I recently moved to a new position at work which required moving to a different site. It is kind of disorienting. Every so often I will be walking down the hall and I’ll find the face of a passer-by familiar. If I’m lucky, he’ll be struck with the same pang of recognition and we’ll slow down and stare at each other as we pass by.

Sometimes, we’ll stop and he’ll say, “Hey, Ari, how have you been?!” and I’ll reply, “Hey, You[1], I’m well, thank you! What have you been up to these years?!” Turns out we both worked on David’s Sling or Iron Dome or Popeye or some other program. This has happened many times over the past few weeks but, strangely, it has never happened with my brother. Whenever I see him, no matter how long it has been since we last met, we always manage to recognize each other.

Joseph’s brothers, convinced that he is trying to destroy the Jewish People, sell him to the Ishmaelites, who are headed to Egypt, and Joseph ends up enslaved to Potiphar, the Egyptian Royal Executioner. After a short stint in jail for a crime he did not commit, Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and is crowned Grand Vizier, second in charge only to Pharaoh and directly responsible for the Egyptian food supply chain during a famine that he predicted.

The same famine hits the Land of Israel and when Jacob and his family run out of food, he sends his sons to Egypt to purchase grain. Joseph is personally overseeing the distribution of grain and he eventually ends up face-to-face with his brothers. But here is the thing – apparently they suffer from the same syndrome described in the previous paragraph [Bereishit 42:8]: “Joseph recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him.” How does this happen? How can one not recognize his own brother? A cadre of medieval commentators led by Rashi[2] suggest that Joseph was unrecognizable to his brothers because he had grown a beard in the thirteen years since they last saw him. He could recognize them because they already had beards when they threw him into the pit. The problem with the medieval solution is that Joseph was only a year or two younger than some of his brothers.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)