Parshas Vayigash: Parenting for the Twenty-First Century

“And they told him, saying, “Joseph is still alive, and that he is ruler over all the Land of Egypt; but his heart rejected it, for he could not believe them. However when they related to him all the words that Joseph had spoken to them, and he saw the wagons (attached to the calves) that Joseph had sent to transport him, then the spirit of their father Jacob was revived” (Genesis 45:26-27)

“The proof that Joseph gave his brothers to relate to Jacob as proof of his existence was the last Torah subject which they had studied together. That subject was “egla arufa” (the calf killed as part of the atonement ceremony for a stranger found dead in an area between two cities). Only after Jacob heard that Joseph recalled his Torah studies and he saw the calves which Joseph had sent as proof, was his heart revived.” (Midrash Rabbah ibid)

After twenty-two years of mourning for Joseph, the glimmer of hope that Jacob always retained to somehow find his missing son was on the verge of becoming true. Yet Jacob rejected the possibility of his Joseph’s reemergence. It was only after hearing about Joseph’s sign of the last Torah portion which they studied together was Jacob fully convinced. What was so significant about the portion of egla arufa that succeeded in convincing Jacob about Joseph’s existence?
During World War I when the Germans captured the city of Breinsk, they asked Rabbi Shimon Shkop to appoint respected community members to the important position of distributing basic staples to the people. After the Rabbi appointed various members to their new positions of authority he delivered a speech beginning with the same question just posed about Jacob’s reticence to believe Joseph’s existence, and the reason why Joseph sent the calves? He explained that had the brothers merely mentioned that Joseph was alive, Jacob would have had no trouble in believing them. However, because they also threw in a little tidbit of information that he had risen to the position of viceroy in Egypt, Jacob became very frightened. Surely Joseph was physically alive, but what is physical existence worth if he has forsaken the path of G-dliness which he was raised with. (Berachos 18) If he had risen to such a high political position, surely he was no longer connected to his path of Torah. Therefore Joseph sent the calves as proof that he remained righteous. As a part of the egla arufa ceremony the city elders proclaim their innocence and faithfulness to the Torah statutes, so too Joseph was declaring his continued commitment to Torah and its mitzvoth. Rabbi Shkop concluded that being in a position of authority behooves one to conduct a reckoning of commitment and faithfulness to Torah.

Jacob was of the belief that a Joseph bereft of Torah was no source of solace. The question we must ask ourselves is how indeed did Joseph retain his connection to the teachings of his youth, especially in light of the hardships he faced?
The Talmud (Sotah 36b) maintains that Joseph’s spiritual resistance had finally cracked (in the story of Potiphar’s wife’s making advances towards him), and the saving grace which prevented him from sinning was the sudden recollection of his father’s visage. It seems that Joseph was blessed with a very strong chinuch (parental education) in his youth. That foundation remained with him throughout his life enabling him to always remain true to his upbringing. Parenting is a very rigorous process. The Talmud (Sota 42b) relates that a child’s first utterances should be the Shema and the eternal declaration that the Torah is an inheritance for all Jews from Moses (Torah tziva lanu Moshe morasha kehilas Yaakov). That inculcation of nascent Torah values is the insurance policy for a lifetime.
Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Kanievsky (The Steipler Gaon) would oftentimes relate that one of the most memorable moments from his childhood was a speech that his mother sent him to attend in his youth. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirch comments that education begins at birth (and in embryo as mentioned in a previous issue) with the parents setting the correct atmosphere for their child.

The greatest example of the power of parenting is illustrated in the following story. During World War Two, countless Jewish parents gave their precious children to Christian neighbors and orphanages in the hope that the latter would provide safe havens for them. The parents expected that they, or their relatives, would take these children back if they survived the war. The few parents who did not perish in the Holocaust, and were able to reclaim their children, often faced another horror. While the parents had summoned the strength to survive the slave labor and death camps, or had hidden out for years, those who took their children were busy teaching them the ways of other religions.
[Additionally,] many Jewish children who were taken in by orphanages, convents and the like, had no parents or close relatives left after the Holocaust. When rabbis or distant relatives finally tracked down many of these children, the priests and nuns who had been their caretakers insisted that no children from Jewish homes were in their institutions. Thus, countless Jewish children were not only stripped of their entire families, they were also stripped of their souls.
In May, 1945, Rabbi Eliezer Silver from the United States and Dayan Grunfeld from England were sent as chaplains to liberate some of the death camps. While there, they were told that many Jewish children had been placed in a monastery in Alsace-Lorraine. The rabbis went there to reclaim them.
When they approached the priest in charge, they asked that the Jewish children be released into the rabbis' care. "I'm sorry," the priest responded, "but there is no way of knowing which children here came from Jewish families. You must have documentation if you wish me to do what you ask."
Of course, the kind of documentation that the priest wanted was unobtainable at the end of the war. The rabbis asked to see the list of names of children who were in the monastery. As the rabbis read the list, they pointed to those that belonged to Jewish children. "I'm sorry," the priest insisted, "but the names that you pointed to could be either Jewish or Gentile. Miller is a German name, and Markovich is a Russian name, and Swersky is a Polish name. You can't prove that these are Jewish children. If you can't prove which children are Jewish, and do it very quickly, you will have to leave."
One of the rabbis had a brilliant idea. "We'd like to come back again this evening when you are putting the children to sleep."
The priest reluctantly agreed.
That evening the rabbis came to the dormitory, where row upon row of little beds were arranged. The children, many of whom had been in the monastery since the war started in 1939, were going to sleep. The rabbis walked through the aisles of beds, calling out, "Shema Yisrael - Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!" One by one, children burst into tears and shrieked, "Mommy!" "Maman!" "Momma!" "Mamushka!" in each of their native tongues.
The priest had succeeded in teaching these precious Jewish souls about the Trinity, the New Testament, and the Christian savior. Each child knew how to say Mass. But the priest did not succeed in erasing these children's memories of their Jewish mothers, now murdered - putting them to bed every night with the Shema on their lips.

Joseph couldn’t forsake his past because the main value that was imbibed within him was Torah. Jacob expended tremendous effort into Joseph’s education, and that was the fuel that powered Joseph during his twenty-two years in exile. Joseph serves as the paradigm for us all. Every Friday night we bless our children to follow in the path that Joseph forged for us. May we as well merit the divine inspiration and strength for the successful parenting skills that Jacob and Joseph so deftly demonstrated for us all.