Vayigash Parsha Lesson- Trustworthiness
For Year 2 of Parsha Lesson, I will be focusing on one practical middah, character trait, to think about in the week ahead and steps we can take to attain it.
Background
At the beginning of this week’s Parsha, we have the famous confrontation between Yehuda and Yosef. Yehuda confronted Yosef, who was threatening to take Binyamin as a slave, over Binyamin having been caught “stealing” Yosef’s cup.
During the confrontation Yehuda says to Yosef ‘for you are like Pharoah.’ What exactly did Yehuda mean? Among the different explanations that Rashi gives, Rashi says that Yehuda was telling Yosef that he, Yosef, is untrustworthy- just like Pharoah. How did Yehuda prove to Yosef that Pharoah was untrustworthy? From the fact that there was a law in Egypt that a slave cannot be in a position of leadership and that Pharoah had anyways appointed Yosef to a position of leadership!
The Maharshal explains that the purpose of why Yehuda was saying this to Yosef was in order to make him feel insecure in his position- if Pharoah is an untrustworthy person, he cannot be trusted to protect you in your position.
Question
R’ Henoch Leibowitz z”l asked- why would this make Yosef LESS trusting of Pharoah, if anything it should make him MORE trusting of Pharoah! Pharoah broke the laws of Egypt- for Yosef’s benefit! Doesn’t that show that Pharoah really likes Yosef and will do good with him- even if it is at the expense of bending the rules!?
Answer
Even though this time, in appointing Yosef to his prestigious position, Pharoah had broken the laws FOR Yosef, the next time he is just as likely to break the laws AGAINST Yosef.
Yehuda was sharing with Yosef the insight into humanity that someone who is not trustworthy is not reliable and cannot be trusted- even by those that they currently are favoring and are breaking the rules for their benefit.
If Pharoah was not a trustworthy person, as was proven by the fact that he summarily trounced on his own law, he could not be trusted, period. The fact that right now he seemed to favor Yosef should be no comfort to Yosef- being that tomorrow Yosef could fall out of favor. And if Yosef were to fall out of favor, Pharoah could not be relied upon to follow rules, procedures and a reasonable code of conduct- as was evidenced by his violation of Egypt’s laws.
Lesson
All actions and behaviors that a person does must be scrutinized from all angles. At the moment they may accomplish the goal that a person is happy with, but the action itself may lead a person to behavior that they are less than proud of.
For a person to be trustworthy and honest means that they are trustworthy and honest always. If a person can only sometimes be trusted and only with some people be honest- what that really means is that they are not trustworthy and honest. To a person who needs a good calculation or goal in order to be truthful- the truth itself is not important to them, it is merely a means to an end.
Parents are often placed in a position of both making rules and having to negotiate those very rules that they made. A parent can often think that they are doing their child a favor by ‘breaking the rules’ for them. Often what they could be doing is destroying the trust that their child feels in them and their own trustworthiness and reliability.
First Step
The great Mussar Sages, the Rabbis who study Ethics and Character Development, place a tremendous importance on a person standing by his word and seeing to it that it is carried out faithfully. This is very important for a person’s character development.
A person should start by both being careful of the high expectations that they set for themselves with regards to obligations that they have to others, and also by being insistent that whatever they did give their word for is fulfilled as they said. A person can start with one person, with one area of their behavior- with the goal to branch out from there and to become a truly trustworthy and reliable, and honest, person.
Have a wonderful Shabbos!
Rabbi Eli Meir Kramer
