Did Jacob cry when he saw Joseph again?

Amid the release of numerous terrorists from Israeli jails and a pause in the battle to eliminate Hamas, we have been celebrating the return of some of our hostages. The cost has been huge, but the euphoric reunions have enthralled Jews everywhere. Now, we await the hostages’ rehabilitation, as they contend with the physical and mental scars of their captivity.

We have biblical precedent for such reunions. Twenty-two years after Joseph was snatched by his brothers and sold into Egyptian slavery, he is reunited with his father Jacob. The parallels to our situation are fascinating.

When Jacob hears that his son is alive, living as a prince in Egypt, he vows to visit him. Yet, as Jacob reaches Beersheba, fear sets in. He realises that reuniting with his son entails abandoning the Promised Land, crossing the border into Egypt and possibly triggering future slavery for his people.

It feels like an awful compromise, but God reassures him that he should make the journey. Things will work out and seeing his son, at least in this case, takes precedence over preventing potential persecution.

So Jacob goes down to Egypt and the reunion is poignant. According to one midrash, in the ecstasy of seeing his father, Joseph abandons royal protocol, leaps off his chariot and hurls himself around Jacob’s neck.

Jacob too is jubilant. He declares that he is now ready to die; although it is unclear why one of the two men weeps, but the Torah does not tell us which. Our commentators debate the point. The Ramban is sure it’s Jacob. According to him, the ageing patriarch peered out; struggling to recognise his beloved son. But when he did, he wept, just as he has for the last two decades.

Another midrash amplifies the complexity of this meeting. It explains that Joseph no longer looked nor sounded like the 17-year-old shepherd that Jacob remembered. Joseph had matured, married and moved on. Now, confronted by this elegant, Egyptian prince, doted upon by local women, Jacob was uncomfortable.

In order to demonstrate love, this grieving father needed reassurance that his son was still faithful to the family’s principles.

But, perhaps Jacob couldn’t cry at all. The father of one Israeli captive confided in me that on the day that his son was captured, his world blackened. Without his son, there was no light.

Recently, parents of the hostages have declared that they were too weary to hope or to weep any more. Maybe, that is how Jacob felt. He had no more tears left. When Jacob declares, “Now I can die”, the 16th- century Italian scholar Sforno suggests he is saying, “I am so exhausted, I have no more strength to face any more troubles.”

My teacher, Rabbi Riskin suggests that at the long-awaited meeting, Jacob not only needed to re-evaluate his relationship with Joseph, he also had to reconfigure his own faith. Decades ago, the news of Joseph’s disappearance had broken him. He refused to be comforted by his family and for the 22 years that he grieved, he had no direct contact with God either.

But, now at the news that his son was alive, communication with God was restored and so too was Jacob’s faith in God’s vision for Jewish people. That is why a midrash suggests that perhaps while Joseph cried, Jacob said the Shema. Now, he could proudly proclaim his faith and his willingness to serve God with all his heart and soul. His life feels complete and that is why he is ready to die.

For some, it may seem strange that while his son was weeping on his shoulder, Jacob should pray. Some commentators like the Malbim (1809-1879) see this as an indication of his intense piety. Jacob’s gratitude to God totally overwhelmed the joy he felt at seeing his son.

But the head of my yeshivah, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (1933-2015), disagrees. He insists that the ability to treasure our human ties while maintaining total reverence for God is a hallmark of religious greatness. Emotions are also a gift from God and a means of appreciating his creations. The Talmud teaches that the greater the person, the greater their impulses. So the spiritual value of sensitive, emotional responses should not be minimised.

This perhaps helps us to understand the families who danced ecstatically with a Sefer Torah while celebrating their daughters’ release. But we also know that after the initial euphoria of the reunions, the former hostages and their families will face new challenges in restoring relationships.

Like Joseph and Jacob, they will find themselves facing family members who have changed during each other’s absence. They will have to adapt. Hopefully like our forefathers, they will find divine and familial support as they emerge from their harrowing experiences to rebuild their lives.

Gideon Sylvester is the United Synagogue’s Israel rabbi