Parashat: Miketz

Parashat: Miketz
Torah Reading: Numbers 7:24–35

“So B’nei Yisrael (the sons of Israel) came to purchase (grain) in the midst of all of the others who had come to purchase, for there was famine throughout the land of Canaan.”

— Genesis 42:5

In this week’s parshah, Miketz, for the very first time we find the phrase “B’nei Yisrael,” here meaning quite literally the actual sons of Israel/Jacob. But it is of note that this is one of the primary terms that will come to describe the Jewish people as a collective whole — the sense that we are all descendants of the sons of Israel/Jacob, and throughout Jewish literature and into the current day, the term really means the whole people of Israel. I am struck by the idea that this term is first used at a moment of crisis and existential uncertainty. The family is on the brink of starvation and needs to turn to Egypt for support and the ability to purchase sufficient food in order to just survive. Perhaps it took just such a difficult and fraught moment in order for these “sons of Israel/Jacob” to pull together and act collectively as a family, to cooperate in such a way that they could see their individual survival was only through the collective survival of the family. Each of the brothers, who would become the 12 tribes of Israel, were bound to one another in history and destiny. But there is a further detail here that is important: They arrived in Egypt to purchase grain “in the midst of all of the others.” This is to say that the people of Israel never really dwells alone: we are also bound to those who are our neighbors, our friends and allies, who will stand with us in our times of need and peril (whether it is their time of need and peril or not). These Righteous Nations of the World are those who are our strength in moments of need from biblical times until the current day and into the future. May we know the solidarity that is necessary to become truly B’nei Yisrael. And may we know that we are connected to and supported by righteous neighbors and allies, with whose fate ours is also bound.

— Rabbi Craig Axler