Reply To: Short & Sweet

Vayigash: Tears of Separation

The Torah tells us that after Yosef revealed who he was to his brothers, he and Binyomin cried on each other’s necks. Rashi cites a Medrash that what they were crying about was more than the decades that they had missed each other; they were crying over the Mishkan and the two Batei Mikdash that were going to be destroyed.

The Chasam Sofer and Avnei Nezer offer the same explanation for why it is that the Mikdash is represented by the neck. The neck is what connects the lower body to the intellect contained in the head. So too, the Mikdash is our connection to a world that is far more elevated than the one in which we live our day to day lives.

But why did Yosef and Binyomin cry over the Churban specifically at this point in time?

It has been suggested that Yosef and Binyomin were crying over the root cause of the Churban. The jealousy of the brothers and their selling Yosef into slavery had just caused decades of separation, and would cause the nation to be in Mitzrayim for hundreds of years. But Yosef and Binyomin saw that this was not the end of the troubles internal strife would cause. Sinas Chinom, they knew, would not go away anytime soon; instead, it would cause the Beis HaMikdosh to be destroyed, and thousands of more years of exile and separation.

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