Our Sages derive from our Parasha, a wondrous occurrence: the circumcision of the Egyptians.
We read in our Parasha(41:53-57)’The seven years of abundance that came to pass in the land of Egyt ended. And the seven years of famine began approaching, just as Yosef had said.
‘There was famine in all the lands, but in the land of Egypt there was bread.
‘When all the land of Egypt hungered, the people cried out to Pharoah for bread. So Pharoah said to all of Egypt:’Go to Yosef. Whatever he tells you, you should do.’
Rashi brings the Midrash, to expand on these psukim:’When the entire land of Egypt hungered’: For their grain, which they had stored, had rotted, except for that of Yosef.
‘What he tells you, you should do’:’Since Yosef had ordered them to circumcise themselves, and when they came to Pharoah and said:’This is what he said to us’, he - Pharoah - said to them:’Why didn’t you gather grain? Didn’t he announce to you that years of famine were coming?
‘They replied: We gathered much, but it rotted’.
‘Pharoah replied:’If so, do whatever he tells you. He issued a decree upon the grain, and it rotted. What if he issues a decree upon us and we die?
Rav Mordechai Kohen - the ‘Siftei Kohen’ - notes that ‘the people cried out from bread’ - not for grain, which was what Yosef had gathered, and stored.
He asks: We read, in the preceding passuk, that ‘in all the land of Egypt there was bread’ - why, then, did the people cry ‘to Pharoah for bread’?
Answer:’True they had grain - from which to bake bread - but the grain all rotted, and therefore the bread they baked from it, was inedible - and they ‘cried out for bread’.’
Here we are compelled to ask - is there a mention - or even an allusion - in our psukim, to circumcision?
The Siftei Chachamim offer one allusion:’if it is not referring to circumcision, what does ‘אשר יאמר לכם: ‘whetever he TELLS you’ - why does the Torah choose the language of אמירה: Saying, and not simoly אשר יצוה: ‘whatever he commands’?
‘Because, אמירה : saying, is assuredly alluding to circumcision - as we find in the words of David Hamelech, in Psalms (119:162): שש אני על אמרתך'’ :I rejoice in Your word’.
Rashi: ‘Our Sages (Menachot 43:) comment: this refers to circumcision - David, when in the bath-house - contemplating thar he was without tzitzit there and without tefillin or Torah - saw himself as being bereft of any mitzvah; but he then saw his brit milah, and - as he left the bath-house - comforted himself with the words of the Psalm.’
Eliezer Mizrachi - on our Rashi - adds:’As it say - Rabbi Shmuel ben Nachman expounded: the Egyptians said : החייתנו: you have given us life - in this world, and in the world-to-come, and circumcision is called ‘life’, in the Mechilta - as we read in the Haggadah:בדמיך חיי: ‘and in your bloods, you shall live’ - and this refers to the blood of the brit milah.’
The Be’er Mayim Chayim elucidates:’To understand how our Sages learned from our psukim that it was specifically circumcision, that Yosef commanded the Egyptians - and not another mitzvah, or matter that was required for his rule - it would appear that they learned it by the midah of גזירה שוה - the same word being found in another place - from the word לכם: to you - which is said here ‘unnecessarily’, as it would have been to say:’Which he commands you, do’.
‘It is, therefore, written here, so that we can learn from it, that it refers to circumcision, as this word is founf regarding circumcision, in the command to Avraham:(Lech Lecha 17:10)’circumcise לכם: for you, every male) - just as there it says לכם regarding circumcision, so too, here.’
Adds the Rav: As to the intention of Yosef, in compelling the Egyptians to circumcise themselves, it would appear to be derived from what our Sages say - concerning Noach in the era of the flood- that a special covenant was required, so that the fruits did not rot, which Hashem granted him because of his righteousness - so the fruits did not rot.
Here, too - by compelling the Egyptians to circumcise themselves, so that by this covenant: הברית מילה: there produce and fruit, would p, likewise, receive Hashem’s blessing , to enable them not to rot, in the years of famine.
The Kli Yakar, as is his want, brings a new way of expounding: why Yosef commanded the Egyptians, when their produce rotted, to circumcise themselves.
He comments: The reason why - as Rashi brings - that, when they went to Yosef, he told them to circumcise themselves, os because the foreskin is called ‘חרפה’: ‘shame’, as we read in Parashat Vayishlach ( 34:14), when Bnei Israel told Shechem:’It is a חרפה to us, to give..our sister, to a man with a foreskin.
Famine is also called חרפה: ‘a shame’, as the Torah states: (Yechezkel 36:30)’You shall no longer suffer חרפת רעב בגוים: ‘the shame of famine among the nations’.
Yosef therefore concluded that removing the shame of the foreskin would ‘remove’ the shame of the famine - as the removal of the foreskin is the removal of the excess of the blood accumulating in the person, so too, the rotting of the grain is from the presence of the פסולת: the waste.
We find that this was the case with Noach, as we have brought.
This is measure-for-measure: if the person casts off from himself the excess of his waste, Hashem in His goodness, will also cast off the waste which is within the grain.
‘Further, our Sages say: (Mishlei 6:26)’Because a man is brought for a loaf of bread to a harlot’ - but the circumcision rectifies the organ, that it does not over indilge in sexual activity - the Egypyians, because of their licentiousness, needed this rectification in the years of famine.
Yosef, who conquered his inclination, therefore merited that his crop did not rot, as he did not seek harlots.
The Maharal, in his commentary on Rashi, Gur Aryeh, comments:It is a query to me, that Yosef told them to circumcise themselves - are we not told that we do not compel non-Jews to convert?
There is a wondrous matter to this - because Yosef saw that their crops rotted, and his did not, he knew that this was because they were uncircumcised, as the milah is the covenant - the Aramaic translation of covenant is בר קיימא: capable of existence for a period of time.
Whoever does not have this brit of existence, his crops rotted.
We already know that everything that was created with man, was worthy of existing - except for the foreskin, as the Torah commanded us to remove it.
Therefore, one who has a foreskin, is adhering to something that has no existence - and therefore, his crops rotted.
It is therefore, no question that Yosef ordered them to circumcise themselves, as it was the Will of the Creator that they they should be circumcised - he did well in his command, in this regard.
Know further, that the Egyptians did not merit that they should be sustained by the righteous Yosef - who kept the covenant, and restrained himself from the Egyptian lady - only when they, too, were circumcised.
‘This is well known to those in the know.’
The commentaries we have brought, all expounded how the circumcision of the Egyptians, benefited them, by preventing their grain from rotting - as it had previously done - though, of course, the fact that the crops did not rot, also benefited Yaakov and his family, when they descended to Egypt.
Rav David Hofstedter brings a new approach to our subject, directly linking Yosef’s action to be for the benefit of Bnei Israel, commenting: Clearly the circumcision that Yosef required the Egyptians to undergo before he gave them bread, was not for the purpose of conversion - as he did not require them to observe any additional mitzvot; further, we do not compel conversion on the unwilling.
‘What, then, was the objective of this circumcision?
To clarify this, let us understand that all of Yosef’s actions were, to prepare Israel fo their exile in Egypt - an exile which was liable to contaminate them with impurity - to the brink of they being completely lost.
This appears to be the reason that Yosef demanded that the Egyptians circumcise themselves, to thereby weaken their impurity, enabling Israel to ascend above this danger.
The events with Shechem, also throw some light on this - when the sons of Yaakov required that Shechem and his nation, circumcise themselves before they would all ow them to marry their sister.
Why, then, were Yaakov’s sons not concerned that - once Shechem realized that it was all a ploy to weaken them - they would seek to harm them, for this?
The answer would seem to be, that the very act of circumcision changed the nature of Shechem and his men, to make them more submissive - as Rav Shimshon Hirsch writes.
When Shechem and his nation realized that their nature had been weakened - to be more submissive - by the circumcision they underwent, even when they discovered that it was a ruse, they felt themselves unable to harm Bnei Israel.
From this, we can learn what Yosef’s intention was in commanding the Egyptians to circumcise themselves, even though they only did so, to be given bread, nevertheless - since they had undergone circumcision - the same fear would enter their hearts as had entered the hearts of Shechem - as they would see that it was in the power of Yosef to change their nature.
This fear caused the Egyptians - even when they feared that Bnei Israel would go to battle against them, and chase them out of the Land, they only sought to enslave and afflict them, but not to annihilate them.’
The Pardes Yosef, citing the Yaarot Dvash, expounds more simply: Yosef was concerned lest his brothers learn from the Egyptians and not circumcise themselves’ - presumably to find favor in their eyes.
He therefore made the Egyptians circumcise themselves, to remove shame from his brothers.
This Pardes Yosef serves as an introduction to the exposition - on Parashat Shemot - of the Beit Halevi.
Expounds the sage: The righteous Bnei Israel did not at any time, cease to circumcise their male infants.
This can be learned from the Midrash Yalkut, which relates:’When they were circumcising their new born, the Egyptians said to them:’Why are you circumcising them? let them be like us, and your burden will be lightened.’
They rejected this, saying:’Did our holy forefathers forget their heavenly Father, that we, their sons, should forego it?!
We see - from this - that even then, they were circumcising their newly- born males - but this is what happened: they had the tradition that they would be enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years.
After Yosef died, they all understood that the days of enslavement were nearing - and the galut begin; they began to fear for their future, as who knew if they - or their descendants - would survive the servitude.
They therefore sought counsel how to draw nearer to the Egyptians - by not being too different from them, as aliens - hoping the increased resemblance would also lead to lessened animosity towards them.
The circumcision - they noted - was the main difference between them and the Egyptians.
They therefore had the wise idea, that, immediately after circumcision, they would pull down the foreskin, covering the place of the brit mila, until it appeared not to have been performed.
They thereby achieved two ends: First, they performed the mitzvah, but, second: it was not seen.
They did not transgresss any Torah mitzvah, though it was a transgression of a Rabbinical ordinance, because they thereby appeared as if they were uncircumcised.
However, as they were - over a period of time - liable thereby to draw nearer to the Egyptians, and to descend into their immoral ways - this being the very opposite of the underlying purpose of the mitzvah - Hashem renewed the difference between them, by turning the favoring feelings towards them, to hatred of them - as an act of chessed, so that Bnei Israel remained separate, and special to Hashem.
This is why this - the change from favor, to hatred - is one of the things for which the Psalmist (105:1) gives thanks to Hashem.’
לרפואת נועם עליזה בת זהבה רבקה ונחום אלימלך רפאל בן זהבה רבקה, בתוך שאר חולי עמנו.