עֲלוּ לְשָׁלוֹם אֶל-אֲבִיכֶםalu leshalom el-avichemgo 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-avichemand 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
