Thoughts on Parashat Vayechi, (almost) a decade later

I was just using an old flash drive to transfer a file from one computer to another when I stumbled across a series of outlines of old derashot and other such interesting documents.   I found this one from nine (9!) years ago.  I present it to you here cut and pasted, with no corrections.  It's in pseudo-outline form, with some parts written out, and little attention to grammar.   If you don't like it, more Navi thoughts are coming soon (hopefully tomorrow, covering Yiftach and Shimshon, and then another one covering the strange package which constitutes the last several chapters of Shoftim):

Parashat Vayechi 5763

I. Parashat Vayechi is paginated in an unusual way.  No new paragraph between Vayigash and Vayechi as there are between almost every other two parshiot in the Torah.  Rather Parashat Vayechi is written beginning on the very same line as the last words of Parashat Vayigash.

We call this type of parasha, where the space between parshiot is filled, a parasha setuma, a closed parasha.

II. Rashi, following Chazal, asks why this parasha is closed, written beginning on the same line as the previous parasha.  One of the explanations he gives is that with the death of Ya’akov, related at the beginning of this parasha, the hardship of slavery began, and the eyes of Israel were closed (nistemu) because of the hardship of slavery.

a. The question that arises, of course, is that it isn’t until years later, after Yosef dies, after all the brothers die, that a new king arises over Egypt who enslaves the Jewish people.  How, then, can our Rabbis say that slavery began with Ya’akov’s death?

III.  I’d like to suggest one answer, which we discussed in our Wednesday night parasha class:  That while the physical slavery didn’t begin until later, the spiritual slavery of the Jewish people began after Ya’akov’s death.

a. How can this be?  What did our Rabbis mean when they referred to this spiritual slavery?

III.    In answer, let me share with you a teshuva, a halachic opinion, of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, the former Sefardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.  Question asked of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef—Can Jewish newspaper reporters go to Egypt to report on business and news there?

A. Problem: “V’lo yashiv et ha’am Mitzrayima.”  Rav Ovadiah notes that Maimonedes codifies this prohibition, indicating that the Torah prohibits a Jew from living in the land of Egypt.

B. But, notes Rav Ovadiah, there’s a difficulty:  Maimonedes lived in Egypt!  

C. He cites a number of solutions:  1) That the prohibition of living in Egypt is only when the Jewish people lives in Israel, not in the diaspora. 2) That the parts of Egypt that Jews lived in were not within the boundaries of Egypt that are defined by the Torah.  3) That the prohibition exists to prevent the Jewish people from intermingling with and learning from the Egyptians, and the people living in Egypt today, due to historical conquests and the transfer of peoples by the Babylonians, are not the Egyptians who are the reason that Jews are prohibited from living in Egypt.

All of these answers have problems with them.   The answer that Rav Ovadiah seems to accept, however, is that the prohibition of living in Egypt is a prohibition against settling down there with the intention to stay, to become attached to, and entrenched in, Egypt.  Visits for business purposes, for example, are totally permissible.  The Rambam’s visit was also for refuge, and it was a visit made long for various reasons.  But it is prohibited to go to the land of Egypt to settle down, to become permanently entrenched in and attached to Egypt.

IV.   So let’s go back to our original question:  Our Rabbis explain that our Parasha begins on the same line as last week’s parasha, it is a “closed” parasha, because the eyes of the Jewish people were closed by the spiritual slavery that began immediately after Ya’akov’s death.  We asked, what is the nature of this spiritual slavery?

The prohibition against living in Egypt obviously did not apply to Joseph and his brothers, who lived long before the Torah’s prohibition to their descendants.  But Rav Ovadiah’s explanation—that whether going to Egypt is allowed or prohibited depends on our intentions in going there--may be shed light on the spiritual slavery of our forebears.

Yosef was forced into Egypt through circumstance.  Ya’akov and his other sons came down to flee the ravages of famine, and to be with Yosef while he had to be there.  They went to visit, compelled by some temporary purpose. Who can blame them for that?  No problem.

But by the time Ya’akov died, the famine was over.

When Yosef and his brothers brought their father back to Israel for burial, they did not have to go back to Egypt.    There may have been no prohibition to live in Egypt, but surely they should have stayed in the land which God had promised to their forefathers!

Yet, even in the absence of an urgent need to do so, they did go back to Egypt.  They turned their backs on the land of Israel and went back to Egypt where it was comfortable.  They turned their backs on Israel and went to a place where they had power and prestige.  They traded in God’s gifts for the seductive allure of material power and comfort.

They traded in God’s gifts for the seductive allure of material power and comfort.  And while it is clear that the Torah teaches that there is nothing wrong with enjoying comfort or with wielding power, it is abundantly clear that spiritual slavery is achieved when one makes the wrong moral and religious choices because of the attraction of the material world.  

So when Ya’akov died, his children took him back to Israel.  And when the last shovelful of earth fell onto his grave, they were drawn back to the accomodations of Egypt like a moth to the flame, already shackled in spiritual slavery.

Let us discipline ourselves to learn from their mistake and choose instead to embrace spiritual freedom, that is, the strength of character and spirit to choose morals over comfort, values over desire, holiness over ambition, and God over the attractions world.