Rabbi Ari Kahn
Parashat Vayeshev 5776
Family Dynamics
It all happened so quickly: Yosef, the
maligned and hated brother, approached. The brothers’ enmity rapidly metastasized,
and they began to talk about murder. For his part, Yosef felt love and kinship toward
his brothers – all his brothers - but his love was repaid with jealousy and hatred.
How had it come to this?
Years earlier, their father Yaakov had
fallen in love with one woman. He worked for years to earn her hand in
marriage, and endured all sorts of abuse for the love of his life: Although Rachel
was all he had ever wanted, somehow Yaakov ended up with four wives, twelve
sons and one daughter. There had always been jealousy and competition among the
women who had come into Yaakov’s life, and the jealousy and competition carried
on to their children, though the field was never an even one: It comes as no
surprise that Yosef, the son of Yaakov’s beloved wife Rachel, was the favored one,
the golden child. And yet, there is something unusual about the verse that
describes this favoritism: The Torah tells us that “Yisrael loved Yosef” more
than all his other children, rather than “Yaakov loved Yosef.” In general, the
name Yisrael signifies the more public, tribal or national aspects of our
patriarch’s life, whereas Yaakov, the name with which he was born and raised,
reflects the more personal aspects of his life as a brother and a son, a
husband and a father.[1] In using the name Yisrael to describe the
unique relationship with Yosef, the Torah gives us insight into the reasons for
his preferential treatment: Yisrael loved Yosef because he saw his leadership
potential.[2] He knew
that Yosef would excel as a leader of the nascent nation.
With this in mind, Yosef’s behavior may
take on a different complexion: From a young age, Yosef used his favored status
to chastise his brothers and to report on their behavior to their father.
Specifically, it was the sons of Leah who were subjected to Yosef’s critical
eye; their mistreatment of the sons of the “concubines”[3] was
something Yosef could not accept. To Yosef’s mind, all of Yaakov’s sons were
equal; all his brothers deserved love and respect.
Yosef had been his mother’s only child
for many years. When his brother Binyamin was finally born, the age difference
between them must surely have made closeness difficult. Yosef must have craved
the affection and camaraderie of his paternal brothers – and therein lay the
rub: Some of his brothers, the sons of Leah, considered their own status to be
higher than that of the sons of the “maidservants” Bilhah and Zilpah, and
lorded it over them, throwing the weight of their greater numbers around: Leah
had six sons, whereas each of the other wives had only two. This Yosef could
not abide; he saw no justification for this caste system among brothers, and he
took his complaints to his father.
The sons of Leah jostled for position,
attempting to establish themselves as the most important faction, and as the
most important sons. Only one person stood in their way: Yosef, the favored son. Yosef’s first “sin” was
that he was the son of Yaakov’s favored wife. Adding insult to injury, Yaakov
made no secret of the fact that he considered Yosef different than all the others;
notwithstanding our distinction between the various aspects expressed by the
use of his different names, the other brothers simply felt rejected and unloved
in comparison. And then, Yosef rubbed salt in their wounds: He sided with the
sons of Yaakov’s “concubines,” protecting the weak and outnumbered brothers
from the taunts and abuse meted out by the sons of Leah, who were desperate to
prove their superiority. In Yosef’s earliest display of leadership, he may have
overlooked the fact that his largesse toward some of his brothers came at the
expense of others: The sons of Leah may have been on a lower rung than the sons
of Rachel, but they were adamant that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah must occupy
an even lower rung than they. Yosef, though, would not have it.
The atmosphere in Yaakov’s home was
bristling with internecine rivalry and fraught with constant jockeying for
position, power, status – and the love of their father. When the brothers set
out with the flocks, Yosef was not among them; his job was somehow connected,
but somehow disconnected, from the others’. Yaakov then sends Yosef out to find
and check up on the brothers and report back to him. And so, the brothers see Yosef
in the distance, his bright coat of many colors looking more and more like a
target painted on his back. The sons of Leah – presumably led by Shimon and
Levi, who had recently “solved” a different family problem in the very same
geographic area through bloodshed - articulate a plan: “Let’s kill Yosef.”
How did the other sons react? Their
silence is deafening, but perhaps understandable. First and foremost, we cannot
help but imagine their shock. Yosef had been their protector, their leader,
their brother in every sense of the word. Could they have considered standing
up to the sons of Leah? They had never been able to do so before; certainly
now, when the brothers had a murderous gleam in their eyes, this was no time to
develop a backbone. Could they have refused to cooperate? Perhaps they did a
cynical, Machiavellian cost-benefit analysis of the situation: If they
acquiesce, if they join forces with the sons of Leah, they might lose their
brother Yosef – but they would gain six brothers in his place, and they would
no longer need a protector. The days of being tormented, second-class members
of the family would be over. In the “moment of truth,” they say nothing, and,
in their silence, they silently acquiesce to the murderous plan.
Then, an unexpected voice speaks up: Reuven,
Leah’s oldest son, the eldest of all the brothers, weighs in against murder,
and instead advises his brothers to throw Yosef into a pit. A plan crystalizes
in his mind: First, calm the rabble; then, save the would-be victim. Reuven
knows a thing or two about impetuous behavior; he himself had recently been guilty
of shooting from the hip and acting on impulse. In what may have been the opening
salvo in the battle for position within the family, Reuven climbed into bed with
Bilhah in order to make a statement regarding status: The concubines were no
more than chattel; they were not “real” wives, as was his mother Leah. As Yaakov’s
property, the concubines would be inherited by his successor – in this case, he
himself, as firstborn son. Reuven hoped to dispel any uncertainty regarding the
proper order of things now that Rachel had passed, but his behavior, born of
jealousy, fear of rejection and a lust for power, had been disastrous. Reuven had learned the hard way that a rash
decision taken in the heat of the moment could wreak havoc not only on himself
but also on the entire family dynamic. And so, he suggested that his brothers
learn from his mistake: Rather than making a snap decision to murder, he
advocates a slower, more deliberate course of action.[4]
Reuven may have had an additional reason
for stepping in as he did: When Yosef told them about his dreams, the entire
family figured into the narrative. Reuven was as much a part of it as all the
other brothers – despite the fact that his recent behavior might easily have
led to his banishment. When Yosef recounted the sheaves and the stars prostrating
themselves before him, Reuven heard a personal message of inclusion that was
far from obvious. Yosef related to all of the brothers in the same way –
despite the heinous crime Reuven had recently committed, despite the fact that Shimon
and Levi, Reuven’s own brothers, no longer deferred to his authority as firstborn.
When all the brothers heard Yosef’s dreams, they came away with a very different
message than did Reuven: They heard Yosef laying claim to leadership, but
Reuven heard, before anything else, a personal message of redemption. Despite
the sins they had committed – Reuven, Shimon and Levi were still, in Yosef’s
worldview, part of the family.[5] Perhaps
saving Yosef was Reuven’s way of expressing gratitude for Yosef’s inclusive
approach. On the other hand, Reuven was desperate to regain his footing, and to
work his way back into his father’s good graces; perhaps Reuven hoped that saving
Yosef would be his way back into their father’s heart.
Unfortunately for them both, before
Reuven could implement his plan, Yosef was snatched from the pit and sold off
to Egypt; the brothers all assumed that he would never be seen or heard from again.
The family that returns home to their father is broken, and as we recreate this
scene in the weekly Torah reading each year, we wonder - year after year,
generation after generation: When will our family finally become whole?
For a more in-depth analysis see:
[1]
Unlike Avraham and Sarah, whose earlier names were never used again after God
bestowed their new names upon them, Yisrael and Yaakov are both used at various
junctures for the rest of his life. For this and other reasons, it is
understood that each name reflects a distinct and co-existent aspect of his
identity.
[2]
Bereishit 37:3
[3]
Bereishit 37:2
[4]
See comments of Seforno Bereishit 37:21
[5]
See Bereishit Rabba 84:15, and comments of Alschech Bereishit 37:21
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