64 | DECEMBER 15 • 2022 

T

he deception has taken 
place. Joseph has been 
sold into slavery. His 
brothers dipped his coat in 
blood. They bring it back to 
their father, saying: “Look 
what we have found. Do you 
recognize it? Is 
this your son’s 
robe or not?” 
 Jacob 
recognizes it 
and replies, “It 
is my son’s robe. 
A wild beast 
has devoured 
him. Joseph has been torn 
to pieces.” We then read: 
“Jacob rent his clothes, put 
on sackcloth and mourned 
his son for a long time. His 
sons and daughters tried to 
comfort him, but he refused 
to be comforted. He said, ‘I 
will go down to the grave 
mourning for my son.’” Gen. 
37:34–35
There are laws in Judaism 
about the limits of grief — 
shivah (a week), sheloshim (a 
month), a year. There is no 

such thing as a bereavement 
for which grief is endless. 
The Talmud says that God 
admonishes one who weeps 
beyond the appointed 
time, “You are not more 
compassionate than I.” 
And yet Jacob refuses to be 
comforted.
A Midrash gives a 
remarkable explanation. “One 
can be comforted for one 
who is dead, but not for one 
who is still living,” it says. In 
other words, Jacob refused 
to be comforted because he 
had not yet given up hope that 
Joseph was still alive. That, 
tragically, is the fate of those 
who have lost members of 
their family (the parents of 
soldiers missing in action, for 
example), but have as yet no 
proof that they are dead. They 
cannot go through the normal 
stages of mourning because 
they cannot abandon the 
possibility that the missing 
person is still capable of being 
rescued. Their continuing 
anguish is a form of loyalty; 

to give up, to mourn, to be 
reconciled to loss is a kind of 
betrayal. In such cases, grief 
lacks closure. To refuse to be 
comforted is to refuse to give 
up hope.
Yet on what basis did Jacob 
continue to hope? Surely 
he had recognized Joseph’s 
blood-stained coat — he said 
explicitly, “
A wild beast has 
devoured him. Joseph has been 
torn to pieces.” Do these words 
not mean that he had accepted 
that Joseph was dead?
The late David Daube 
made a suggestion that I 
find convincing. The words 
the sons say to Jacob — 
haker na, literally “identify 
please” — have a quasi-legal 
connotation. Daube relates 
this passage to another, with 
which it has close linguistic 
parallels: “If a man gives a 
donkey, an ox, a sheep or any 
other animal to his neighbor 
for safekeeping and it dies or 
is injured or is taken away 
while no one is looking, the 
issue between them will be 

settled by the taking of an 
oath before the Lord that the 
neighbor did not lay hands 
on the other person’s property 
… If it [the animal] was torn 
to pieces by a wild animal, 
he shall bring the remains as 
evidence, and he will not be 
required to pay for the torn 
animal.” Exodus 22:10–13
The issue at stake is the 
extent of responsibility borne 
by a guardian (shomer). If 
the animal is lost through 
negligence, the guardian is at 
fault and must make good the 
loss. If there is no negligence, 
merely force majeure, an 
unavoidable, unforeseeable 
accident, the guardian is 
exempt from blame. One 
such case is where the loss 
has been caused by a wild 
animal. The wording in the 
law — tarof yitaref, “torn to 
pieces” — exactly parallels 
Jacob’s judgment in the case 
of Joseph: tarof toraf Yosef, 
“Joseph has been torn to 
pieces.”
We know that some such 

Refusing Comfort, 
Keeping Hope 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

