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Shabbat Parashat Shemot 5786

Parashat Hashavua: Leadership of Yosef – For How Long?

Harav Yosef Carmel

In the beracha of Yosef in last week’s parasha, Yaakov calls Yosef the crowned head of his brothers (Bereishit 49:26). This clearly gives Yosef a position of leadership vis a vis his brothers. Let us notice three stresses in the pasuk:

1. Yaakov stresses that he is transferring the berachot that he received from his parents and that the berachot were being elevated (gavru).

2. Two words are used to describe Yosef’s head (representing stature): rosh and kodkod.

3. The image of the crown of his brothers (n’zir echav) is invoked.

On the other hand, as we begin Sefer Shemot, the family/national leadership seems to be transferred to the Tribe of Levi (through Moshe), whose patriarch is actually castigated by Yaakov. To follow the process of leadership shifts, let us look at what happened after Yosef died and then after Moshe died.

We do not have a lot of information on the period between Yosef’s death (which seals Sefer Bereishit) and the rise of the new king in Egypt who “did not know Yosef” (Shemot 1:8). There is pertinent information elsewhere in Tanach and in corresponding passages of Chazal. Tehillim (78:9) refers to the sons of Ephrayim (Yosef’s son) as warriors, within a psalm that deals with the period of the exile in Egypt. Chazal send us to Divrei Hayamim (I, 7:20-22), which tells us of the death of sons of Ephrayim who were killed by the people of Gat when they went there with their cattle. P’sikta D’Rabbi Kahana (Beshalach 11) tell us that groups within Ephrayim made a mistake in calculating the end of the exile in Egypt, which caused a very large number of them to be killed.

The picture that we get is that as Ephrayim had been chosen by Yaakov to be leader of Yosef’s family and thus of the emerging nation, he used his influence among Israel and Egypt to embark on an armed excursion to Eretz Yisrael in order to pave the way for an Israelite return. This premature effort to bring liberation, ending in great failure, caused Ephrayim’s leadership to lapse, and the actual liberation to move to Moshe the Levite.

However, Yosef/Ephrayim’s special status was not over. As Moshe was about to die, he passed on his leadership to Yehoshua bin Nun from the Tribe of Ephrayim. In his beracha for the Tribe of Yosef, Moshe again invoked the words “rosh, kodkod, and n’zir echav” (Devarim 33:16).

How long did Yosef’s prominence last? In the same perek of Tehillim, the Mishkan in Shilo is referred to as “the tent of Yosef,” and the pasuk concludes that Hashem “did not chose the Tribe of Ephrayim” (see Tehillim 78:60-67). While the p’sukim talk of the fall of Shilo, this took place only at the end of the period of the Judges. During this period, the majority of the judges were from the family of Yosef and/or the tribes connected to the matriarch Rachel. (In my upcoming Tzofnat Shmuel, you will be able to learn in depth about the reasons behind the assumption of the mantle of leadership by Yehuda, the son of Leah.)

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Shemot 5786
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Shemot 5786