Parashat Vayigash

In Parashat Vayigash, after all the emotion, the reunion between Joseph and Judah and the reunion of all the brothers, Joseph takes a step that seems strange at first glance: the most powerful man in Egypt presents the weakest of his brothers before Pharaoh (thus Rashi explains the words "and from among his brothers"). This is not insecurity, but deep psychological and national intelligence. Joseph understands that in exile, the display of natural might is a danger. Overt power in a foreign place attracts domination, extortion, and conscription into interests that are not your own. Therefore in exile the nation survives through contraction, through spirit, through avoiding the display of full life. The Rav emphasizes that what was seared into us in exile as "spiritual" conduct: abstention, suspicion, recoiling from action, preservation without renewal - is not an eternal virtue but a survival mechanism of a wounded people while it was in its exile. The problem begins when this mechanism becomes an ideology, and in the depths of the Land of Israel people try to continue conducting themselves with an exilic soul. We have merited, thank God, to ascend to our land, and whoever tries to preserve that same exilic pattern creates a sickness in the nation. Building a state, an army, a society, power, and practical life is not a deviation from holiness but part of its building and its strengthening.

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