Joseph Corners Jacob: Freedom is the Recognition of Necessity

The situations Yaakov had to finesse to be able to preserve harmony in his home would be deemed insurmountable by any human standards. The Torah itself attests to the impossibility of having two wives: "Were a man to have two wives, the one who is loved, and the one who is hated… (Ki Tetze)." The Torah essentially attests to the reality of two wives in one home causing friction, and acrimony, with that result being incontrovertible; whenever a man has to two wives, one will feel loved, the other hated.

Yaakov, as is universally known, had no say in the matter – mission impossible in every sense of the word! And he did it ever so beautifully, walking the finest of lines, his wives competing to be with him, competing to have more of his children, to lay the groundwork down of what would become the "12 tribes of Israel."

It was a mean task, one nobody would envy. Competition, strife, a father-in-law with little sympathy and who ran him to the ground. And still, Yaakov straddled that very fine line, eschewing preferential treatment amongst his wives, and for the most part, his children.

But, in the Torah portion of Vayigash, we see that when push came to shove, Joseph needed Yaakov to admit that he, Joseph, was not the one causing the jealousy that was ever so palpable, but rather Yaakov himself.

Yaakov, at first, refused to send down Binyamin to save the life of Shimon, who was, to the best of his knowledge, in an Egyptian dungeon.

And then, when Judah tells his father, "We are all going to do if you don't let me take down Benjamin," Jacob expresses why it is so hard for him: "You (in the plural – to all of his sons!) know that my wife had two children. And, one left me, and I said, "surely he was eaten by a wild beast," and I have not seen him until now.""

That statement, that Joseph brought his brothers to hear, was the first time Yaakov stated to his children that he had – from his perspective – only one wife. Only at this time of dire stress does Yaakov make that admission.

In the Parshah of Vayehi he refers to the passing of his wives equally. He tells Joseph, "Rachel died on the way to Efrat," and later, tells all of his sons, "I buried Leah in the Tomb of the Patriarchs." He doesn't call one of them his wife, to the exclusion of the other, but at that moment of immense stress, he felt that his sons finally deserved an explanation, which is what gave them the freedom to repair their relationship with their brother. In the words of the 18^th century philosopher, Hegel, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."