"I forgive you." Those words are difficult to believe. Even if it's a member of your own family, it's hard to imagine that something we regret, something horrible that we did, could be sincerely excused. The beginning of every Jewish year is focused on this incredible quality of our Creator to forgive us. This quality runs so deep in God, that forgiveness was created before anything else in our world. Before we even started to fall away from God, before we even existed, a mechanism was installed in the world to allow us to return… no strings attached.
This week, our family's saga continues. Benjamin has been framed as the one who stole the cup from the Royal Viceroy (Joseph). Yehuda approaches Joseph in desperation, hoping to overturn the ruling that Benjamin must remain as a slave in Egypt. The brothers are at the end of their rope. Ever since they threw their brother into that pit, it's been nothing but trouble: the horrible famine, then they're captured as spies, Shimon is jailed as they try and convince Yaakov to let Benjamin come down to Egypt, and now Benjamin is facing imprisonment… OY! Salvation is the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Then, just when things seem darkest, an incredible solution unfurls. "Ani Yosef," I am Yosef. Huh? But of course he's Yosef, he's been Yosef all along. Why did that announcement suddenly make everything okay?
When Yosef revealed himself to his brothers, he begged them to let bygones be bygones. Says the Ishbtzer Rebbe, it was clear to him that all the events that had transpired were absolutely necessary to place him in Egypt with the ability to amass food to survive the famine. All of a sudden, the horrors that had transpired these past few years were infused with a completely new meaning. Yehuda and his brothers had been seeing the events of the recent past as taking them further away from God, from unity as a family, from a real connection to their own souls. But that was only the mask. Beneath it lay the truth of their redemption. That's beautiful. But it's also incredibly cruel. Why did Yosef torment them for so long? Why didn't he reveal his true identity at the first possible opportunity? What was he waiting for?
When Yehuda approached Joseph to demand Benjamin's release, he went through a whole song and dance merely recounting, in great detail, the all-too-familiar events that led to Benjamin's capture. At the end of all that, the only thing he adds is a proposal to stay as a slave in his younger brother's stead. This, from the Yehuda who masterminded Joseph's sale into slavery, who led the family through the thick and thin of the entire fiasco, who prided himself on being the ultimate pragmatist. Couldn't he have come up with a more convincing argument? Well, thank God he didn't. "Ani Yosef." Yosef had been waiting all these years to say that to his brothers, but he was waiting for them, for Yehuda, to see that logic only went so far. Finally, explains Rav Natan Greenberg, Yehuda had touched the place of "emet l'amitah," deepest truth. Yehuda wasn't able to use reason anymore. All he was left with was real, deep anger. Anger not at Yosef, but at himself. Anger at the way he had witheld Shalom, peace, from their family. Once Yehuda's mask comes off, Yosef can remove his, too.
Tshuva (reconnecting to essence) isn't only about fixing yourself, it's about fixing the world. Yosef and Yehuda are the two halves of our self. The dreamer and the realist, the vision and the plan, the soul and the body. For years, it seemed to Yehuda that those two sides would always be at war. But all along, the force of the world kept bringing the two together in order to bring about the tshuva, the ultimate reconnection, that was so desperately needed to heal the world. "Vayigash," and he came close. May we all let each other come close. Close enough to remove the masks we wear. Close enough to see what's behind it.