Vayigash
How can we release our clinging to one narrative?
Reflection by Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg:
"Feelings run deep. There is a lot of weeping in this parsha and throughout the Joseph narratives.
We read, `He then fell weeping upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed all his brothers and wept with them…` (Gen 45:14-15).
When Jacob later arrives in Egypt, we read: `Joseph harnessed his chariot and went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen; he presented himself to him and threw himself on his neck, weeping all the time` (Gen 46:29). The text is ambiguous. Who is the one weeping here? Is it Joseph or Jacob? Well, we know Joseph is a big crier. In fact, in his Biblical saga, he cries 8 times. The commentator Rashi goes with that. Joseph cried and Jacob recited the Shema, he writes. This suggests that Jacob’s level of emotion after 22 years believing his beloved son was dead is a spiritual response. He moves his consciousness into the unity of God’s love which is greater than any emotion a person might express. These men experience a reversal of their idea of what is true, what is right, what is one’s fate.
Tears are one way of releasing attachment to the way things are, and so is prayer/meditation. Both forms of expression allow release of our certainty, our clinging to one identity or one narrative.
We pray that we can take inspiration from the expansion of love and connection among Jacob and Joseph amidst our own awareness of the unpredictability and storminess of the external conditions they and we experience."