The Teachers’ Lounge at Sha’arei Bina, is a place where colleagues exchange pleasantries and jokes, but they also confer on the challenges that they confront as educators. They brainstorm and lend each other support. Older teachers share their accumulated wisdom, experience and expertise; younger ones inject energy, creativity and, of course, technical skills into an ever changing digital landscape. Certain teachers can be counted on for their jokes, others for their ability to laugh. And sometimes the conversations in the Teachers’ Lounge model of the spirit of exploration and discovery that we try to instill in our students.
Today, as we waited for the Keurig to produce our coffee, Mrs. Blumenthal shared a question that her son asked her on Parshat Vayigash. Yosef listens as Yehuda delivers the soliloquy of his lifetime, playing on the sympathies of Yosef. Yehuda portrays the agony of his father, a man whose beloved wife died young and whose precious son from that wife likely died at the hands of a predator. Binyanim is all that Yaakov has left of that nuclear family. Yehuda’s goal is to convince Yosef to set Binyamin free and take Yehuda as a slave in his stead. Yosef can no longer overcome his emotions. He clears all Egyptians from the room and proclaims, “? אני יוסף, העוד אבי חי - I am Yosef; is my father still alive?”
Noam’s question is obvious. Of course, Yosef knew that his father was alive. Yehuda’s entire plea was predicated on that assumption. And if we examine the text closely, we see that Yosef has already asked the brothers,
(מ"ג, כ"ז): "וַיִּשְׁאַל לָהֶם לְשָׁלוֹם, וַיֹּאמֶר הֲשָׁלוֹם אֲבִיכֶם הַזָּקֵן אֲשֶׁר אֲמַרְתֶּם, הַעוֹדֶנּוּ חָי", והאחים השיבו לו "שָׁלוֹם לְעַבְדְּךָ לְאָבִינוּ עוֹדֶנּוּ חָי".
“And he asked how they were and he said,’Is your old father, of whom you have spoken, well? Is he still alive?’ And the brothers answered him, ‘Your servant, our father is well; he is still alive.’ “ So what is the nature of Yosef’s question?
The Medrash Rabbah states: Aabah Cohen of Bardela said, “Woe unto us from the day of judgement Woe unto us from the day of rebuke…. Yosef, was the youngest of the tribes and they couldn’t stand in his reproach. There it is written, “And they could not answer him because they were frightened before him (Bereishit, 45, 3).”
The Haamek Davar (Netziv) explains that, according to the Medrash, “העוד אבי חי” was not a question, but rather a rebuke. Yosef said to Yehuda, “You are asking that I be merciful in judgement because you are so concerned about causing pain and suffering to your father and compromising his life. Where was your concern for your father’s life when you judged me as a threat to the nation and you refused to allow any mercy into your judgement? “
Yosef highlighted the inconsistency of his brothers and they were speechless in the face of his argument. When we teach our students to be critical thinkers, we advise them to check for inconsistencies in logic before they accept a point of view. But it is a much greater challenge, for youngsters and adults alike, to maintain consistency in our daily lives. How many of us demonstrate the integrity to recognize our own inconsistencies and then the courage to change course in order to maintain a straight path?
So a youngster asks a basic question. It finds its way to the SBTAG Teacher’s Lounge, a room designed to promote the pleasure of honest discourse. The question can skip through the hallways and on into the classroom, or land on a Taglines Google Doc. And the answer to that question has the power to change lives. All in the course of a day at Sha’arei Bina…
Shabbat Shalom!
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