Secret Ablution: Parashat Miqqetz/Hanukkah

Parashat MiqqetzParashat Miqqetz/Hanukkah
Genesis 41:1 – 44:17
Maftir: 
Numbers 7:48-59

Here, for the first and only time, the Torah tells us that someone washed their face.

The complex story of Joseph continues to unfold. He is raised from the dungeon to become the Viceroy of Egypt. He engineers things so that he is finally able to confront all his brothers. The brothers, who have been trying to support their families by buying provisions from the storehouses that Joseph has established, have been compelled, through Joseph’s stratagems, to bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, to meet this inscrutable ruler.
It is at the moment that Joseph finally sees his younger brother that the Torah reports one of the numerous emotional crescendos of this story: “And Joseph hurried – for his mercies had welled up toward his brothers, and he wanted to cry – so he entered the room and wept there. And he washed his face and came out and got control of himself and said, ‘Put out the bread.’” (Gen. 43:30 – 31)

The Torah takes pains in giving us the details of this moment. We need to hear that Joseph was on the brink of bursting into tears and had to hurry into a private room before he could cry. But we also need to hear how Joseph pulled himself together so as to continue on his chosen mission of uniting his entire family despite rampant jealousies, resentments, grudges and shame.

He washes his face before he goes back out to play his imperial role. In the Torah washing is mentioned as something people do in order to clean their dusty feet. Both Abraham and Lot urge their guests to do so. It is also a ritual practice that applies in the Tabernacle as a means of sanctifying sacrificial offerings and the priests who deal with them. But not once, before Joseph or later, will anyone wash their face.

This is an intensely private moment. It is a secret ablution. When the guests wash their feet, or in any of the other instances of washing mentioned in the Torah, their washing is to satisfy a social convention. But Joseph washes his face out of a private need. It is important for him that no one should know that he is doing this and that, afterwards, no one should know that he has done it. But it is equally important to the Torah that we should know his secret, nonetheless. We, only we, are vouchsafed this glimpse into his personal effort to bring his body and emotions into line.

He has cried. He has been overcome with compassion. But no one must know! His eyes have betrayed his heart by gushing with tears. How lucky he was to get into the room before they started to flow! Now he must erase their traces. He places his hands in the basin of cool water. He embraces his face, the face that his brothers do not recognize. He caresses himself the way his mother and father once did when he was small and beloved. The wet, salty tears mingle with the clean water. He remembers the pit, when his brothers threw him into it. It was empty, without any water. (Gen. 37:24) The gentle splashing of the water covers up the soft sounds of his sobbing.

He is as alone now as he was when he was in the pit. But each time he washes his face with handfuls of water he reminds himself that this time he is free and strong and in control. Now he will have to go out of this room, this temporary place of safety, and, his signs of weakness washed away, he will see whether he is strong enough to pull his brothers out of the pit into which they have thrown themselves.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukkah
Rabbi David Greenstein

 


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