Thank you, now give me more - Vayetzei 5785

A woman has been married for many years and not been able to have children.  For many decades she has suffered, seeing all her friends with many children and yearning for a child of her own.  Finally the miracle happens and she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a healthy boy.  You can imagine her intense joy and happiness, and she expresses that in the name she gives her son.... Give me another one?

This seems to be exactly what our mother Rachel did.  After many years watching her sister Leah give birth to seven children and the house maidservants have two each, she finally has a son, and she names him Yosef, which means “he will add.”  

The Torah clearly states her intent - “Yosef Hashem li ben acher,” typically translated as “May Hashem add for me another son.”  While of course there can be many explanations for this, like perhaps that she was excited about her ability now to have children and was praying to be able to augment her part as a mother in Israel, it does seem strange.

There are many legitimate ways to interpret the Torah, on many levels, and Chassidus gives us a mystical insight into what Rachel really meant by this name and this statement.  The word for “another” in the above verse is “acher,” which implies more than just another in number.  Acher is used to refer to someone who is different, other.  Like the sage Elisha ben Avuya who became an apostate and violated the Torah, and was named by his colleagues Acher, the other one.

So we can parse this verse a little differently.  Yosef Hashem li, may Hashem add for me, Ben, a son, Acher, from the “other.”  What Rachel was saying prophetically was that Yosef would have the ability to transform the “others” into children of Hashem.

This fits very well with Yosef’s life, in contrast to his brothers.  The other brothers were shepherds who kept to themselves out on the fields.  They were holy people who connected to Hashem on a high level of spirituality and shunned the outside world and its influences.  Yosef, on the other hand, took a different approach.  He engaged with the world, and rather than succumbing to its temptations, he brought goodness and light into the darkness.  

This was one of the sources of conflict between the brothers.  Yosef’s dreams implied that his way was right when the sheaves of wheat and the son, moon and the stars bowed down to him.  But his brothers felt that the insular life was superior and that Yosef was moving away from the tradition of his family.

In the end it turned out that Yosef was right.  As long as they lived peacefully in Israel and had the luxury of not engaging with the rest of the world, they could remain aloof and purely spiritual.  But Yosef knew that this was not to be our future destiny.  He knew that we would be in exile in the spiritual cesspool of Egypt and would be forced to live in an environment steeped in corruption and immorality.  This kind of life requires a very different approach - to engage the world and transform it.  

According to this interpretation, Rachel’s explanation of the name Yosef was not about adding another son.  It was a description of his life’s work - to turn the “Acher” - the other, the darkness, into a son - to bring him back into the family and to Hashem.

  

Our Sages taught that it was Yosef’s approach in Egypt that set the tone and gave the inspiration for future generations to be able to survive as faithful children of Hashem throughout the bitter exiles and spiritual persecution.

The Rebbe said many times that emulating Yosef is our work.  When we see that so many seem to have sunk into “acherhood” (I made that up), our response is never to give up on a single Jew.  We have the ability and power, and the inspiration from Yosef, to bring that person back under the wings of the Shechina (Hashem’s Presence) and to be a true “Ben’ - a child of Hashem worthy of the title.