There is no more dramatic interchange in the Chumash than the confrontation between Yehuda and Yosef at the opening of the Parasha. The effect of each on the other is staggering. Yehuda leaves Yosef inarticulate -- he goes off in tears. Yosef leaves all of the brothers unable to respond.
The power on each side does not come from rhetoric. Neither is a sophist, making the weaker case look stronger. They are not fooling anyone. The power comes from the fact that they have both captured the most potent of qualities: they have both said the truth. Very different truths but truths nonetheless.
It is easy to identify Yosef’s type of truth. He says little more than a declarative sentence: I am Yosef. There are horrendous implications to that statement, of course, and that is what silences his brothers. His asking if his father is still alive only underscores those implications. The Beis HaLevi highlighted that extra question 150 years ago. If Yosef has already been told multiple times that Yaakov is still alive, why does he ask again here? He is not asking because he doesn’t know. He’s asking in order to deliver a rebuke. Yehuda has said that if Binyamin does not come back, it will kill his father. Yosef responds, “did you think about that when you sent me off? Did my father survive then?”
With that rebuke, Yosef emphasizes that they have been caught, that he knows their lie and its cover-up, their grand scheme to undercut the dreams. That’s what happens when someone captures a simple but big truth, unvarnished -- worlds come tumbling down..
This is a type of truth we are used to. But what of Yehuda? He tells a story, a narrative some would call it today. But he’s not just telling his truth, as they say. His story is not just sad, a poignant tale of a family already torn apart by loss and threatened by further trauma. In fact, it’s not really the facts at all which capture Yosef’s attention. He has been told this story -- piecemeal -- before. Yoef is not learning anything new.
The truth of what Yehuda says comes in what he conveys in the story. He shows what he has learned. The telling demonstrates that Yehuda has conceded the truth. As he takes responsibility for Binyamin, Yosef can fill in the rest: This is not the way I acted with Yosef.
Whereas Yosef has stated the truth, Yehuda has admitted the truth. Stating the truth can be dangerous. One can be thought annoying, or worse. But it does not negate one’s self. Admitting the truth is a negation of self -- one has to admit failure, mistakes.
Yosef’s type of truth is like that of an angel. That’s why the Midrash associates it with the day of judgement. Such rebuke is what all of us will feel on the day of judgement. What did we do that undercut what we said?
But Yehuda’s type of truth springs from down here among the humans. It is a truth that cannot emerge from anywhere but down on earth. Someone has been soiled but now seeks to emerge.
The Midrash points out that Yosef’s name includes all of the letters of Hashem’s name except for the Hei, while Yehuda’s includes all of the letters including the Hei. The Hei is a letter of full expression in this world. Yosef hovers above the world but Yehuda is fully of this world.
These two have a hard time co-existing. In fact, they won’t co-exist, as the Haftara shows, until the future. They are both associated with the Mashiach. There is a Mashiach that stems from Yosef and one that stems from David (who comes from Yehuda). The final redemption needs to pass through both of them, and they must latch together. We experience them as starkly different but we must look forward to their combination, Bimheira biyameinu.
