At the beginning of the parsha, Ya’akov seems to resist blessing Yosef’s children. Verses 8-9 tell us he sees them and asks who they are. Malbim thinks it started with their dress, their having adopted the style of the Egyptian court. Yosef clearly was allowed to dress this way, because it was necessary for his political position, and the Gemara tells us of people close to non-Jewish rulers allowed to ignore some halachot regarding improper mixing (he names the family of Rabban Gamliel, whom Sotah 49b tells us studied Greek wisdom].
Ya’akov saw them dressed like Egyptians, and couldn’t imagine they were still faithful to the family traditions. Yosef responds they are his sons, fully righteous, dress as they do because they are whom Hashem has given him ba-zeh, in this place, where the situation necessitates it.
[For a Jew who thinks of him/herself as Modern or Centrist Orthodox, this is a fascinating comment, because it recognizes times when it is important to adopt non-Jewish practices. I think Egyptian dress would be particularly fraught, because tradition says they dressed deliberately licentiously. Yet Malbim can imagine people who dress that way by force of circumstance and remain faithful to tradition.
To add to the comment’s remarkable quality, remember that much of Malbim’s rabbinic career, from at least age fifty and on, involved struggles with growing Reform tendencies, among whose first goals were to reduce their difference of appearance from non-Jews, such as by shaving their beards.
Despite his personal story, he could still envision situations where looking like non-Jews did not have to mean loss of connection to God, faith, and observance.]
I’m not sure that’s a psychological insight like our first two, but it does round out a week where our commentators educate us on how to keep our lives on a good path, to understand the layers of our emotions/thoughts, know which we can put aside when necessary, to recognize the necessity of a strong sense of core self, and to see where/if we can mix in with those around us without cost to our connection to what’s more important, our service of God.
