Miller's Musings Parshas Mikeitz: No Pain, No Grain

בס''ד

It all seemed to be going perfectly to plan.  Yosef’s brothers had no idea who he was, he had managed to bring his brothers back down to Egypt for more grain just as he had requested and now he had surreptitiously placed his goblet in the sack of Binyomin.   It was almost time for the final act to play out.  But first the accusations.  First the servant of Yosef reproaches them for taking the goblet that “my master drinks from.  And he surely divines with it!” and Yosef himself points to the fact that this chalice was a special one. “Don’t you know that a man like me practices divination!”.  It seems to be a rather intriguing detail that Yosef feels is vital to convey, that he performed divination. But why?

All of Yosef’s plans hinged on one thing; the ability to conceal his identity from his brothers.  Anything that would aid this deception would have been utilised to ensure everything would occur as he hoped.  The concept of divination is something that is the antithesis of Jewish belief.  As Reb Shimshon Rephoel Hirsch explains, the root of the Hebrew word for divination is identical to that of a snake, because just as a snake does not move directly forward, but rather from side to side, the practice of divination is one in which you try to circumvent the normal direct cause and effect and move towards a goal without having to work in a straight line towards it.  Yosef wanted to convince them that he was who he claimed to be, and therefore identified himself with a system that was anathema to his true principles of faith, in which our purpose is only achieved through working purposefully and tenaciously towards it, with no shortcuts and no alternative routes.

Although this might not be what we all want to hear, the fact is that Judaism believes that nothing of true value is ever attained without effort.  Any method that purports to provide instant eternal reward or a means that bypasses the usual work required, is nothing but a fraudulent imitation of the true realities of the role Hashem has given us.  We believe that the next world is a consequence of our actions in this world and that part of the ultimate good that we receive is due to the fact that we ourselves have created that good and deserve it due to the struggles we have overcome and the tests that we have succeeded in.  We only reap that which we have sown.  Anything less is not only a fallacy but lessens the worth of the infinite pleasure we can obtain.

*May the purity of Shabbos motivate us onwards and upwards*

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