Parshas Hashavua – Rabbi Shimon Zonnenfeld · Lesson 7 · 10 Adar I 5782
Tetzaveh: 5782 - Why does Yosef ask, "Is my father still alive?" Didn't he already know from the dialogue that his father was alive? Rabbi Shimon Zonnenfeld with a brief insight on the Daf Yomi, daf 4, in Tractate Chagigah,…
Guest: Shimon Zonnenfeld
Episode description
5782 - Why does Yosef ask, "Is my father still alive?" Didn't he already know from the conversation that his father was alive? Rabbi Shimon Sonnenfeld with a short insight on the Daf Yomi, Daf 4 in Maseches Chagigah, at the conclusion of the Daf Yomi class of Rabbi Betzalel Mizrachi in Nachlah
Machine translation into English of the automatic Hebrew transcript.
00:00 Speaker 1 Avner, please.
00:01 Speaker 2 Something from today’s learning. It says that Rabbi Elazar wept when he reached this verse. Which verse? “His brothers could not answer him, for they were frightened by his presence.” So why did he weep? If a rebuke from a human being is like this, how much more so a rebuke from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There are two questions here. First, the verse doesn’t say that Yosef rebuked his brothers. It says, “Yosef said to them, ‘I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?’” But it doesn’t say he rebuked them. So why do we say he rebuked them, and that “his brothers could not answer him”? Second, they’ve been talking about their father the whole time. So what is he asking them? “Is my father still alive?” Doesn’t he know their father is alive? Their whole conversation with him has been about how Yaakov won’t be able to bear it and Binyamin must return to him. So what kind of question is this: “Is my father still alive?”
01:03 Speaker 1 About Yosef.
01:04 Speaker 2 Yes, Yosef asks his brothers, “Is my father still alive?” There’s a very beautiful, very interesting explanation that answers both questions. The brothers, with Yehudah in particular speaking for them, come to Yosef and say that Binyamin has to go back to their father. Why? Because if we come home and our younger brother isn’t with us, our father won’t survive. He’ll die. Yosef says to them, “I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?” When you sold me, did you make that calculation too—that perhaps our father wouldn’t survive? You didn’t make that calculation. What’s different now? What happened now? “His brothers could not answer him.” They had no answer to that question.
01:51 Speaker 1 To that rebuke.
01:53 Speaker 2 No, there was nothing to answer. So that resolves both questions. “Is my father still alive?” wasn’t really a question; it was rhetorical. Why didn’t you make that calculation when you sold me? And that was a rebuke they had no answer to. “His brothers could not answer him.”
02:10 Speaker 1 That’s right, that’s right, that’s right.