Vayigash - 5773

Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's household, "I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and I will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father's household who were in the land of Canaan have come to me. The men are shepherds, for they were [always] owners of livestock, and their flocks and their cattle and all they possess they have brought.’

And if it comes to pass that Pharaoh calls you and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ You shall say, ‘Your servants have been owners of livestock from our youth until now, both we and our ancestors,’ so that you may be allowed to dwell in the land of Goshen, because all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians." (Bereishis 46:31-34)

The anticipated tension between the native Egyptians and the newly arrived Jews is rooted in the fact that the Jews were shepherds and that this profession was especially despised by the Egyptians.

Rashi contends that this abhorrence is related to the fact that the sheep was the deity of Egypt as is well known from the teachings of Chazal regarding the symbolism of the Korban Pesach.

Yet, the matter still calls for explanation. One could conjecture that those who tended to the deities should be considered the most distinguished members of society!

Rav Elchanan Wasserman zt’l, who was a disciple of the Chofetz Chaim zt’l, was once asked to explain the uniqueness of his Rebbe. He responded by pointing out that many sages that we may admire from a distance become diminished when we observe them from close. What was special about the Chofetz Chaim zt’l was that the closer you became, the greater he appeared to be.

The deification of the sheep would be undermined in a society whose members lived in close proximity to sheep. They would see the sheep for what they truly were – animals! Consequently, those members of society had to be marginalized.

There is another approach to understanding the Egyptian disgust with shepherds: the conventional tension between farmers and herders. Egypt was a farming society; flocks and herds could potentially ruin farmland. (See Bava Kama 79b for a discussion of Rabbinic ordinances made in Eretz Yisrael to prevent this problem.)

One could easily say then that the bottom line is economic; the strangers’ herds and flocks could bring ruin upon Egypt’s economy. But Rav Hirsch (Commentary to Bereishis Ch. 4) argues that the farmer/herder issue is the root of the spiritual and cultural divide between Mitzrayim and Yisrael as well. I will present his words verbatim; it would be impossible to merely paraphrase them and still do them justice:

Agriculture demands all of one's physical energies. The Divine decree "By the sweat of your countenance shall you eat bread" (Genesis 3:19) is applicable particularly to the tiller of the soil. He must devote himself totally to his physical existence. Self-pride and pride of possession are especially predominant in the tiller of the soil. The ground that the farmer has fertilized with his own sweat becomes for him a supreme value, becomes part of his personality, and he is caught up in it and settles down.

To be sure, agriculture stimulates and develops civilization. Most inventions and skills may be credited to agriculture. The settlement of the land implicit in agriculture leads to the formation of society and state and to the administration of justice. The decree upon the human being to work the ground opened the way to humankind's development.

On the other hand, a farmer is a slave to his field, which lowers him to the level of the soil. Once he places his neck under the yoke of the pursuit of possessions, his spirit, too, becomes bowed. He can be manipulated through his desire for property. This leads to slavery; one human being is subjugated to another. Moreover, the farmer can easily come to worship the forces of nature, on whose influence hinges the success of his field.

Agricultural peoples were the first to lose faith in God and in the higher dignity of the human being; it was in their midst that slavery and idolatry first emerged.

By contrast, there is much virtue and advantage in pastoral life. The shepherd works mainly with living creatures, and the care he extends to them fosters in him human feelings of tenderness and empathy. His property is movable. The flock needs the shepherd's care, but does not owe its very existence to the human being. As a result, the shepherd is saved from the danger of attaching too much value to himself and to his property. His vocation does not drain all his energy, or occupy his mind to a great extent, and he has time to elevate his spirit to Divine and humane values. Hence, our forefathers were shepherds, as were Moshe and David.

Conversely, consider the antipathy of the ancient Egyptians towards shepherds and pastoral peoples. All the negative outgrowths of the agricultural mentality discussed above were found in Egypt. Egyptian culture was based on agriculture; its characteristic features were polytheism, on the one hand, and human enslavement, on the other. Work was the purpose of the human being. The individual per se had no value, no dignity, no freedom. The Egyptian was born a slave to his occupation. Faith in God, the freedom of the human being, and the human being's likeness to God remained alive only in the hearts of one tribe of shepherds: our ancestors. The Egyptian leaders were therefore very shrewd in instilling in their people an implacable hatred for pastoral peoples.

Thus, the reluctance of the newly arrived Jews to give up shepherding was much more profound than is conventionally believed. We assume that it was simply a ploy to gain isolation from the Egyptians who would consider the Jews disgusting. In reality, there was much more at stake; the Jews could not give up their traditional profession without giving up as well every spiritual and cultural value that they cherished.