Parshas Vayigash 5783
A captain of a battleship is informed that another ship is in his sea lane, pitting the battleship on a collision course with the other. The captain tells the signalman to communicate that the other ship needs to change course by 20 degrees. The response comes back, “Advise you change course 20 degrees.” The captain, annoyed, tells the signalman to inform the other ship that he is a captain, and the other must change course. The response comes back, “I am a seaman, second class, advise you change course 20 degrees.” The captain, at this point incensed, says, “Send back: ‘I am a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.’” The response, “I am a lighthouse. Change course,” quickly changes the captain’s mind.
Stephen Covey shares the lighthouse story in his classic book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” as an introduction to the powerful role that paradigms play in our view of the world. It’s true not only of captains of battleship, but of Yosef’s brothers, and the rest of us as well.
Yosef reveals himself to his brothers with the simple words, “אני יוסף העוד אבי חי—I am Yosef, is my father still alive?” In the astonished silence that follows this revelation, Chazal discern intense rebuke in Yosef’s words. The Midrash quotes Rebbe Elazar ben Azarya as commenting on this interaction, “אוי לנו מיום הדין, אוי לנו מיום התוכחה—Woe to us from the day of judgement, woe to us from the day of rebuke!” (Bereishis Rabbah 93)
Yet the rebuke is difficult to detect. To be sure, the brothers were stunned by Yosef’s revelation, but Yosef doesn’t exactly rain fire and brimstone down upon them, admonishing them for their wrongdoing. How does the revelation amount to rebuke?
According to Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, Yosef was effectively telling his brothers that he was a lighthouse. In other words, that the lens through which they viewed their lives was completely warped. Upon first hearing Yosef’s dreams, the brothers saw him as a danger, someone looking to upend their way of life, setting himself up as the central authority of the family, with everyone bowing down to him. It was wrong, unnatural, and painted Yosef as a threat. Everything that followed—throwing Yosef in a pit, dipping his coat in blood, selling him into slavery—was all a means of thwarting his plans and preventing his dreams from coming to fruition.
And now, in a flash, they see everything differently. Yosef is the viceroy of Egypt, with vast stores of food at his disposal. From from threatening the family, his role as a figure worthy of bowing down to is revealed as the means by which the family will actually be saved. In an instant, every act of hostility towards Yosef is proven misguided.
We think of rebuke as pointed criticism aimed at one’s actions. But what the brothers experience is even more reproving; it is the denunciation of the very underpinnings upon which they had built their lives. By causing the foundation to crack and crumble, Yosef left them sitting in the ruins of all their erroneous actions built upon it.
The words “rebuke” and “criticism” feel harsh; they’re not the sort of things we would actively seek out. Yet being beset by the wrong paradigm means being imprisoned in a cell of our own making. We cannot grow and develop if every step forward is upon a path that only seems to lead ahead because we are seeing it through a lens that itself is warped.
So how do change those lenses? The inherent challenge in doing so is that our entire orientation is formed by the paradigms we operate within. It’s easy to endorse thinking outside the box, but doing so is terribly difficult. The interior of the box, after all, is all we’ve ever known.
The case of Yosef’s brothers is illustrative. Ultimately, the paradigm shift is brought about from beyond the tight circle of those all thinking alike. Once trapped in the wrong paradigm, it is unlikely that the captain himself could conceive that the smaller boat heading his way is actually a lighthouse; he needs the lighthouse attendant to expand his view from the outside. While thinking beyond our own paradigms can be nearly impossible on our own, we can invite the opinions of those who see things from a completely different perspective to share how they view the world.
How much do we encourage those other voices and how much do we shut them down? How curious are we to hear a different viewpoint and attempt to see life from someone else’s perspective? How quickly do the words, “That’s just not my style,” or “That’s just not how our organization does things,” slip out of our mouths? Our lives, professions, and operations need not be altered in response to every ill-conceived suggestion, but adopting an approach of curiosity and interest to new ideas allows for the pipeline of transformative paradigm shifts to remain open.
Anyone can get caught in the rut of covering a huge amount of ground while traveling entirely in the wrong direction. The quicker someone tells us to turn the car around, the quicker we’ll arrive at our destination, and the more gas we’ll save. The more others feel we’ll be receptive to their thoughts, ideas, and perspectives, the more likely we’ll be to receive what may be life-changing advice.