A brief one this week because I am both traveling and trying to squeeze out approximately 100 bars of opera every non-shabbos day for the next week or so.

In parashat miqeitz, Yoseif’s brothers go down to Mitzráyim twice, both times to get food from the grain stores there to survive a seven-year famine. Each time they leave, they discover something distressing when they open their bags of grain — the money they thought they paid to the Egyptian treasury, Yoseif’s divination cup. Each time, it’s frightful.

But it’s not the same word for bag.

The first time around, they’re not being pursued. One of them has had to be left behind as a prisoner in Mitzráyim, it’s true, but if the sons of Yisra’eil still felt as comfortable abandoning their kin as they did when they left Yoseif in a pit, they could leave Shim’on to rot in jail and go on their callous way. And in this moment, we read that on the way back up to their father, וַיִּפְתַּח הָאֶחָד אֶת שַׂקּוֹ . . . וַיַּרְא אֶת כַּסְפּוֹ | vayiftaḥ ha’eḥad et saqo . . . vayar et kaspo | “one of them opened his sack . . . and saw his silver” (Bəreishit 42:27).

The word for sack there is שַׂק | saq, and it’s actually the same word, ultimately: The English sack derives directly from Hebrew saq, or from its Proto-Semitic root (it’s unclear exactly when the borrowing into Ancient Greek happened).

But when he reports the discovery in the next verse, he doesn’t use the word saq. Instead, he says the money is בְאַמְתַּחְתִּי | və’amtaḥti | “in my bag”. These two words weave around each other for a little bit, but in the second voyage to Mitzráyim, amtáḥat comes decisively to the fore. In 44:2, Yoseif instructs his steward to put an incriminating goblet בְּפִי אַמְתַּֽחַת הַקָּטֹן | bəfi amtáḥat haqaton | “in the mouth of the youngest’s bag”, and the climactic moment of finding in verse 44:12 reveals said goblet בְּאַמְתַּֽחַת בִּנְיָמִן | bə’amtáḥat Binyamin | “in Binyamin’s bag”.

In the moment, it seems like a catastrophe, but it will, in fact, lead very directly to a reconciliation years and years in the making, the reunion of Yoseif with his brothers, the restoration of a family to a state of wholeness. And it seems that we have to leave saq behind to get there.

Saq has a gematria of 400, amtáḥat one of 849. The difference is 449, which happens to be the gematria of טַלִּית | talit, the Hebrew word for a prayer shawl.

A tallis as a garment of protection and shelter, and it is also a reminder of the obligations placed on us by G-d. These obligations include looking out for the wellbeing of our fellow humans even when they annoy the shit out of us, and they include being accountable for our wrongs even when doing so is terrifying. It is only when the sons of Yisra’eil remember and act on these obligations that they can reconcile with Yoseif and make their family whole. And that is why their saqim turn into amtaḥtot.