explored and analyzed throughout the ages; from the time of the Mishna until today.

Notably, the Maharal, who lived during the age of exploration deals with the question of whether or not it is plausible to assume that ten tribes of the Jewish people are somehow living on earth in an undiscovered location.

While he is unwilling to rule out that possibility, he offers the following explanation as well (נצח ישראל לד) :

That which is lost from the ten tribes is not the people themselves (since they have already been reabsorbed into the Jewish people.) Nevertheless, the power and potential of these tribes is completely hidden, as if they are simply swallowed up into the tribe of Yehuda. But there will be a time in the future where this potential will be realized, and the Jewish people will be one, with one King over us.

This is to say that everything that we have achieved throughout the past two millennia has been the strength of Yehuda. The miraculous survival of our nation against the countless attempts to destroy us is all Yehuda. Our immeasurable achievements in Talmud Torah? Yehuda. Our disproportionately massive contribution to the arts and sciences? All Shevet Yehuda. We have yet to rediscover the immense power of the other tribes, they are still lying dormant within us, until the time when we will reawaken our ancient potential.

Or perhaps we have already begun to see it. After all, it has been many centuries since we saw Chayalim on the front lines of battle in Eretz Yisrael carrying a weapon in one hand, and a copy of Yerushalmi Yomi in the other.

Perhaps we have begun to see the ancient power of the Shevatim – destroying enemies far more numerous and formidable with cutting edge intelligence and superhuman precision. Indeed, the last time in Jewish history when we witnessed the power of one of our Shevatim was the story of Channukah – על ידי כהניך הקדושים – a miraclulous vicory wrought by the Kohanim.

Our eternal celebration of Channukah is not simply a commemoration of Jewish survival. It’s a reminder of what we, the Jewish people, are capable of when we living up to our mandate to be Hashem’s Light unto the Nations.

To this end, the lessons of the Medrash are most instructive. Chazal chose to describe the potential of the brothers only in the context of the encounters in which they arose to defend each other. That’s the road map.

As the last embers of Channukah flicker out, and the Jewish people descend into Egypt, Chazal are reminding us of the latent power that we have yet to rediscover inside of ourselves and each other. The key to unlocking it is as simple as it is elusive: We will only find it when we are willing to give up everything to save each other.

It’s the secret of the Shevatim, the Chashmonaim and our brave Chayalim today. Hashem should help us all to follow in their footsteps until all the of our brothers and sisters are freed from captivity, and all parents are reunited with their children – וַתְּחִי רוּחַ יַעֲקֹב אֲבִיהֶם.