The Secret of the Dreidel[1]
ואת יהודה שלח לפניו אל יוסף להורות לפניו גשנה
And [Yaakov] sent Yehudah before him, to Yosef, to teach before him, to Goshen[2]
After Yaakov found out that his son Yosef was not only alive, but that he was the viceroy in Egypt, he and his family made plans to move there. There was a worldwide famine and the only place with food was with Yosef. The verse tells us that Yaakov sent Yehudah ahead of everyone else to Yosef, in the city of Goshen. The question is why was he sent, and why specifically Yehudah[3]. Another question is a grammatical one. The verse says Yehudah was sent גשנה, to Goshen. The normal way to write this would be לגשן. Why did the Torah choose this formulation? Chazal tell us[4] whenever you have a ל at the beginning of a word, which means ‘to’, you can replace it with a ה at the end for the same result. While this explains how it works in the verse, it doesn’t explain why sometimes one format is chosen over another. There must be some significance.