Vayigash elav Yehudah (Genesis 44:18). Yehudah stepped forward. He stepped forward and spoke words that somehow undid Yosef’s hard exterior and cracked him open to the waters of love and forgiveness that lie underneath, deep within each of us.
Harsh Climate
What was the emotional tenor of the situation into which Yehudah stepped forward? As the brothers describe it earlier, diber ha’ishi itanu kashot (Genesis 42:30) – the man, meaning Yosef, spoke to us kashot, “hard words” – he treated us harshly. There have been glimpses of Yosef’s compassion and care, but he has covered those over quickly, and mostly acted from this place of harshness, accusing the brothers, tormenting them, locking them up and now framing Binyomin and threatening to enslave him.
We, too, live a lot of the time in a pretty harsh internal climate, our hearts partially closed and an aggressive energy prevailing, often directed primarily at ourselves. This aggression – in us as in Yosef – masks pain; it is a hurt inner child striking out. .
The Many Meanings of Vayigash
How do we approach this harsh part of ourselves? Vayigash elav Yehudah. Into this harshness steps Yehudah. The rabbis suggest a thousand different nuances to this word, vayigash. It somehow contains within it the energy of milhamah, war, as well as the energy of comfort, appeasement, peace, and tefillah, prayer (Breishit Rabbah 93:6).
Fierce and Kind
Taking all that apart, we can inhabit this vayigash stance as we turn towards our own harshness, imagining ourselves standing strong like Yehudah, who is compared to a lion, embodying a warrior stance, and at the same time, not losing sight of our tenderness, of our desire to reconcile, to comfort, to bring peace, feeling both of those, both the fierceness of the warrior and the gentle soothing touch of a soft purring cat. As we turn towards the harshness inside ourselves, we are both determined and compassionate, both fierce and kind. We, like Yehudah, will not be swayed from our mission, but we also remember that ultimately we are acting out of love. This is a helpful approach, whether we are turning towards difficult parts of ourselves or of those that we care about. .
Surrendered in Prayer
Vayigash also implies tefillah, prayer. In the end of the day, we don’t know how to resolve conflict, in ourselves, with each other or in the larger world, and so we gird ourselves for war as well as for peace, and then we pray for help from beyond, we pray that the larger Spirit that animates us will be with us as we move forward. We acknowledge our inability to do this work alone and we surrender and let in our Higher Power to help us, letting go of the tightness of striving, relaxing into something larger, trusting we are not alone. We don’t do this work alone. This is the stance of prayer.
So here we stand, surrendered to God, girded by both fierceness and mercy, turning towards the difficulty inside us, the harshness, the closed-heartedness, with a prayer – please help me, please help me heal, please help me move out of this stuck place of negativity and harshness.
And maybe then, with the power of that prayer, we can sense a little bit of movement inside, some cracking of the crusty hard outer layer we have been presenting and a glimpse of something deep and tender and raw underneath.
Like a Well of Deep Cool Waters
There is a beautiful midrash that looks at this scene and expresses it this way – it is like a deep well filled with fresh, good cool waters, but no one is able to reach those waters because they are buried so deep – mayim amukim, deep waters – until someone comes and ties rope to rope, thread to thread, and cord to cord, and reaches deep down and draws out the cool water and drinks. This is what Yehudah did – he tied word to word and phrase to phrase and reached down into Yosef’s depths and found those good cool waters (Breishit Rabbah 93:4).
You, too, have such a well of deep cool waters inside you. It may be buried and covered over by layers of harshness and irritability and resentment and self aggression, but somewhere deep inside you are those cool clear pure waters.
Tying Thread to Thread
In the midrash, Yehudah created a lengthy rope to reach down into Yosef’s depths. He tied thread to thread and word to word. What were the threads and words he wove together? They were threads of the possibility of family love and care. He spoke of sons and fathers and brothers and of the love and loss and pain between them (Genesis 44:18-34), digging this way and that, knowing there was a way, but not being sure which word would break through, weaving together words like ah and av, “brother” and “father,” showing Yosef that the world of such caring relationships still exists despite his trauma, despite his betrayal, despite the years of estrangement, opening that door again in Yosef, a door closed off in his heart by pain.
A Rope of Love
We can weave such a rope of love, too. We can weave it out of the little moments of care that seep into our lives like angels, often unnoticed, the inklings of love from beyond and from up close, the sunshine that greets us, the small gestures of a friend, the notes of a moving melody, the bird that appears suddenly to gladden our path, the email that makes us smile, even if there are a thousand others that make us cry, we can weave those, too, into this rope, we can weave it all into a rope of hope and the possibility of trusting in love and connection. We can weave our family and our friends and all those who care about us into this rope, in all their complications, like Yosef and his family, but still we can weave them into this rope, hand linked to hand, and we can also weave in the love and support of our ancestors, maybe even of Yehudah himself, and of all the angels that stand by always to help us should we open to them, weaving them in, too. We are weaving a rope of trusting in the love of the universe, even if it is also filled with pain, weaving a rope of trusting in that love despite our wounds.
We can weave such a rope and send it down into our depths, step by step, seeing the harsh outer parts of us, feeling their mistrust, and offering them these threads of hope and care, offering them the possibility of trust despite the pain, until slowly we are granted permission to go further, just a little further into the well that is our hearts.
The harshness is a crusty outer layer. We dig deeper, sending the rope down further and further into our hearts – it has incredible depths that we have not yet fathomed.
Tears
What is here, in these deep waters? It might feel at first like a dam bursting. Yosef could not control himself any longer – lo yakhol yosef lihitapek (45:1)– he couldn’t hold back the rush of tears and emotion and pain that broke forth from Yehudah’s digging. Maybe you can sense inside your own deep well, how some of the waters are tears, years of tears, torrents of tears, stored up pain from so many things or from one big thing, or not even knowing what from, perhaps from a wound that was before your time or from the pain of others or from the pain of the universe itself. In this deep place inside our hearts, our own pain and the world’s pain merges and all the tears are part of one giant ocean. When we dig deeply, we sense those universal waters. Once Yosef started crying, he couldn’t stop, long and hard.
The waters gradually become stiller, less frenzied, less choppy. These are the cool, fresh waters of our own deep wells..
A Beating Heart
Beyond the pain, beyond the tears, or perhaps from within the pain, you sense something else that is here – it is your own fount of love, your own beating heart, long closed up and covered over. Here it is, full of feeling, painful and loving and joyful all at once. Like Yosef, maybe you can look now with a little bit of grace and forgiveness at the people in your life and you can draw them close, despite it all. And maybe, too, you turn to the harsh difficult parts of your own self with their crusty outer layers and you draw them close, too. It’s all one. There is love and forgiveness, connection and belonging, in this place of deep waters inside you.
Revelation of Self
In this place of deep waters you also discover something else. You discover your own true essence. Hitvada – Yosef made himself known (45:1) – to his brothers as well as himself. He came to know his real self, who he is on the inside, in that citadel where our essence lies, unknown even to us. It is the place where God meets you, where God resides inside you in your own unique way, an inner sanctum of eternal essence, the place of deep waters where you are connected to your source, the be’er mayim hayim, the divine well of living waters.
Photo by Riccardo at Pexels
Rachel, this is beautiful, heartfelt, and thought-provoking writing that brings me to tears!