INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

PARASHAT VAYIGASH

IS GOSHEN THE FIRST GHETTO?

By Rabbi Yaakov Beasley

A.           INTRODUCTION

After Yehuda’s impassioned plea before the viceroy of Egypt, Yosef, unable to control himself any longer, reveals himself to the brothers.  The brothers are stunned.  Only Yosef’s reassurance that he bears them no ill will, that he understands that everything that occurred was Hashem’s ultimate plan to save the family, allows them to accept the stunning news and reunite.  Yosef instructs his brothers to return to Yaakov and inform him of Yosef’s successes and power, and with Pharaoh’s approval, he summons them to dwell in Egypt.  If the family dwells in Goshen, Yosef suggests, he will be able to provide for them and protect them for the remainder of the famine.  When Yaakov receives these tidings, he excitedly packs up the family and begins the descent to Egypt.  He expects that this visit will be a short one.  Hashem, however, has other plans.  In a foreboding nighttime vision, Hashem informs Yaakov that this trip is more than a family reunion – it is the beginning of the long exile foretold to Avraham at the brit bein ha-betarim. 

The Torah then discusses the genealogy of Yaakov’s children,[1] and continues with the preparations for the dramatic meeting between Yaakov and Yosef:

28 And he sent Yehuda before him to Yosef to show the way before him unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen.

29 And Yosef made ready his chariot and went up to meet Yisrael his father, to Goshen; and he presented himself unto him, and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.  (Bereishit 46)

B.           WHO WENT WHERE

Why did Yaakov send his trusted son Yehuda ahead of him?  According to the plain sense of the text - the peshat - it was so that Yehuda could show him the way to Goshen.  The purpose of the mission was to carry out Yosef's plan for his father and brothers, which he had already made known to them: "You will dwell in the region of Goshen" (Bereishit 45:10).  This is how all the classical commentators understand Yehuda’s mission, including Rashi.[2]  However, Rashi adds a midrashic comment as well:

"To point... before him" (le-horot le-fanav) [which can also mean "to give instruction"] – The midrash states: To prepare him a House of Study, that Torah emanate from there.[3]

Whenever Rashi brings a midrashic comment in addition to the simple meaning of the text, we must ask if Rashi is simply bringing additional information to the attention of the reader or if he senses that something is lacking in the peshat of the text that requires an additional explanation, even though the second explanation is clearly not the text’s intended meaning. 

If we look carefully at these verses, we note that they present a problem of sequence: "So they came to the region of Goshen. And Yosef... went to Goshen to meet his father Yisrael" (46:28-29). The beginning of verse 28 implies that Yehuda was sent to Yosef in Goshen, whereas verse 29 implies that Yosef was not yet in Goshen when Yehuda arrived there.  Instead, Yosef only came to Goshen after his father Yaakov arrived.  Only then, "Yosef ordered his chariot and went to Goshen to meet his father Yisrael."[4]

Presumably, those exegetes who adhere to the text’s plain sense understood the words "to point the way" as meaning something other than physically going to Goshen. They would explain that Yehuda came first to Yosef, and then Yosef instructed him how to get to Goshen. Yehuda then returned to Yaakov and came back down with him to Goshen; only then did Yosef come to meet them.

Don Isaac Abrabanel offers his own unique interpretation of what occurred.  He suggests that the two parts of the verse describe two different but interrelated events. Yosef already told his brothers to bring his father to Goshen. Once Yaakov was in Goshen, Yosef himself needed to be told where his father was residing, so Yehuda "pointed out before him" where Yaakov was to be found.  This approach is creative, but it is faced with the difficulty that according to the immediate context of the text, it is Yaakov, not Yosef, who must be “pointed the way” to Goshen.

            Rashi’s midrashic comment resolves the problem by explaining that Yehuda went to Yosef to establish Torah study, not to get directions to Goshen.

C.           WHY GOSHEN?

Why did Yosef choose to settle his family in Goshen?  The exchange with his brothers after his meeting with his father may reveal some clues:

31 And Yosef said to his brethren, and to his father's house, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and will say unto him, ‘My brethren and my father's house, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me;

32 and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.’

33 And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say, ‘What is your occupation?’

34 That you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of cattle from our youth, even until now, both we and our fathers,’ that you may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”

According to this exchange, Yosef did not choose Goshen because of its fertile lands or proximity to the palace – the seats of power.  Instead, it seems clear that his primary goal was to separate his family from Egyptian society.  Goshen was to become the first Jewish ghetto – a voluntary refuge from larger society (ironically so, given that in later manifestations, the limitations placed on Jewish settlement were externally imposed, often brutally). 

Several of the medieval commentators attempt to explain this decision in terms of the negative effects that city dwelling has on a person’s spiritual growth.  The Abrabanel, no stranger to palace intrigues in his personal life, wrote that shepherding provides a simple, humble, and sacred alternative to living with positions of authority and power.  The Siftei Kohen argues that urban dwelling, unlike its rural counterpart, involves the acquisition of luxuries and possessions, and over-involvement in such pursuits is perilous for a spiritual life. 

Rabbeinu Bachayei (commentary to v.32) argues that shepherding offers two major benefits:  (a) It produces necessary and important materials (meat, wool, milk) for relatively little effort, and given the low status of shepherding in Egypt, the brothers would have a monopoly on this profession.  (b)  Because it involves seclusion, shepherds were not only able to avoid the damaging tale-baring and gossip that personifies most human interactions, they were also able to find time for self-examination and spiritual growth.

Other commentators, however, viewed Yosef’s efforts as we suggested above – a deliberate effort to separate his family from Egyptian society.  R. Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv) states that Yosef wanted his brothers to live in isolation, even though this would arouse the hatred of the Egyptians, in order to preserve their purity.  In an interesting comment, R. Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, despite his stated preference for integration (“Torah im Derekh Eretz” – a person should combine Torah with the way of the world), attempts to explain the rationale for this approach based on the historical reality:

The disgust of the Egyptians for their profession… was the first means of preservation of the race which was destined for an isolated path throughout the ages… That is why Yosef acted with the express purpose of obtaining a separate province within which his family would settle.  As long as the ethical dawn of the other nations had not yet come, it was the partitions that the other nations erected which preserved Israel from being infected by the corruption of the people among whom it dwelled for hundreds of years.  (Commentary to v. 33)

D.           THE MIDRASHIC MESSAGE

The midrashic message that Rashi brings not only resolves a problem in the text regarding the sequence of events – it also encapsulates a fundamental value in Judaism that underlies the words “le-horot lefanav.” From Rashi, we sense that settling in Goshen was the last chance for Yaakov’s children to coalesce as a group prior to their becoming a people. It is at this point in history that a Torah academy must be established.  This teaches us a fundamental lesson, as noted by R. Isaiah ben Abraham ha-Levi (1565?-1630), popularly known as Ha-Shelah Ha-Kadosh:

“He had sent Yehuda ahead of him" to set up a house of study for him, so that teaching emanate from there. We learn a moral from this: every act that a person does should first be seen it terms of preparing for something elevated. For example, someone who has the good fortune to build a house should first imagine to himself the room of the house in which he will close himself up for the purpose of Torah study, prayer, and meditation, then the room allotted as a scholars' meeting place, and then other matters of need to him. Thus, Yaakov first sent [Yehuda] to prepare him a house of study.  (Musarei Ha-Shelah [Jerusalem, 1985], pp. 26-27.)