{"id":39705,"date":"2018-09-09T14:03:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-09T11:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=39705"},"modified":"2022-04-04T22:40:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T19:40:02","slug":"the-silence-of-benjamin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-silence-of-benjamin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silence of Benjamin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[554,548],"acf":{"old_id":"39705","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33942,"related_cahpter":"43","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The perspective of the child who stayed behind","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A full-scale drama takes place around Benjamin, and he remains silent. \u00a0He is silent when his father refuses to send him with his brothers to Egypt, he is silent when they take him to Egypt, he is silent when the strange and shocking man who is in charge in Egypt blesses him (Genesis 43:29). \u00a0He is silent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One might think that Benjamin is a little boy whose family takes care of his affairs, but Benjamin is already a father on his own to ten children, no less (according to Chapter 46), and therefore it is reasonable to assume that he is already 30 years old or perhaps older. \u00a0But he remains silent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps he was not silent, but the Torah chose to tell us that he was silent in order to indicate that he was an object around which the endless mourning over his brother was taking place, as if the space left by his brother had swallowed him, and he had remained without any independent existence. The entire significance of his existence is that he is the child who stayed behind. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And perhaps, like other children who are left behind, he understood at an early age that he must remain silent. \u00a0He understood that in order for his father to see him he must fulfill this role, that is, he must remain the little child for whom others make the decisions, decide his fate and what he should do. In this way, one can pretend that life has not moved forward without that brother.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMay God be gracious to you, my boy\u201d (Genesis 43:29), says Zaphenath-paneah (Joseph\u2019s Egyptian name) to Benjamin. It is possible to imagine all the brothers whispering to each other and asking: \u201cWhat did he say?\u201d and deliberating afterwards among themselves did he bless him that God will pardon him or God will grant him good fortune? 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