R. Shmuel b. Nachman opened this chapter with the following: It is written, “For I have known the thoughts that I am thinking towards you - an affirmation of God; thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you posterity and hope.” (Jer. 29:11)
While the Tribes were busy with the sale of Joseph and Joseph was busy with his sackcloth and fasting, Reuben was busy with his sackcloth and fasting. Jacob was also busy with his sackcloth and fasting, while Judah was busy getting married, and God was busy creating the Light of the Messiah. (Gen. Rab. 85:1)
This Sidra describes Judah’s process of Clarification - Birurin.
Joseph also goes through a major test and comes out with flying colors, but this Sidra is not really about Joseph. The conclusion to Joseph’s narrative is almost foregone. He is a very great man, but his greatness does not give birth to something which lasts forever and ever. An orgasm is very great, but it does not last forever and ever. It cannot do so. But what Judah is processing will result in something that lasts all eternity, as will be explained.
Even though it is only those Kings of Israel who are descendent of Joseph (through the Tribes of Menasseh and Ephraim) that Scripture calls ‘great,’ they are not ‘great’ forever.[1]It is the kings descended from Judah who prevail in the end, giving birth to the Messiah and our final redemption. So, while this is a Sidra packed with narrative details, as the Midrash above points out, we must not lose sight of the object, the fast-moving ball, so to speak. The real prize is being cooked up behind the scenes, where God is creating the Light of the Messiah who represents posterity and hope.
It’s an enigmatic Midrash, though. There must be some special significance to God saying, “I know my own thoughts,” but the Midrash does not explain what those thoughts are.
Sackcloth and fasting; what do they represent? Well, traditionally they represent both mourning and penitence, most often both together. When Jews have felt responsible for bringing about some great tragedy, their response has historically been to don sackcloth and fast in prayer and penitence.
After Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and brought his bloodied coat back to their father, Jacob, for him to identify, the entire family fell into a state of despair. Jacob was inconsolable and blamed himself for the tragedy. If only he had not sent Joseph out on his own to search for his brothers…
Reuben blamed himself for the unhappy ending. If only he had not walked away during the proceedings, he might have stopped the sale of Joseph and returned him safely home…
Joseph blamed himself for bringing the calamity down on his own head. If only he had not antagonized his brothers and belittled them, things might not have reached such an explosive dénouement...
And so on. Each family member donned the sackcloth and took up fasting in order to expiate his sin, each according to some internal reading of his own guilt.
According to the Rebbe Reb Bunim of P’Shischa,[2]Judah felt the worst of all the brothers. It had been Judah’s role to bring the bloodied garment to their father’s attention. He had acted as prosecutor, judge, and executioner throughout the tragic drama. It was all his responsibility. Once he realized how grief-stricken and how damaged Jacob had become, Judah lost all hope of being able to fix things. While everyone else in the family was busy with the traditional guilt-expiation penance ritual of sackcloth and fasting, Judah felt he was beyond such remedies. And this, according to the Midrash, is where events become emotionally, psychologically and spiritually fascinating.
Judah was so broken, says the Rebbe Reb Bunim, that he felt beyond any possibility of redemption. The damage he’d caused and the pain he’d brought to his family were irreparable. There was nothing left for Judah to do but begin life all over again and start from scratch - so he got married. Reb Bunim’s students[3]disagree as to the precise direction of this thought: Did Judah mean to begin life from scratch by fulfilling the first and most basic commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ or did he mean to let his children fix those bits of loose karma that he himself no longer could? Regardless of the purpose of his marriage, whether to start his own life again from the basic urge to be fruitful and multiply, or to try fixing what he had ruined through having children, Judah’s motive was despair. He just didn’t think sackcloth and fasting were adequate. More needed to be done.
Jacob, Joseph, Reuben and presumably everyone else in the family, dealt with their grief and guilt the traditional way - by trying to expiate and seek atonement through rituals and symbols of penitence. Judah felt he needed to go beyond that, as there could be no atonement for his guilt. Judah decided to act, to do something, saying to himself, “Only God can fix what I have ruined. I need to start something new, begin a project through which God can bring about a healing or fixing. Then perhaps my life will not have been a total waste.”
The chief point is that instead of just sitting in penitential mode, Judah attempted to do, to act, to create a fertile field in which the seeds of his contrition might flourish. This is a radical departure from the tradition; Judah is blazing a new pathway in Teshuva – Penitence.
So, he married Bat-Shua. But through the subsequent death of his sons, Er and Onan, God showed Judah that if he really was as ruined and broken as he’d imagined himself, his children would not be any healthier or different; they too would be fatally flawed. It wasn’t until his third son, Shela was born, that Judah realized this mistake.[4]
Now enter Tamar, Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law. As I have written about elsewhere,[5]Tamar is a unique individual, a woman whose desire for God is so powerful that her Yetzer Hara - Evil Desires have simply made peace with her soul and agreed to assist her in all her endeavors. She pretends to be a prostitute and waits for Judah by the roadside.
R. Yochanan said, “Judah wanted to ignore her, but God had prepared the Angel of Lust, who was sent to meet him. ‘Where are you going, Judah?’ the angel asked him, adding, ‘where will kings come from and where will redeemers come from?’ Therefore, the verse continues, ‘And he bent towards her on the road.’ It was against his will, without his consent that he was bent to her.” (Gen. Rab. 85:8)
Scripture tells us what passed between Tamar and her father-in-law:
[Judah] said, “Here now, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
And she said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?”
He said, “Therefore, I will send you a young goat from the flock.”
She said, “Will you give a pledge until you send it?”
He said, “What pledge shall I give you?”
And she said, “Your seal and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.” So, he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and departed, and removed her veil and put on her widow’s garments. (Gen. 38:16-19)
Judah lay with Tamar because he was overwhelmed with lust and could not find the strength or self-control to walk away. He cannot be blamed, if blame is appropriate in this case, because God intervened, forcing Judah to spend his lust on a woman he mistook for a prostitute.
It is at this juncture in the narrative, says the Rebbe Reb Bunim, that the Birurin – Clarifications occur. Everything that has happened in Judah’s life since the sale of Joseph up until this moment, has been orchestrated by God, down to this fateful sexual encounter with Tamar by the roadside. Now that it is over and his lust has subsided, Judah is going to go through that final test, which will determine whether the Light of the Messiah will be allowed to come into this world. And it is Judah who is going to make that decision. The Messiah has already been conceived and burgeons in Tamar’s womb, created in a moment of utter unconsciousness, when Judah submitted to his instincts.
Joseph could not bring down the Messianic spark because he was incapable of letting his instincts (especially his sexual instincts) take control over his body. Joseph’s destiny depended on him maintaining control at all times, for it was the source of his power and greatness. (The kabbalistic Sephirah identified with Joseph is Yesod– Fundament, and is synonymous with self-control.) But no matter how holy and great Joseph’s sexual self-restraint is, God cannot use it or him to bring the Messiah into this world. Something that will last for eternity must be God’s own handiwork. So, Judah in his oblivious insensibility, in his mindless sexual coupling with Tamar, made room for God to do His work.
Imagine, if you will, the moment has passed, the deed is done, and Judah examines the wreckage of his life. He has given this ‘prostitute,’ whose name he has not even thought to ask, every piece of his personal ID: his seal and its cords, as well as the staff he usually carries. All are now pledged to her, until he can pay the price of using her body - one goat. If word gets out what he has done, the situation could turn into a major embarrassment and blow up in his face. The mere fact that he has given her not one, but three forms of identification in lieu of the price of a small animal, was sufficient to cast serious doubts on Judah’s judgment.[6]What sort of aspiring leader makes such a blunder? When you write a check and someone demands ID, would you give them, your social security card, your passport and your banking information as well as your phone number?! If the world were to find out what a dupe Judah was, that he’d allowed his lust for a woman by the roadside to blind him into parting with three valuable pledges in return for …! And what if Jacob caught word of the scandal, what would it do to him?
There was a moment, says Reb Bunim, when Judah was feeling so empty and so bereft, so completely shamed and reduced by what he’d just done, that he could well have justified taking the pledges away from the prostitute by force. There was no one there to stop him. He knew in his heart that he intended to pay her price in full. He knew he had the means and the opportunity to take care of the debt. It was not going to be a problem. He could have justified and rationalized grabbing back the pledges, telling himself it would be best for everyone concerned, and that no one would blame him for doing so. He could have talked himself into believing it would be a kindness, an act of peace and harmony, to prevent any potential scandal, embarrassment or catastrophe.
That was the one moment when the future of the world hung in the balance. This was to be the first exercise of free-will and decision making in Judah’s entire narrative since the sale of Joseph. The universe held its breath.
But Judah had given his word. He’d handed his pledge to the prostitute. It never even occurred to him to go back on his word, to try renegotiating or using his power to change the terms of their contract. He walked away from her without doing the slightest thing to dishonor their agreement.
“Think about what would have happened had he taken back the pledge,” urges Reb Bunim. “Three months later, Tamar and the twins she carried in her womb would have been put to death when word spread that she had fornicated and gotten pregnant. The Light of the Messiah would have been extinguished and King David would never have been born. The consequences are too horrible to contemplate.”
Judah’s test, his Birurin, passed unremarked amidst all the public drama. It came so quietly and unnoticed, that not even Judah himself realized it was happening. It happened so swiftly and has been overlooked so long, it exemplifies the Mishna: “Be as scrupulous with a light Commandment as with a weighty one, for you never know the reward of the Commandments.” (Avot 2:1)
As the Midrash quoted at the outset states, only God knows what He’s thinking. Only He knows the true measure of human thoughts, which to discard and which to treasure. Who could have imagined that with all that grieving sackcloth and holy fasting going on, it was Judah who was making himself available to carry out the will of God?!
The whole story can be summed up in one phrase, “You never know, you just never know.”

[1] Gen. Rab. 84:20
[2] Kol Simcha – Vayeshev. Ramosayim Tzofim – Rabba5:57
[3] Izbicy and Kotzk, see Ohel Torah - Vayeshev
[4] Mei HaShiloach Vol.I - Vayeshev
[5] Sefer Yetzira: Chronicles of Desire p.p. 304-312
[6] Ibn Ezra, Gen. 38:19.