Vayigosh: trepidation

 Vayigosh: trepidation

I hear the gosh in VaYigosh,  The temptation to awkwardly  shuffle the feet, the knees knocking into each other  as Yehuda trembles in fear before Tzaphnas Panea (Joseph). 

Yehuda approaches, but he must keep his distance.  Yehuda is lowly and Joseph is great. Yhe pitiful brother from the pit is looking down with pity at the brother who sold him into slavery.  But Yehuda does not know that .  Yehuda is standing in front of the Great and Powerful  Zaphnas Paneah, distributor of food and his own idiosyncratic justice. Judah is cowardly lion and scarecrow in one. He has come to rescue his Dorothy, sacrifice himself so that she can go back to Kansas, so that Benjamin can go home. 

Toward the end of the parsha, Joseph acquires the world's wealth, establishing Pharaoh as the economic ruler of the world.  As the people sequentially hand over all their money, sell off their posessions, and ultimately sell themselves  for sustenance, they must approach Joseph. 

 I am sure that each time they approached the increasingly mighty viceroy, as they were progressively impoverished, their  trepidation increased.  It was hard to imagine that Joseph had sympathy for them. But Joseph's sympathy was a true and ambivalent sympathy that came from his own experience as a man betrayed by his brothers, a slave, and a prisoner.  He knew both sides of that story.  He knew how low a victim can descend and how high he rise.  And he he knew much of the role of Elokim, the master of fate, arbiter of justice, ruler of history.

Nelson Mandella seems to have had a Joseph quality.  He seems to have considered his misfortune, including his imprisonment, an opportunity to emerge and lead.  And when he emerged  to  lead, he was not vengeful to his former oppressors, he reconciled with them.