Midreshet Amit

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A very popular ice breaker for teachers, who teach the middot of chesed and tzedakah, is to ask their class if you were creating a new city how would you allocate funds for you city? What institutions would you build first?  Common answers include hospitals, shuls, mikvaot etc. In our parsha the family of Yaakov is tasked with answering that very same question. After Yosef's big reveal, the family needs to make plans to join Yosef down in Egypt as residents and not as tourists. 
 
The Parsha informs us that אֶת־יְהוּדָ֞ה שָׁלַ֤ח לְפָנָיו֙ אֶל־יוֹסֵ֔ף לְהוֹרֹ֥ת לְפָנָ֖יו גֹּ֑שְׁנָה וַיָּבֹ֖אוּ אַ֥רְצָה גֹּֽשֶׁן׃ Yehuda is sent ahead by Yaakov . But what is he sent to do? The verb used in the pasuk is לְהוֹרֹ֥ת לְפָנָ֖יו. What does this mean? Lehorot generally means to show someone the way. It seems strange that Yehuda would go before the rest of the family but without the family in order to show Yaakov the way. Rashi quotes a Midrash from Breishet Rabbah which states Letaken Lo Beit Talmud Shemisham Teiztei Hora’ah That Yehuda is sent ahead to establish a school so that the way/ the teaching would flow from there. Since they had not yet received the Torah we can only speculate what would be taught is this school for the family of Yaakov. What seems obvious is that the goal of this school is make sure that the Jewish identity of Yaakov's family would remain intact during their years in Egypt. Often we view the role of the school as that of imparting information, but in reality schools serve as a way of preserving and strengthening identity before we go out into our own proverbial Egypt. Yaakov, by sending Yehuda ahead of the brothers maintains his own families identity for years to come, but also teaches us an important lesson that education is the key to spiritual and intellectual survival and that schools should be our number one priority when building communities and even when maintaining communities that are already well established.