Parashat Vayigash: Drawing Near in a Time of Siege While the Light Remains

Hanukkah is already behind us. We have extinguished the candles—but not their light. Because the real question was never how brightly the ḥanukkiyah burned, but what kind of Jewish light we are capable of carrying with us once the festivals end and the unadorned season begins. 

This week we entered the month of Tevet—an austere month, without celebrations, that confronts us with history stripped bare. In Tevet there are no visible miracles; there is memory. On the 10th of Tevet, which we will commemorate next Tuesday, we mark the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. Not the destruction yet, but something perhaps more unsettling: the moment when the siege begins and the outcome feels inevitable. That is why this day is also Yom HaKaddish HaKlali, when we recite Kaddish for the victims of the Shoah whose dates of death are unknown—for lives cut short, for names without graves, for a memory that refuses to let us look away.

Within this frame we read Parashat Vayigash, one of the most moving—and most uncomfortable—portions in the entire Torah. After twenty-two years of separation, pain, silence, and deception, Joseph encounters his brothers again. But the Torah does not offer us a sentimental scene. It presents something profoundly human and profoundly political. The question is not only whether they will be reunited, but how.

Will there be truth? Will there be responsibility? Will there be repair?

Our sages explain that Joseph does not reveal himself immediately because he is waiting for something essential: that his brothers have changed—that they will no longer abandon the weakest among them, that they will no longer sell another in order to save themselves. True reconciliation is not born of forgetting, but of moral transformation.

And yet, the parashah does not end with a fairy-tale ending. The family is reunited, yes—but in exile. Unity does not yet return them to the Promised Land. The story of Israel in Egypt begins precisely after the reunion. Because sometimes reconciliation is only the first step… and the cost of survival remains high.

Everything begins with a gesture. The parashah takes its name from that gesture: Vayigash—“and he drew near.” Judah approaches the man he believes to be Egypt’s viceroy and speaks from the depths of his heart. He pleads for compassion for his elderly father. He offers to remain as a slave in place of his younger brother, Benjamin. In that instant, Joseph understands that something fundamental has changed: his brothers have learned that tearing a child away from a parent is an irreparable harm—that the pain inflicted in the past cannot be repeated.

The Midrash lingers on the word vayigash, because the Torah rarely describes the physical movement preceding a conversation. Here it is no accident. Bereishit Rabbah offers three readings of vayigash: drawing near for war, drawing near for conciliation, and drawing near for prayer. Rabbi Elazar concludes: sometimes one must be prepared for all three—depending on the moment, depending on the truth at stake.

The brothers were in conflict—like so many brothers, like so many neighboring peoples, like so many wounded intimacies we see today. Joseph’s story was not resolved by throwing him into a pit, nor by selling him, nor by pretending he no longer existed. Healing begins when someone dares to draw near in a different way—not to erase the past, but to take responsibility for it and to act.

When Judah speaks, Joseph can no longer maintain the disguise. “I am Joseph, your brother,” he says, breaking down in tears. How desperately we need to hear those words again. How urgently we need someone to dare say to the other: I am your brother—despite everything. Despite history, inherited narratives, learned hatred. Let us keep walking together as the brothers we are.

It is no coincidence that it is Judah who steps forward. The Torah has told his life with unusual detail. We know his failures, his falls, and the responsibility he assumed—late, perhaps, but truly. Standing before one of the most powerful men of the ancient world, the representative of a regime that claimed divinity, Judah does not choose neutrality. He is prepared even for confrontation if that is what it takes to protect his brother.

There are moments in history that do not tolerate lukewarmness—moments when ḥutzpah, moral courage, is the only possible response. And it is there that an ordinary person can suddenly become a leader—not by power, but by responsibility. It is no accident that the Davidic dynasty descends from Judah.

All of this resonates powerfully in our own time. We live in days when antisemitism is once again globalizing, when ancient libels return in new language, when the siege—symbolic and sometimes real—tightens. Like Tevet: not everything is destroyed yet, but the siege has already begun.

Vayigash confronts us with an urgent question: Will we be able to remain united without denying the truth? To pass through crisis without erasing responsibility? To kindle light—like on Hanukkah—without naïveté, but without hatred?

Jewish light is not escapism. It is memory. It is moral courage. It is the decision not to abandon a brother, even when history is hard.

May we learn to carry the light of Hanukkah into the month of Tevet. May we learn from Joseph that authentic reconciliation demands change. And may we remember that even in exile, identity, memory, and mutual responsibility are what sustain us as a people.

For when a brother is abandoned, the siege is already underway. And when hatred is normalized, the world grows dark again.

Our response cannot be fear or silence. It is to draw near. To hold fast. To refuse to be quiet. To assume responsibility—and to ensure that no one, no matter how powerful, extinguishes the light. Even in Tevet.

Because that is the last frontier before darkness. 

Rabbi Gustavo Geier