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A classic klutzkashe – that is, a silly question – is how we know that our father Abraham wore a yarmulke. Well of course we know Abraham wore a yarmulke, because would a pious Jew like Abraham walk around without a yarmulke?
The question is trickier than it seems at first blush, because our Sages wanted to imagine that their holy work of studying the Torah went all the way back to Abraham and, thus, the founding of the Jewish faith. But there was a huge problem, and the question of Abraham and the yarmulke alludes to it - how could Abraham have studied the Torah, when in fact the Torah hadn’t yet been given?
The Sages therefore resorted to certain Scriptural “clues” in an effort to “prove” that the patriarchs studied the Torah. In this week’s portion, Vayigash, there is a superlative example of this. In order to be sure that it was really Joseph the brothers were seeing in Egypt, Jacob devised a test based on his study with his son. Thus we read in Braishit Rabbah 95:3:
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Jacob recollected at what subject Joseph had left him (when they had been studying Torah together), and he said to himself, I know that Joseph left me at the passage of the beheaded heifer (eglah arufah, Deuteronomy 21), and so he said to his sons, “If the man gave you a sign at what subject he left me, I will believe you.” Now Joseph too had remembered at what subject he had left him, so what did he do? He gave his brothers wagons, “And Joseph gave to them wagons (agalot, plural of eglah). This teaches us that Jacob studied the Torah, even though it had not been given.
It’s hard to overstate the cleverness of this passage. First, the eglah arufah
is a ritual which was performed to expiate an unsolved killing. And of course Jacob, presented with Joseph’s bloody tunic, believed his son had been mysteriously killed – until now, when the crime would be “solved.” Second, it makes father and son into study partners, anchoring their special relationship not in gifts of favoritism but in sacred learning. Third, it provides a vehicle to verify Joseph’s identity, which has not been revealed but which the midrash believes Jacob correctly senses.
And finally, it “proves” the antiquity of Torah study even in the pre-Sinai period.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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