Why Didn't Yosef Send A Message To His Father?

I have to share an excellent dvar torah by R. Yoel Bin-Nun as to why Yosef didn't try to contact his father all the years before his brothers came to Egypt. 

Think about the events in Yosef's life from his perspective alone, without knowing all the other information from the Torah. His father sent him out to the brothers, they tried to kill him, then sold him to slavery. When Yosef didn't come home that night or soon after why didn't his father come looking for him, send word via caravan networks, use his influence to locate him? After years in prison and Egypt, he concluded that his father abandoned him just as earlier relatives abandoned or disowned one of their own. Ishmael was sent away. Yitzchak capitulated to Rivka and chose Yaakov over Esav. Maybe that's how his family worked. 

Yosef named his son Menashe because "God has made me forget (nashani) all my labor and MY FATHER'S HOUSE." After some years of no contact from his father, he assumed he was lost to his father and now he considers his father lost to him, time to move past caring about his father or thinking about him.

It was only after receiving strategic information previously unavailable to him that Yosef realized he had it wrong all these years. Specifically, Yehudah described his fathers words "You know that my wife has bore me two sons. One has left me; I said HE WAS DEVOURED...if you take this son too...you will bring my old age down to She'ol in agony." (Gen 44:24-30) Only NOW does Yosef realize that the reason his father didn't search high and low for him is because he believed Yosef was devoured. Yosef was NOT disowned or disavowed after all!

So Yosef pauses and reflects on his life and who he has become, a leader in Egypt, and then shakes his head, NO!!..."I am Yosef..(I can reclaim my rightful place as a member of Yaakov's family)...Can it be my father is alive??" He has been dead to me all these years based on my incorrect perceptions of the situation, can it be that I was so wrong in my outlook and that he is still MY FATHER and a father to me??!!!??

That blew me away. How often, in life, {as opposed to what? Death?}, do we think we have ascertained another's motives or role? And how long do we suffer from those stories we tell ourselves about what happened and live with this erroneous impression of events? Think about it and next time don't be hasty to judge and open your mind up to alternative possibilities. 

Make Some Midrash Sense

Midrash can be quite odd. One famous midrash I heard as a kid is that Yaakov realized his son Yosef was alive based on seeing the agalot (wagons) that were sent. He reasoned that the last thing Yosef and he were learning before the disappearance was eglah arufah ("Eglah Erufa is an offering made by the elders of a town when a corpse is discovered outside the borders of the municipality. The implication is the Elders and residents are partially responsible because they permitted the victim to leave the town unaccompanied, leaving him vulnerable to highway men."-Dov Bear) Agala and eglah are similar spelling and sound in Hebrew so that must be the connection.

This explanation seemed quite ridiculous to me and far fetched that they were learning such a piece of Torah. And even if they did, what was so special about the eglah law and its relevance to the story of Yosef? It seems to me that much of the intent and lessons of midrash have been lost or due to shift in our consciousness, things that would be obvious to our forefathers are more obscure to us today. But let me propose an interesting thought.

From Yosef's perspective, his father sent him to his brothers that fateful day, his father abandoned him, never sought him out (he didn't know that brothers told father he was killed). Now that his father is to be reunited with his son after so long and after feeling so rejected,  now it's time to send his father a message. Make him understand the residual pain and resentment of feeling cast out.

As is the case by Eglah, the elders who were not directly responsible for the tragedy nonetheless had culpability because they failed to prevent it, so too Yaakov should have intervened in the growing discord between the brothers and Yosef. He publicly denounced Yosef's dreams. He shares some blame for not nipping things in the bud. So perhaps this was a subtle way of telling Yaakov that Yaakov had an element of guilt in leaving him vulnerable. 

As children, we have an idealized visions of our parents and when they let us down, the pain and resentment can simmer for years. But there reaches a point where those feeling must be dealt with, sent out on a wagon, if you will, to cross the expanse that has divided a family. And once shared, closure and reconciliation can follow just as the spirit of Yaakov was revived once he saw the wagon and what it represented. So now the journey towards peace and harmony in the family could begin.