Vayigash
Genesis 44:18 – 47:27
In the middle of this parashah comes the critical moment when Jacob/Israel and his clan descend into Egypt, setting the stage for what will unfold next: enslavement, suffering, redemption, and revelation. Following their encounter with Joseph in Pharaoh’s court, Jacobs sons return home to Canaan and tell their father the good news, that Joseph is alive, is now the second-most powerful man in Egypt, and has invited all of them to flee from the famine of Canaan and resettle in Goshen, the most fertile land of Egypt. Jacob’s first impulse is to cry out, “I must go and see him before I die!” (Gen. 45:28), but then he is assailed by doubts of a journey so fraught with perils for his people.
To seek guidance, he travels south to Beersheva—a place where God had once appeared to his father, Isaac. We can only imagine the wrestling that takes place within Jacob between his desire to see his long-lost son and his knowledge of what awaits his people in Egypt. God had expressly forbidden Isaac ever to go down to Egypt (Gen. 26:2), and Abraham was given a grim vision of what would befall his progeny there (Gen. 15:13). Surely Jacob knows about these warnings and struggles to balance them against his deep yearning to be reunited with his favorite son. Trying to ride out the famine in Canaan may seem to him a more ethical decision than to condemn his descendants to “be enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). But in a night vision, God appears to Jacob in Beersheva, reassures him, promises him that He “will make [him] a great nation there” (Gen. 46:3), and convinces him to leave for Egypt after all.
The philosophical implications of Jacob’s decision have caused the rabbis to debate it over many generations. Did the path leading to our becoming a great people have to go through Egypt? In other words, was the suffering, the enslavement, necessary in order for us to carve out our unique national identity? Most rabbis seem to think so. In Plaut’s “The Torah: A Modern Commentary,” an argument, echoed by many commentators, is made that “in Goshen there would be isolation and segregation, both of which would provide a fertile soil for the development of particular national characteristics… If oppression, too, would be part of the experience, this would be the price the people-to-be would have to pay…” (pp. 297-298).
But what about personal identity? If the biblical tale is taken to be more than just the founding myth of our people, and understood on a deeper level to relate to a universal human story, does this fourfold pattern—enslavement, suffering, redemption, and revelation—apply to us as individuals as well? Many spiritual traditions the world over answer in the affirmative. Take Buddhism for example. This four-part unfolding of the biblical myth corresponds to the Four Noble Truths to which the Buddha awakened, though the Buddhist version puts suffering first. First Noble Truth: There is suffering. This is a fact of life at this level of being. Second: The cause of suffering is our craving for pleasant experiences and our aversion to unpleasant experiences; or, in other (Jewish) words, our enslavement to the deep conditioning of our ego; to the Egypt of our constricted deluded sense of self. The Third Noble Truth is freedom from suffering, corresponding to the Hebrew story of Redemption. The Fourth Noble Truth is the eightfold path of awakening, what Torah calls Revelation; this includes the many Jewish paths to mindfulness, including mitzvot, spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation, personal ethical discipline etc… The stories may be different and the modalities of teaching may take different shapes, but our spiritual Truths are analogous.
Jacob can’t help but go down to Egypt. And we become enslaved. That is the Jewish “First (Noble) Truth.” Consider that each of us is enslaved to the cravings and aversions of this conditioned false self we have identified with. And in this Egypt of ours, there is suffering. But God promised Abraham “…in the end they shall go free with great riches” (Gen. 15:14) and to Jacob God said, “I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will most surely bring you back up as well” (Gen: 46:4). And so, heeding the Divine promises in Torah, let us join the Buddha in prayer: “May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.”