Gandhi famously taught: “Be the change that you wish to see
in the world.” Our biblical ancestor
Judah embodies this teaching in our weekly parashah, Vayigash.
In one of the longest and most heroic speeches in the Torah,
Judah sacrifices himself for the sake of his father Jacob and his younger
brother Benjamin. Decades after his complicity
in selling Joseph into slavery, Judah is a changed man. He has suffered enormously, losing two
sons. He has also transgressed—and
publicly acknowledged his failings.
Judah transforms his personal pain and shortcomings into profound
spiritual growth. As Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
notes: “This is the measure of Judah's
greatness: his tragedy becomes the soil for empathy, compassion, forgiveness,
and self-sacrifice. He was the one to step forward when the hour demanded it
because he was the one who knew that to redeem himself out of his own past
mistakes and accumulated grief, he had to extend himself for the redemption of
others.”
The Rabbis
refer to Joseph as HaTzadik, “the
righteous one.” He is a powerful and
important figure in our tradition. But
his almost too-pious righteousness renders him a little remote and
distant. It is hard to relate to, and
engage with, Joseph. Most of us connect
more easily with Judah, the deeply-flawed man who wrestles with his moral
choices and grows from his struggles.
The midrash recognizes his greatness by pointing out that his name, Yehudah, contains all four letters of God’s
Name, (yud-hey-vav-hey)—and is the
origin of our collective name, yehudim, Jews. Judah is also the progenitor of King David
and, by extension, the messiah. The
messianic hope for an age of peace, justice, and compassion can only be realized
if we, collectively and individually, commit ourselves to the kind of
self-reflection and spiritual growth that we learn from Judah.
The
greatest heroes are not born but are always in the process of becoming. This is Judah’s legacy for us.
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