Lead Tidbit

Brothers will be Brothers

We’ve quoted this Midrash P’li’a (79) before: AMAR HAKADOSH BARUCH HU, G-d said - you sold Yosef! CHAYEICHEM, by your lives, that you will say in every year: We were slaves to Par’o in Egypt.

Yes, Avraham Avinu was told by G-d that his descendants would be strangers in a strange land. And the people of that land would enslave and oppress your offspring for 400 years. Etc. This, many years before the sale of Yosef. But the land was not specified and Yaakov and family need not have been the generation to go down to Egypt. We can say that this is so about every prophecy of something bad happening. Those prophecies can be delayed or even canceled.

But Mechirat Yosef is something - it seems - that cannot go unpunished. Did the brothers do T’shuva? Let’s say they did. But Mechirat Yosef is such a big thing that it has ramifications that are not stopped by mere repentance. And were the brothers reconciled? In last week’s sedra of Vayigash, it seems so. They cried. Yosef repeatedly told them not to worry, even though they had planned evil, G-d was “calling the shots” and had a good master plan.

But then we get to Vaychi. Right after Yaakov Avinu dies, the brothers say among themselves, “Yosef will perhaps hate us, and will certainly pay us back for all the evil which we did to him.” So they lied to him as told Yosef that Yaakov had instructed them before he died to say to Yosef, “Forgive, I beg you now, the trespass of your brothers, and their sin; for they did to you evil; and now, we beg you, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.”
Yosef cries at this, because - we can say - his brothers didn’t believe that he had really forgiven them. The brothers said to Yosef, “Take us as slaves”. How do you think Yosef felt? How do you think the brothers felt?

Reconcillitation? Maybe that’s not the right word. Reunited - okay. But not yet reconciled.
And what came next? Egyptian slavery and oppression.

Brothers will be brothers was a flippant choice of titles. In its context, it serves as no excuse for inexcusable behavior.

As we wrote last week, Yosef and his brothers are still at it today. That’s very sad and depressing. The bright side? That we don’t have to be like that. We can be the brothers we were meant to be. Let’s.

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