Before participating in NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the host Peter Sagal will ask contestants to tell a little about themselves. Most phone-in callers will offer a job title in response, to which Peter will offer a quip depending on how interesting or uninteresting that job is to him. But, on occasion, the call-in participant will go in a different direction describing their kids or their hobbies. I find these moments so interesting as they reveal how hard it can be to describe ourselves in just a few words. None of us are just one thing, representing different things to different people at different times of their lives.
Reading this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, I was struck by a moment in the sixth Aliyah when Pharaoh asks Joseph’s brothers about their profession. This is a loaded question as it could determine where they will place in Egypt and whether they will be accepted fully into their new society. “We, your servants, are shepherds,” they say in Genesis 47:3, emphasizing a profession needed in Egyptian society, one they think Pharaoh will like. But that is not their full answer, because they also add, “and we are fathers.”
I loved seeing that in the Torah because despite all the many ways I’m known in the world, fatherhood is probably my favorite. To be able to raise my three children is the hardest job I’ll ever have, and my greatest honor. This little insight into Joseph’s brothers reveals a lot about their overall character. Despite everything they did to Joseph earlier in their lives, this one answer redeems them in my book. How wonderful to know that that’s how they were able to identify themselves to Pharaoh. I wonder what Peter Sagal would have said in response.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex