• she/her

healthcare bureaucrat in philly, v adhd, orthodox jew, ect ect, im love my wife



geostatonary
@geostatonary

Made my goat/sheyd more festive for the occasion (reading the portion we read for our first torah study one jewish year ago). As a year retrospective, I can now 100% confirm the value of making a simple pngtuber avatar to study torah with online friends with, as well as other activities. Highly recommend it.

Vayigash is the penultimate portion of Genesis, and begins to close out the stories of both Joseph and Jacob. We open with Joseph's brothers explaining in detail why they absolutely cannot return to their father without Benjamin, up to the point that Joseph finally breaks and cannot maintain the bit, revealing his identity to them and crying profusely. They make arrangements to fetch Jacob to come join them and Pharaoh, having heard what was going on, arranges various other goods and promises for Jacob and his sons as they settle in Egypt. They come to Jacob, who dies briefly1 on learning Joseph is alive, and upon recovery immediately comes to join him. They reunite, we have an accounting of Jacob and his sons' households, and we turn back to Joseph's management of the famine and how he used it to take control of all the livestock, land, and peoples of Egypt for Pharaoh.

A lot was said around Joseph and his reveal to his brothers and the manner in which he forgave them in contrast to his funny little tricks, the nuances of when G-d and the Torah refer to their father as Jacob or Israel, as well as some of the sages' opinions on Egypt and the ongoing family dynamics of Jacob's house, as well as some good old medical opinions from the sages, but the most difficult piece comes at the end. The text notes that one of the things Joseph did when taking the land and people of Egypt for Pharaoh in exchange for grain was to move them all about Egypt, which is troubling, to say the least. It's a messy episode- the little the portion discusses it and the ways the sages elaborate on it don't really complicate how this is typically seen as a tool of subjugation, and it occurs during a sort of victory lap for Joseph that nonetheless occurs immediately before Exodus, a total reversal of their fortunes. There's a question of how much we can form a counter-reading, and when it's better to finally write a section off.

Between this and the conquests of canaan, a thing I increasingly take from episodes like this is that, regardless of any lesson we "should" be taking, the Torah does not hide that the creation and maintenance of nations is something that is soaked in blood.

But on to lighter topics.

Did you know that Joseph may have whipped his dick out to help prove his identity to his brothers? Rashi sure thinks so. Just a normal time with the bros.
joseph's dick
Later, when sending his brothers out to pick up their dad, they mention that Joseph told them to be chill on the journey back, presumably out of the thought that they'd get into heated arguments over who really sold Joseph, or maybe halakha.
halakha or recriminations... you decide
Finally, Sforno comments on what happens when you ask Jacob for his age and how years of your life don't count if you were afflicted with Agonies at the time.
joseph and agonies


  1. the sages explain this as joy overwhelming him in his age, causing the heat to flee from his heart or his spirit to expand beyond his body. They brought him back by showing him the evidence of Jacob's survival as well as bringing down the mood a bit with some facts about the whole world-spanning famine thing


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