Mikeitz
Do we recognize our children?
Do we recognize our students?
The parsha informs us that as the brothers stood before Yosef in Egypt they surprisingly did not recognize him. This is astounding since we are told that Yosef’s features were exactly like those of his father, Yaakov. Granted, he perhaps sported a beard but as a brother with whom they had intimate contact, Yosef should have appeared very familiar to them. Yet throughout the many interactions in Egypt the brothers do not recognize him until Yosef, himself, reveals his identity. What prevented the shvatim from recognizing their own brother?
Chazal tell us that the brothers went looking for Yosef in the slums and gang-ridden areas of Egypt. They figured that Yosef, sold as a seventeen year old, would end up as a low-life in Egypt, perhaps in some place of ill repute. It was not in their wildest dreams to find Yosef, as “Yosef hatzadik,” king of Egypt. Because they failed to recognize the inner greatness and potential of their brother, they could not even see him clearly, bowing before him. How can it be that our teen age brother growing up away from his parents’ home in idol-worshipping Egypt, can be the righteous powerful monarch before us? It can’t be!
That is why the Torah tells us that the brothers were so stunned when Yosef revealed his identity. They simply could not believe that they miscalculated the inner greatness and potential in their brother. This miscalculation is what prevented the brothers from recognizing Yosef’s face.
We find an amazingly similar misperception in the Navi when Shmuel goes to the home of Yishai to select the next king from his many sons. Even after Shmuel rejects each of them, Yishai could not fathom that his son, Dovid, would be the next King of Yisrael, and ancestor of Mashiach. He never saw the deep potential and spirituality contained within Dovid, viewing him as a mere shepherd, with a shepherd personality and a shepherd intellect.
So, we educators and parents, need to ask ourselves, “Do we recognize our own children? Do we recognize our own students?”
Are we able to see the inner greatness in them, the unique talents and skills they possess, who they can become? Sometimes, our own self-talk under-estimates the power within our children. We envision them ending up in inferior stations in life when we should be seeing them as princes, kings, presidents, rabbis, talmidei chachamim! We must be careful that we never unintentionally convey inferior worthiness to our children, never to lower the bar for them, when in fact, they can jump higher than we ever imagined.
