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Mikeitz: Torah in Translation · A Thought for the Week

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to a Thought for the Week, a Torah in
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  Speaker 1: Motion podcast. I'm Jake Hellman, founding director of Torah in Motion,
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  Speaker 1: and it's a pleasure to have you here with us.
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  Speaker 1: By Yo mar elohem he or and God said, let
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  Speaker 1: there be light. It's not a podcast on Kanaka. It's
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  Speaker 1: on the Parsha me case by Yomar Alohim. And God said,
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  Speaker 1: and God said, and God said, the sage you say
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  Speaker 1: as Sarama amarot ni vrah Olam. It was through ten statements,
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  Speaker 1: through ten speech utterances of God that the world was created.
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  Speaker 1: We create, We're partners with God. We create or God
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  Speaker 1: forbid destroyed worlds by how we speak. How we speak
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  Speaker 1: is often much more important than what we say. It
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  Speaker 1: seems pretty clear that until the story of the Tower
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  Speaker 1: above El, everybody spoke the same language, because the Torah
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  Speaker 1: tells us that the punishment or the result of the
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  Speaker 1: Tower above El was that God spread them out and
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  Speaker 1: they spoke different languages. And it's introduced that everybody spoke safagat.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody spoke the same language. Presumably this language was Hebrew.
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  Speaker 1: Be that as it may. Everybody spoke the same language,
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  Speaker 1: and then they got dispersed and they seventy descendants of
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  Speaker 1: Noah who turned into seventy nations, would now speak seventy language.
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  Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, the Torah doesn't seem at all concerned with
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  Speaker 1: any language. Barrier I was, you don't find you know
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  Speaker 1: what language did they speak to each other? So, for example,
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  Speaker 1: what language did Avram speak to Paro he comes to Israel,
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  Speaker 1: there's a famine, goes to Egypt. I don't think he
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  Speaker 1: knew Egyptian. I don't think Baro knew whatever languages Avram spoke.
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  Speaker 1: And how did Avram's servants speak to Raquel and Lavan?
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  Speaker 1: Did I mean Melakat converse in Hebrew? What about Lava
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  Speaker 1: and Yakov? The Torah Hebrew sizes everything the Torah discusses.
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  Speaker 1: You know, Paro talking in Hebrew. It's unlikely he actually
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  Speaker 1: spoke in Hebrew, but that's the Torre's way of presenting it.
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  Speaker 1: Like you read a newspaper article from Israel in English,
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  Speaker 1: it tells you what the politician said. He said it
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  Speaker 1: in the Hebrew, but the quote marks are in English.
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  Speaker 1: And this, of course, we even have this idea by
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  Speaker 1: when the daughter of Paro names Mosha, the many commentaries
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  Speaker 1: stays she gave Mosha an Egyptian name. Mosh is actually
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  Speaker 1: the Egyptian name, and the Tourra sort of flipped it
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  Speaker 1: into a Hebrew named pemen of mind mishiituu that he
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  Speaker 1: was drawn from the water, but it really originates in Egyptian,
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  Speaker 1: and we're sort of that's a beautiful wordplay. We do
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  Speaker 1: see one idea that the language is a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of a difference. When Yakov is leaving Laven's home and
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  Speaker 1: they make a covenant. Before they leave, they make a
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  Speaker 1: pile of stones, and then the Tora tells that that
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  Speaker 1: Levin named the problems don't digar sahaduta, which I believe
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  Speaker 1: is the only Aramaic expression that appears in the Torah itself,
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  Speaker 1: and Yakov called it galais. So here you see clearly
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  Speaker 1: love and preferred to do things. His language is Aramic,
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  Speaker 1: And I'm going to name some permanent covenant only in Aramic,
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  Speaker 1: and Yako's gonna switch it to Hebrew. But like so
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  Speaker 1: many practical and logistical issues, the tour doesn't really concern
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  Speaker 1: itself with us. It doesn't interest the Torah what language
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  Speaker 1: they spoke. It doesn't care because the message of the
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  Speaker 1: Torah are moral and ethical, not practical and logistical. Yet
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  Speaker 1: this week, the tora tells us in Partian Mecates that
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  Speaker 1: then Josef and the brothers, who obviously didn't recognize that
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  Speaker 1: they were talking to, they spoke through a translator. But
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  Speaker 1: as we will see, that too is not a practical discussion.
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  Speaker 1: That's a some type of a moral statement. The tour
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  Speaker 1: tells us that the brothers come down to eat, there's famine,
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  Speaker 1: and Yosef recognized them. Not so hard for Yosef to
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  Speaker 1: recognize them, although maybe not so easy, but it was
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  Speaker 1: obviously impossible and inconceivable that the brothers will recognize that
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  Speaker 1: the person who is speaking in front of him was
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  Speaker 1: the guy they threw in a pit and sold into slavery.
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  Speaker 1: Yosef Devo is this whole plan. Then he takes them hostages.
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  Speaker 1: He puts them all in in prison for three days,
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  Speaker 1: and then he lets them out. He says, I only
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  Speaker 1: take one brother. After this goes on, the brothers are
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  Speaker 1: talking among themselves. They're lamenting, and the brothers really make
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  Speaker 1: an amazing statement. They say, by yomru isha Lahiv, they
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  Speaker 1: spoke to each one of Ala Shimi and akosol Our
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  Speaker 1: fault a lahinu. It's because of what we did to
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  Speaker 1: our brother, to Joseph who's standing before them, And it's
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  Speaker 1: not so much it's intering door. It doesn't They don't
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  Speaker 1: emphasize that they sold him. Maybe they they feel so
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  Speaker 1: terrible about that. Maybe he deserved it in their eyes.
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  Speaker 1: But what they most complain about is we saw him
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  Speaker 1: crying to us. It's, by the way, it is the
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  Speaker 1: first time you hear that. When they threw him to
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  Speaker 1: the pitch, Joseph is pleading and crying, we're enu surretnav
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  Speaker 1: show beat kindanoelenuh. He was yelling out to us for looshamna.
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  Speaker 1: We just ignored his cries. And this is why this
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  Speaker 1: is happening. And that fact is I remember Kama Leiba
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  Speaker 1: was pointing at to us many years ago. Right after
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  Speaker 1: they sell them, the brothers sit down to eat lunch. Again,
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  Speaker 1: the door is not telling us the practical thing. They
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  Speaker 1: ate lunch, date lunch every day. Door doesn't tell us
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  Speaker 1: they threw him in a pit and they ate lunch.
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  Speaker 1: So they have this conversation. Then Rubin says, you know, guys,
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  Speaker 1: it's your fault. He starts pointing fingers. I told you
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  Speaker 1: I'll tell Dubil I told, and you know, listen to me,
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  Speaker 1: and here we are. This is an amazing discussion. It's
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  Speaker 1: clearly it's been weighing on them for twenty two years.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, why in the world just something happened when
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  Speaker 1: they blame it on how they mistreated Joseph. It's really
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  Speaker 1: an amazing concept. And clearly the brothers regretted what they
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  Speaker 1: did and it's and they felt terrible and the finger
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  Speaker 1: pointing that this would come out right away, and then
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  Speaker 1: the tour adds this sort of funny statement, the hem
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  Speaker 1: loyo do kishume jos. If they didn't know that Joseph
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  Speaker 1: was he could hear them, why he may at least
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  Speaker 1: pay a him because there was an interpreter, because obviously
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  Speaker 1: Joseph the viceroy something not Kanayak his new name. He
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  Speaker 1: spoke Egyptian and the brothers are speaking Hebrew, so they
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  Speaker 1: had an interpreter. Now, why didn't they have to tell
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  Speaker 1: us that? They could have just said they didn't know
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  Speaker 1: Joseph was listening. He was in the next room. He
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  Speaker 1: overheard them for or did truth to matter, who cares
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  Speaker 1: if he heard them? They they assumed the guy speaking
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  Speaker 1: from them, doesn't know England, it doesn't know Hebrew, so
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  Speaker 1: they're talking about themselves. Who cares if he's standing there?
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  Speaker 1: So why does the tour have to tell him that
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  Speaker 1: there was a translator speaking between them? At this point,
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  Speaker 1: it seems to me that, like I mentioned, that Dora
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  Speaker 1: is not telling us some practical thing. They could have
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  Speaker 1: told us. The translator was, you know, right before when
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  Speaker 1: they first met. But the Torah is rather telling us
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  Speaker 1: that they didn't speak, as we would say, not literally,
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  Speaker 1: they didn't speak the same language. Yosef and his brothers
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  Speaker 1: were now living in totally different worlds. They could no
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  Speaker 1: longer communicate. When Josef was taken at a prison, so
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  Speaker 1: that tor tells us he was given a change of clothes.
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  Speaker 1: And then they did something which we know from ancient Egypt.
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  Speaker 1: This was uniquely Egyptian. He shaved. Ancient people always had beards,
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  Speaker 1: you know, until they invented electric shavers, so all Tews
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  Speaker 1: had beards. It's very hard forget the tor probition on shaving.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody had beards Egypt for reasons, their own reason. They
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  Speaker 1: believe youth, and they they shaved, so Yosef was clean shaven.
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  Speaker 1: Then when PuO appoints Yosef as the viceroy. He gives
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  Speaker 1: them a new name, Royal close Yosef. It's not just
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  Speaker 1: a new name and his clothes. It's symbolically, of course,
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  Speaker 1: the tour is telling us Yosef had become an Egyptian
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  Speaker 1: through and through. He was an Egyptian and a peer terrans.
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  Speaker 1: He was culturally, he was very comfortable in Egypt, and
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  Speaker 1: you know how he named his children. He wants to
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  Speaker 1: forget the past, and the Torah tells us that Joseph
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  Speaker 1: cried at this point. Obviously that brought back emotion when
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  Speaker 1: he had to turn away and he had a cry.
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  Speaker 1: But I think the cry is to a large extent
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  Speaker 1: because Yosef realized the past cannot be undone. That cry
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  Speaker 1: was the cry that there would no longer be a relationship.
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  Speaker 1: That relationship that was severed twenty two years ago could
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  Speaker 1: not be rebuilt, and the brothers would never reconcile, which
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  Speaker 1: is clear from the rest of the Torah. The most
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  Speaker 1: obvious manifestation is when after Yakov dies, the brothers concoct
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  Speaker 1: the story, because Yako could have told this yose If
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  Speaker 1: they go to the Yosem and say you know our
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  Speaker 1: father told us, why didn't tell yose don't take revenge?
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  Speaker 1: And the other there is the fact that the brothers,
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  Speaker 1: after seventeen years in Egypt, this is seventeen years later
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  Speaker 1: that Yako dies, assume that Yosef is going to take revenge.
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  Speaker 1: Obviously there is no reconciliation and lo and behold yo
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  Speaker 1: safe price. And we know that Yosef had very little
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  Speaker 1: to do with his father. He had to be called
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  Speaker 1: twice to tell his father is ill. Yosefe realized, you know,
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  Speaker 1: I'm in a different world. I'm he was an Egyptian.
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  Speaker 1: Luckily he didn't reject his past, and at the end
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  Speaker 1: of Vifi he says he wants to be buried as
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  Speaker 1: part of the Jewish people. He brought them up. But
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't always so clear. The rabbis and me Dresh
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  Speaker 1: pick up on this that it wasn't clear what would
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  Speaker 1: become Yosefe, but he was clearly different. This problem, of course,
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  Speaker 1: of not speaking the same language really begins the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of the story of Yosaf. Obviously, this problem with the dream.
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  Speaker 1: They couldn't talk to each other from the beginning, and
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  Speaker 1: this is symbolized of course by the silence that when
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  Speaker 1: they throw Yosefe into the pit we mentioned, it's only
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  Speaker 1: now that we find out Yoseph was yelling and screaming,
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  Speaker 1: and there was silence between the brothers from the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: or even if they spoke, it was totally different languages. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: the rabbis in the me Dress say at least part
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  Speaker 1: of the reason our sagas claim we merited redemption was
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  Speaker 1: because we did not change our language. We did not
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  Speaker 1: change our what we spoke. So on a literal sense,
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  Speaker 1: the rabbis are saying that the slaves in each just
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  Speaker 1: spoke Hebrew. Maybe could be a little of it, you
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  Speaker 1: think about it realistically, it's I don't know, it's maybe
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  Speaker 1: this me drush, like many me Drussian, was not meant literally.
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  Speaker 1: It means they knew how to speak to each other.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't change their language. The Jews were speaking one language.
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  Speaker 1: They spoke the same language. Whatever this Hebrew Egyptian doesn't
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  Speaker 1: really matter. And what matters is we speak the same
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  Speaker 1: metaphorical symbolic language. Hebrew's important, but that's not the point here. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: today and always, but we see so much today Jew
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  Speaker 1: juw and non Jew the world. We don't speak the
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  Speaker 1: same language often, unfortunately, tragically, it takes a great tragedy
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  Speaker 1: to have everybody speeing, oh, this is terrible, everybody somehow
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  Speaker 1: speaks the same language. But of course we must go
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  Speaker 1: beyond tragedy and speak the same language at all time
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  Speaker 1: and learn how to communicate. And even if people speak
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  Speaker 1: quote unquote different languages, we can still communicate. We can
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  Speaker 1: still speak the same language. Even if one speaks English
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  Speaker 1: and Hebrew and Egyptian and Arabic, we can. Please God,
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  Speaker 1: look for the way to speak the same language, because
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  Speaker 1: that is the pathway to redemption. May that happen soon?
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  Speaker 1: By Amima Hain Hubsman as a sure bet your luck.
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  Speaker 1: forward to learning with you next week.