Each of us is a greater theologian than we can possibly know. In the ways we treat each other, in the ways parents raise children, in the way that lovers protect their beloved, we transmit profound and intangible lessons about the reality of the world. Take, for example, the baby who wakes up screaming. The parent who gets up in the dark to cradle the child teaches—without words—that when we cry out, there will be someone to cradle us. Most children have the luxury of parents and relatives who can offer them comfort. But who is there to comfort the adults?
Who will comfort the comforter?
That same issue emerges with poignant power at the death of the great Patriarch Jacob. Recall that Joseph and his brothers had been reunited and had lived in peace in Egypt together during Jacob’s declining years. But the brothers always shared a lurking suspicion that Joseph’s forgiveness of them was false, that in reality he still bore a grudge against them for their base treatment in planning to murder him and finally settling for selling him into slavery to some traveling Midianites. Perhaps Joseph was simply biding his time, not wanting to upset his aged father by adding yet another tragedy—total fratricide—to the long list of sufferings that poor Jacob had endured in his lifetime. Maybe Joseph, the second most powerful man in all of Egypt, was simply waiting for his father’s death before he could wreak revenge on his vulnerable brothers.
Up to this time, the vitality of their father shielded them from the terror of life and of their imperious brother. But now that Jacob was dead, what was to become of them?
The Torah tells us that Joseph hastened to reassure his terrified siblings: “He comforted them and spoke to their hearts.”
Rabbinic tradition focused on that peculiar and striking phrase, speaking to their hearts. Whatever does that mean? Rashi, basing his commentary on the Midrash Bereshit Rabbah explains that these were “words which were accepted by the heart.”
Joseph was able to put himself in his brother’s shoes, to imagine their terror and their weakness. Rather than exploiting their panic, rather than giving a lecture, Joseph chose his words so that the brothers would be able to understand what he wanted to say, so that the comfort he intended would be received.
So often, we speak without considering how our listeners might hear our words. Getting it off our chest, we don’t pause to reflect on what we have now dumped on the chests of others. Not so Joseph. He knew that his brothers needed assurance that he understood their fears and needed to know that he shared their estimation of what ought to happen. In English, we call that ability empathy. The rabbinic phrase is “what comes from the heart goes straight to the heart.”
The only comfort Joseph could offer was to open his heart to his brothers. He truly listened to their concerns and then he, in turn, shared his heart with them. From the depths of his heart to the depths of theirs, no misunderstanding, no distortion, no animosity could intrude.
And in acting the way he did, Joseph offers a role model for us all to follow. We too can speak “heart to heart”—trusting each other sufficiently to share the deepest parts of our souls, caring for each other enough to treat that revelation like the fragile treasure that it is.
That lesson, like the caring parent in the dark of night, also points to a reality beyond the physical. Parents cradling a screaming infant demonstrate a trustability to life that will gird the child throughout its life. Reliable parents create emunah, the ability to trust in general. Ultimately, that ability to trust is a religious posture, an ability to feel at home in the cosmos, to feel at one with Creation.
By demonstrating trustworthiness to his brothers, Joseph as he had in jail, offered testimony to the trustworthiness of God. As midrash Bereshit Rabbah notes: “If Joseph could thus comfort our ancestors…how much the moreso will the Holy Blessing One comfort us, as it says ‘Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God.”
Parents pave the path for God, showing the little child that there is reason to trust. And the child in each of us need never feel abandoned, because there is still a Parent who loves us, every one.
Shabbat Shalom!