Living In-Touch With Time
There is a well-known idiom that one should live one’s life in touch with the times (ןָמְזַם הִת עֹיוְחִל). What this means is that a person should live in conjunction with the week’s Torah reading, with the weekly parashah. Every year, in every Jewish congregation, a portion of the Pentateuch called a parashah, is read publicly on Shabbat. Over the course of an entire year—from the holiday of Simchat Torah to the next holiday of Simchat Torah—the public reading of the entire Pentateuch is completed. So, to live in touch with time means to be aware of the eternal spiritual and practical message contained within the weekly parashah. A person who wants to live spiritually needs to connect his life with the weekly parashah and find guidance and focus from the parashah.
Parashat Vayigash describes the reunion of Joseph with his family. Earlier, the Torah described how for 22 years, Jacob, Joseph’s father had not seen him (after Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery). Jacob thought Joseph had been killed. When in parashat Vayigash he is finally told that indeed Joseph is still alive, he says, with tremendous excitement, “Joseph, my son, is still alive” expressing his extreme joy.
After the public Torah reading, a portion of the books of the Prophets, called the haftarah, is also read. The haftarah read in conjunction with Vayigash is from chapter 37 of the Book of Ezekiel. In it, God instructs Ezekiel to take two tree-branches, one symbolizing the House of Judah and the other the House of Joseph and to join these two branches together. Then by a miracle, God unites the two branches into one. This prophecy symbolizes how the two kingdoms of the nation at that time, the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was governed by the descendants of Joseph, the tribe of Ephraim (which is why at times, as in this particular prophecy, they are referred to as Ephraim), will unite. The Kingdom of Judah was site of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and thus they were more committed to learning Torah and performing its commandments than were the Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom, the kingdom of Ephraim.
Similarly, today there are Jews who are more observant and Jews who are less, even though all are Jewish. As much as in this world the Jewish people are two kingdoms, when the Mashiach will come, these two “kingdoms” will unite to become one tree. Understandably then, one of the central phrases in this prophecy, which makes up the haftarah of parashat Vayigash is, “the tree of Joseph” (ףֵסֹץ יוֵע). One of the links between the parashah and the haftarah is that this phrase has the exact same value as what Jacob said when he heard the good news about Joseph, “Joseph, my son, is still alive” (יַי חִנְּף בֵסֹד יוֹעו). They both equal 316. Obviously, this is a very important allusion to the special affinity between parashat Vayigash and this particular prophecy of Ezekiel’s that was chosen as the reading in the prophets for parashat Vayigash.
The Two Dimensions of Mashiach
The sages identify Joseph as representing the Mashiach, the son of Joseph. The Mashiach that we are all awaiting, who will rectify the entire world, has two dimensions to his character, one from Joseph and the other from David, who is from the tribe of Judah. Each of the tree-branches appearing in Ezekiel’s prophecy represents one dimension of the Mashiach.
The tree of Joseph represents the dimension in which the Mashiach engages in discourse with science to integrate it into Torah. But this is a very difficult task and is spiritually dangerous and can hurt this aspect of the Mashiach. For this reason, the sages state that the Joseph dimension of the Mashiach is always in danger of dying, as it were. But the David dimension of the Mashiach, the Mashiach son of David, represents the political power of peacemaking that relates to the construction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, a process that follows the integration between Torah and science achieved by the Joseph aspect of the Mashiach. The David aspect of Mashiach is always called alive.
One of the central themes of the Kabbalah of the Arizal is the elevation of the sparks. Our toil in our present reality to elevate the sparks is what gives the Mashiach son of Joseph—the Joseph dimension of Mashiach—the power to complete his task, allowing him to finally unite with the David dimension of Mashiach. This is the same unification as the one described in Ezekiel’s prophecy. Indeed, the gematria of Ezekiel’s name (אלֵקְזֶחְי) is the same as Joseph (ףֵסֹיו), hinting at the special affinity between the two figures.
Joseph’s Flock
As we know, the two kingdoms did not exile at the same time. First, the Northern Kingdom was conquered and its inhabitants, known as the Ten Tribes, were exiled by the Assyrian empire. Then, some 60 years later, the Southern Kingdom, the kingdom of Judah together with the tribe of Benjamin (and individual members of the Ten Tribes that were not exiled and remained in the Land of Israel) were conquered and exiled by the Babylonian empire.
The Jewish people today are mostly descendants of the Southern Kingdom, which is one of the reasons that we are called Jews, a shortened form of Judah. Ezekiel’s prophecy thus predicts that in the future unification under the Mashiach, the Ten Tribes that were exiled separately will be reunited with Judah (and Benjamin). This alludes to the fact that there are dispersed around the world today many people, who though they are not identified as Jews, have some distant kinship with the Jewish people. This manifests as a special feeling of affection that these individuals have for the Jewish people and for the Torah. All these individuals around the world are thus related to Joseph.
The tree of Joseph constitutes many people who though they are not Jewish on a physical level, connect to Judaism spiritually, and the spark that lies at the heart of their affinity with the Jewish people and with the Torah is still alive. Indeed, says Ezekiel, these will come together under Joseph’s tree and will be united with Judah’s tree so that they make one tree over which the Mashiach, whose soul is the soul of David, the king of Israel (who is very much alive), will rule.
In Ezekiel’s prophecy the united sovereignty over these two unified trees is described as their having, one king (ְךֶלֶמ), one shepherd (הֶעֹרו), and one president (יאִׂשָנ). The king must be both a shepherd and a president. Being a shepherd means guiding each individual in the flock and providing him or her with the spiritual and physical sustenance they require. The role of president in respect to the Mashiach encapsulates his role as the one who teaches the entire world Torah (not just the Jewish people), both the body of the Torah—i.e., the commandments—and the soul of the Torah, its inner dimension comprising the secrets and the Divine effluence that resides within the Torah, as it pertains to each and every individual.
(from a class given on the 6th of Tevet, 5771)
