This parshah, Miketz, chronicles Joseph’s meteoric rise from Egyptian prisoner to Egyptian second-in-command and the start to the children of Israel’s eventual move to Egypt. It starts out with Pharoah having a few dreams. The first one involves seven big juicy cows getting eaten by seven ugly gaunt cows and the second one being pretty much the same thing but with corn. Nobody can interpret the dream until the chief wine bearer remembers about this guy, Joseph, who he somehow forgot about for the last two years. He tells Pharaoh about him, and they rush Joseph out of prison, tidy him up, and bring him to see Pharaoh. He interprets the dreams correctly, explaining how there would be seven years of abundance, followed by seven years of awful famine. He even suggests a plan to ration the resources for the bad years, and that Pharaoh should put “some man of discernment and wisdom” in charge of food distribution. In perhaps the biggest, quickest, promotion in history up to that point, Pharaoh promotes Joseph from prisoner to SECOND COMMAND IN THE ENTIRE LAND. (There are lots of things that could be said about this, but we’re going to move on because we’re running out of time before Shabbos). Fast forward into the famine years, Joseph’s got a wife, a couple of kids, and control over an entire country, and who should show up but his own brothers, hoping to get some food because of a famine in the land of Israel. They don’t recognize him as that brother they threw into a pit a while ago, and he pretends he doesn’t know them. They get into a conversation where he accuses them of being slaves three times but he eventually gives them their food. He tells them that if they want to come back, they have to bring that other brother they talked about (Benjamin), who stayed home that time with Jacob. The brothers go back and he puts the money they paid back into their bags (presumably because they’re his brothers). Jacob isn’t very pleased with the idea of letting his favorite son go but he doesn’t have much of a choice as they get hungry again. With Judah’s promise to take care of Benjamin, they go back down to Egypt. This time, with Benjamin, they come for food and he invites them to a feast. He puts them in order of birth, which confuses them a lot, and when he sends them back, he puts all the money they tried to pay back in their bags again. He also puts his special cup in Benjamin’s bag. He then sends men to track them down and search them, claiming they stole his cup. They find it in Benjamin’s bag. Joseph says that he’ll take Benjamin as a slave and let the rest go home but Judah along with the brothers stick up for Benjamin, saying that if he’s taking them as slaves, he should take them all. The parshah ends with a cliffhanger, us readers not knowing what’s going to happen next (because we totally haven’t read this story about 13 times before). The immediate question is, why? Why does Joseph go through this whole multimonth shtik with his brothers. If it were me, I would have been like, “It’s me, Joseph, the one you sold away! Look at me now!” or something like that long before. Why did Joseph have to do this? Well, here’s an answer that I came up with. I think Joseph’s testing them to see if they’re worth reestablishing a relationship with, if they’ve changed since they threw him away. Earlier in the parshah, he named one of his sons Menasheh, meaning, “G-d has made me completely forget my hardship and parental home”. He’s already kind of moved on from his family, but he’s still open to possibly reconnecting. This whole shtick is a test to see if they’ve changed enough that he wants them to be part of his life again. Anyway, that’s what I think. -Zalmen Richmond-Shazeer
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