Yes We Can!

Yaacov did not fully believe that Yosef was alive until he saw the wagons of food that Yosef had sent. The Daas Zekeinim explains that there was a limit of one bag per customer. It was illegal to take wagon loads of food out of Egypt. When Yaacov saw the wagons he understood that something truly unusual had happened.

The Medrash adds that the Hebrew word for wagon is ‘egel’, the same as the word for calf. The last subject that Yaacov and Yosef had studied together was the Law of the Eglah Arufah – The decapitated calf. Seeing the wagons, Yaacov knew that Yosef was not only alive and sending messages, he still remembered the Torah that they studied.

What exactly was that Torah? The Daas Zekeinim and the Baal Haturim both write the same story. When Yaacov sent Yosef to find the brothers, he actually came along. He escorted Yosef for much of the way. Yosef kept telling his father to turn around, but he refused. Yaacov told Yosef about the law of the Eglah Arufa. If a corpse is found between two cities, the elders of the closest city need to decapitate a calf on the spot. They would symbolically “wash their hands” of the death saying “we didn’t see him leave town!” 

It seems clear that if they had seen him leave town and not escorted him, they would be liable for his death.  We are all connected.

We all know the end of the story. Yaacov finally turned around and Yosef walked straight into a trap. 

Twenty two years later, Yosef was successful in making the brothers regret what they had done and come together once again as a unified group of brothers. It was Twenty-two years in coming but Yosef finally fulfilled his father’s request: “לך נא וראה את שלום אחיך” – Go see how you can make Shalom with your brothers.

One could imagine that when the brothers came back to Yaacov and gave him the news that they had reunited with Yosef, he was a little skeptical. Was such a thing even possible? Perhaps this is why Yosef chose to remind Yaacov of the Eglah Arufah, that at the end of the day we are all connected. Deep inside we do all feel responsible for one another.

 When the brother’s left to get Yaacov he gave them food and told them not to argue on the way home. One had to imagine that there would be great satisfaction in having the brother’s spend the way home discussing how terribly they had acted toward Yosef, but Yosef learned from his father that the top priority was not satisfaction. The top priority was to make sure that his brothers got home safely.