Judah pleads for the release of his brother Benjamin, offering to exchange himself in taking this exaulted Egyptian ruler for Benjamin who could then go home.
2)
2)
But Josef saw in Judah a change from the immature and covetous brother of years ago who clearly matured to a man who understood loyalty to family. And seeing his brothers’ loyalty to one another, Josef chose to surprised them, revealing his identity to them.
3)
3)
“I am Josef,” he says, and “Is my father still alive?”
Josef’s brothers are overcome by shame and remorse, but Joseph tells them. “It was not you who sent me here, but G‑d. It has all been ordained from Above to save us, and the entire region, from famine.”.
4)
Josef’s brothers are overcome by shame and remorse, but Joseph tells them. “It was not you who sent me here, but G‑d. It has all been ordained from Above to save us, and the entire region, from famine.”.
4)
Family meant something special to Josef, no matter how entrenched he was with the Egyptian leadership and no matter how assimilated he became into Egyptian culture, family and ties to his own culture were primary to him.
5)
5)
The brothers rush back to Hebron with the news. Jacob comes to Egypt with his sons and their families and is reunited with his Josef after 22 years of missing him and thinking he had died.
6)
6)
On his way to Egypt, Jacob (Yisrael) receives again the divine promise: “Fear not to go down to Egypt; for I will there make of you a great nation. I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again.”
7)
7)
Josef continues his plan, selling grain to all who need it to stave off the famine, and makes himself and Egypt wealthy & secure during the famine.
Pharaoh gives Jacob’s family the fertile county of Goshen to settle, & the children of Israel prosper in their Egyptian exile.
8)
Pharaoh gives Jacob’s family the fertile county of Goshen to settle, & the children of Israel prosper in their Egyptian exile.
8)
Where was Goshen? According to some, Goshem, called Gesem or Kesem in ancient Egyptian, marked its western border east of the modern city of Mansoura, eastward toward the Suez Canal today. It is grasslands, great for planting grains and herding cattle and sheep and goats.
9)
9)
Ranging from savannah to muddy swampy areas. It is rich land, but it is outside the area where the bulk of the Egyptian people lived then and today and so the people settled there were rather isolated and self-contained to live in their own ways and prosper.
10)
10)
And there, we did become a great nation, amounting at one point such a large proportion of Egypt’s population that you can understand how the later Pharaohs and Priests considered these people a potential political threat that they preferred to limit and control.
11)
11)
We can see all over the world, but particularly among the Jewish People, how searching for connections today, building family trees and records, have gained additional importance.
12)
12)
We all feel that something is missing, that we feel isolated at times, those of us with small close families wishing we had large families with which to connect.
13)
13)
I started back in 2005 to collect family information and am still collecting connections and stories today, finding family all over the world after connections were lost between the mass migrations of the last century to the Holocaust.
14)
14)
Today, I look beyond those blood relations, while still searching for them, to all our people, looking at them as family.
15)
15)
And that brings us to probably one of the two big lessons of the Parsha. One is explicit. The promise to Jacob.
16)
16)
The other is implicit, the need to start treating one another with compassion & care & with the understanding that we, as a people, are linked to one another as family, with the fact of all connected.
So, my little brothers & sisters & cousins, let’s start acting that way."
17)
So, my little brothers & sisters & cousins, let’s start acting that way."
17)
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