Parshas Vayigash: Remember Who You Are
In this week’s parsha we see Yaakov (Jacob) traveling down to Egypt. Along the way, he has a dream in which Hashem (G-d) comes to him and tells him not to be afraid, that he should resettle in Egypt. Was Yaakov afraid? And why did he have to stay in Egypt? It makes sense why Yosef (Joseph) would need to stay in Egypt, but why Yaakov? What was so important that G-d Himself had to command him to go live there?
Egypt was fundamentally different from Canaan (the land of Israel at that time). Yaakov’s father and grandfather lived there and were well known and respected. For the most part, the family was accepted. Perhaps they were viewed as a bit eccentric, or even heretical, but nobody in those days cared all that much. In fact, as Rabbi Bernie Fox of the OU points out, the Canaanites’ acceptance of Yaakov’s family was so total and complete that Shechem, a prince, fell in love with and asked to marry Yaakov’s daughter Dina. Even when told that he and his entire city would have to be circumcised (as adults, with no anesthetic!), he did it, and commanded his city to do so as well. The Jews were accepted fully.
Egypt, however, was not like that. There, Yaakov’s family would really be viewed as heretics, and in the wildly religious Egypt, that was not something to be overlooked. The Jews were not even permitted to eat at the same table as the Egyptians! This applied even to Yosef, who was second to no one but Pharaoh himself. In Egypt, the Jews would remain separate.
You see, Yosef was afraid to leave the land his family had settled, which had been promised to him and his ancestors, which his father (Yitzchak, Isaac) had been forbidden to leave. But he had to go and live in Egypt because if he and his entire family did not, the assimilation would be so total that the Jewish people would have been wiped out before it even began.
Unfortunately, we face this very problem today, quite strongly. In many Western cultures, the assimilation is very strong. Marry someone who’s not Jewish and he won’t mind if you want to celebrate Chanukah instead of X-mas. He’ll be happy to come with you to your Pesach seder, he just might invite you to his family’s Easter dinner. And what’s the harm in that? It’s only a dinner, right? And the circle will spiral downwards – assimilation is a slippery slope that poses a big threat to Judaism.
It’s often been said that Antisemitism has done a great job at keeping Jews Jewish. Please G-d we can do without this, however we must always remember that we are different no matter how much the place in which we live welcomes us.
Shabbat Shalom!
Read more on Parshas Vayigash: The Benefit of Being “Different”
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