Vayyiggash: moving closer to reconciliation

Parshat Vayyiggash: Gen Ch. 44:1. Then Judah came near to him, and said: ‘Oh my lord, let your servant, I pray, speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are even as Pharaoh.  Gen Ch. 45:1, 4 “Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried: ‘Cause every man to go out from me.’  And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers.  .  .  .  And Joseph said to his brothers .  .  .  ‘I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.  And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here; for God did send me before you to preserve life’”.  

The Sefat Emet says that the words “to him” in the phrase “and Judah came near to him” mean that Judah not only came close to Joseph but to his own higher nature and to God.  This spiritual transformation moved Judah to offer himself in the place of Benjamin and Joseph to reveal himself to his brothers.  Judah could only offer himself as a substitute for Benjamin; and Joseph could only make himself known to his brothers after both acquired self-knowledge.

May we be blessed to move and respond like Judah and Joseph to foster moments of reconciliation.