At beginning of Parshat Vayigash, this week’s Torah portion, where we read of Yosef’s reconnecting with his brothers after they had sold him into slavery so many years previously. It was not just that Yosef passed for an Egyptian, he married into the priestly class of Egypt and his brothers did not recognize him. In his closeted identity, he enjoyed every privilege in Egypt. Yosef cleared everyone out of the room, but that did not include his brothers. Despite his being the second to the king, he had internalized the xenophobia and felt that he needed to clear the room to share his hidden identity. There we read:

Then Yosef could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried: ‘Cause every man to go out from me.’ And there stood no [Egyptian] man with him, while Yosef made himself known to his brothers. And he [Yosef] wept aloud; and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. (Genesis 45:1-2)

When Yosef did find that voice, it could know no bounds. Everyone heard about it. His words are telling, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?”(Genesis 45:3). Yosef is not angry at his brothers for selling him into slavery or bragging about his good fortune in Egypt. He just wants to know if his father is alive and well. Like Citizen Kane who did not care for any of his massive estate and only longed for the token of the love of his parents, Yosef wants to reconnect with his father. Yosef may be the second in command of Egypt, but his greatest truth is that he is homesick.

As you know I am a word junky and I love getting my word of day. There I learned a new word, Mal du pays is French for “homesickness.” This is formed from the Latin malus “bad, wicked,” and pays, “country, land, region”. Mal du pays entered English in the second half of the 18th century. It is clearly a profound force across cultures.

In this respect we see that Yosef is experiencing this pain of missing his father and fatherland. What is most interesting is how this experience of Mal du pays is shared. Once Yosef found his voice and an audience who could appreciate what he was feeling it could know no bounds.

In all of my world travels, when I meet someone else with a Kippah or other clear sing of Jewish identity I experience a filial bond. But I am not satisfied with this being a sign of my religion, group pride, or nationalism; rather I want our meeting to reveal something of our collective yearning. It is not just a trivial game of Jewish Geography. We are deeply connecting. We share sense of homeland that we can uniquely relate with also knows no bounds. In many ways Yosef’s revealing himself to his brothers is the paradigmatic meeting of any two Jews. When one of us is yearning is has the sting of painful loneliness, but when we connect we find that in our collective longing we find belonging.

• Also see: From Longing to Belonging