עֲלוּ לְשָׁלוֹם אֶל-אֲבִיכֶם
alu leshalom el-avichem
go in peace to your father.
The fact that this Parshah concludes with the words "go in peace to your father," is a reference to the ten martyrs who were tortured to death by the Romans supposedly because the brothers had never paid the penalty prescribed by Jewish law for kidnapping. The words "in peace to your father" refers to "your father in heaven." Yosef meant that once the brothers had been cleansed of their sin against Yosef they could one more fact the G-d in heaven upon their deaths and take their place in the hereafter.
The entire Yosef tragedy began when his father Ya'akov made a colored coat for him which Yosef wore as a sign of distinction. The fact that the brothers dipped the colored coat of Yosef in the blood of a male goat which they specially slaughtered for that purpose telling their father, "this is what we found," was considered an act of great cruelty on their part. This is why their punishment which involved their bodies commenced immediately after Yosef's death. Eventually, during the the time of the Romans and after the destruction of the second Temple (which was destroyed due to an excess of groundless hatred between Jew and Jew.) the ten martyrs paid the last installment of the penalty with their deaths.
It is important to realize that contrary to a perception that all the ten martyrs listed in our prayers commemorating their death as martyrs occurred at one and the same time, this is simply not so. We find the following text in Pirke Heychalot:
"Rabbi Yishma'el said that the decree to torture these sages to death came out on a Thursday. News came from the capital in Rome that Emperor Lupinos had ordered the execution of four of the outstanding Jewish scholars. They were rabbi Shimon ben Gamli'el, Rabbi Yishma'el ben Elisha, Rabbi Ele'azer ben Dama, and rabbi Yehudah ben Baba. Many thousands of other scholars in Yerushalayim offered to take the place of those condemned. When Rabbi Nechunyah ben Hakanah realized that this decree was irrevocable he inquired about it from Suri'el the Sar Hapanim (of the angels close to the Attribute of Justice). He was told that actually, in the books of G-d (Attribute of Justice, there was a list of ten scholars whose lives had been handed over to Sama'el (the angel of death) the guardian angel of Esav. The instructions which this guardian angel of Esav had received at the time were to destroy among the leaders of Yisra'el every "good cut of meat" and throw it into the cauldron." The purpose of this decree was to complete the expiation needed for the sin of the brothers who had sold Yosef at the time, and who had violated the prohibition in Shemot 21:16 "if someone steals and sells a person and the party concerned is found in his hands, he is to be executed." This decree, i.e. application of this penalty, could be delayed all the time until "In the day, Hashem will punish the host of heaven in heaven and the kings of the earth on earth" (Yeshayahu 24:21). This expiation could occur by means of the goats and sheep on Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Yishma'el said that Sama'el had heard all these threats and conditions and that he had said that he accepted them. As a result he chose 10 f the outstanding scholars of Yisrael to be that unexpired expiation, "scape-goat," for what had been done to Yosef. When G-d heard about these resolutions of Sama'el, i.e. the Romans to kill ten outstanding Jewish scholars, He was so angry that He immediately wrote down decrees which would afflict the entire Roman Empire, each one for six months at a time. As a result of all the afflictions that will strike the Romans at that time, one individual will say to another that if he were offered the entire Roman Empire in exchange for a minor copper coin he would decline to make such a purchase."
One of the amazing statements in in that passage concerns Rabbi Chanina ben Tradyan who supposedly was exchanged for Emperor Lupinos who was burned in his stead. Similar statements appear concerning the other martyrs on that famous list. Concerning such far-out statements, I have heard that they must be understood as analogous to the binding of Yitzchak. Once Avraham was irrevocably committed to slaughtering Yitzchak, and the latter had accepted the decree, he was replaced by the ram Avraham found which had been caught in the thicket (Bereishit 22:13). According to that view something similar occurred with all the ten martyrs. Seeing that they had submitted to G-d's decree it became possible to exchange them for Romans and others. The point is that once the lives of these scholars were spared they were in effect reborn. It is therefore no contradiction to say that they had indeed died a martyr's death. These scholars had all "tasted" death so that the sin for which their lives were meant to expiate had been wiped out once and for all.
When the Torah wrote: "and place each man's money at the mouth of his feeding back," this was an allusion that the Torah treats the life-force נפש (nefesh), of a person as equivalent to minted silver whereas his body is compared to a feeding bag seeing it contains the soul (silver). This allusion can be carried a little further by looking at 43:10 when Yehudah said, "we could have returned already twice." He may have hinted at something we find in Iyov (based on the concept of a soul's repeated return to life on earth in order to cleanse itself of sins committed in a former life). In Iyov 34:36 and 33:29 the point is made that in order to deal finally with some sin, retribution may have to be spread over several installments. (Rabbi Moshe Alshich makes this point more clearly when explaining why G-d did not wipe out Pharaoh with a single plague. His sins were such that a single act of retribution would not have sufficed to punish him. He had to have relief between one affliction and the next in order to absorb and suffer the next installment).
Iyov 33:29 "two or three times with a man," may be a reference to the need for someone to be reincarnated repeatedly in order to expiate for sins committed in a previous incarnation. The words וישובו העירה (vayashuvu ha'irah) describing the return of the brothers to the capital of Egypt (44:13) may be an allusion to Yehudah's feeling on the matter. All the Torah had needed to write was וישובו מצרימה (vayashuvu mitzraymah), "they returned to Egypt." The use of the word העירה (ha'irah - the city) suggests a meta-physical aspect of the matter. Compare the use of the word עיר (ir - city) as a hyperbole in Kohelet 9:14) This is the reason that the Parshah concludes with the words.
וְאַתֶּם עֲלוּ לְשָׁלוֹם אֶל-אֲבִיכֶם
ve'atem alu leshalom el-avichem
and you return and make your peace with your father (in heaven).
Menashe could simply have said, "go on your way in peace." Seeing that the Torah focuses on the ten brothers and the grievous wrong they had done to their brother Yosef, it is not surprising that the Torah also uses this opportunity to hint at the historical consequences of the brothers' behavior at the time. Chazal in Pesachim 50 go so far as to say that the acceptance of G-d's decree by the ten martyrs who died a cruel death at the hands of the Romans for a crime committed over fifteen hundred years earlier put these people into a class by themselves, one that could not be matched in piety/faith by anyone else previously. We can apply to them the verse in Yeshayahu 64:3: "Such things have never been heard or seen. No eye has seen them O G'd, but You, Who acts for those who trust in Him."
May HASHEM continue to enlighten us with the Light of His Torah.
- Chazal
Parashat Miketz
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