Parshas Vayesehv
“And Yaakov settled in the land in which his father had sojourned in the land of Canaan” (Bereishis 37:1).
Unlike his father Yitzchak and his grandfather Avraham before him, whose journeys through life are described in the plural as “megurei,” and who had gone through life constantly moving from one place to another, Yaakov’s journey at this point is described by the word Vayeshev. He had reached his destination and settled down in one location. He became too comfortable.
Yes, this location in which he settled was the land of Canaan, a country destined one day to belong to the people of Israel. But meanwhile, it belonged to the people of Canaan. It was part of the Diaspora and it was steeped in their culture.
We are warned not to feel too secure in the Diaspora, “Among those nations, lo sargia (you will not settle down)” (Devarim 28:65). We are not to confuse the Diaspora with our permanent home in the land of Israel from which we were exiled and to which we should yearn to return. The words “lo sargia” have a double meaning. They mean “we should not settle down.” But they also mean “we will not settle down.” It is up to us. If we constantly remind ourselves that we are not at home, we will have a home, albeit a temporary one in the Diaspora. But if we forget where we really belong and fool ourselves that Berlin is Jerusalem, we will not rest and we will lose even our temporary home.
“These are the children of Yaakov, Yosef…” (Bereishis 37:2). But Yaakov had twelve sons, not one.
What the Torah is telling us here is who Yaakov’s children were becoming under the influence of the people of the land of Canaan, which they called home. They were becoming rivals. And it began with Yosef, who in his immaturity – “ve’hu na’ar,” at seventeen – began to stoke the jealously of his older brothers. Yes, perhaps this was innocent child-like behavior. But nevertheless, it resulted in serious consequences.
And Yosef brought “dibasam ra’ah,” evil reports, about his brothers to their father, Yaakov (37:2). He would tell him all sorts of slanderous stories about them. He would tell him that they would detach limbs from living animals for food. Whatever he saw his brothers doing, he immediately concluded was “ra’ah,” evil. In his naivety, he only saw black and white. He jumped to conclusions. Perhaps if he would have asked his father whether what he saw his brothers eating was really Ever Min Hachai, his more experienced and learned father would have told him that he got it wrong. Maybe the father would have told him that the animal, in its pirchus, in its spasmodic motion after it was slaughtered, only looked alive, but in reality was already dead. But he did not tell his father all the facts. The true facts were buried in his hasty and inexperienced judgments. He told his father only his conclusions.
And it worked. As a result of these evil reports which made his brothers look bad and made Yosef look good, Yisrael loved Yosef more than all his children. “ki ben zekunim hu lo” (37:3) – because in the eyes of Yaakov, Yosef was the baby of the family.
But the brothers didn’t buy the baby excuse. After all, Yosef was not the youngest child of the family. Binyamin, his nine-year-old brother, was. But, Yosef became the favorite and the brothers knew how he achieved that status in his father’s eyes.
And the dreams which Yosef repeated, which he should have kept to himself, in which he lorded it over his brothers, so enraged them that they decided to preemptively kill Yosef, before he killed them.
How do you kill a brother? You try to forget he is a brother. You estrange him.
After having been sent by Yaakov to join his brothers who were tending the flock in Shechem, Yosef meets the angel Gavriel and asks him, “Where are my brothers?” And he is told that his brothers have moved themselves away from brotherhood (Rashi to 37:17).
But this does not deter Yosef. He may have behaved like a spoilt child, but he still loves his brothers. So he went in search of them. He found them in Dotan and he began to approach them.
When his brothers saw him coming toward them from afar, “mei’rachok,” they maintained their distance. They kept him rachok, a stranger. “uv’terem yikrav aleihem” and before allowing him to come close like the karov, the brother, he was, they conspired to kill him.
Yaakov rebuked Yosef for repeating his dreams (37:10), but in his heart he took them seriously. He waited for the time when these dreams would be fulfilled (Rashi to 37:11).
And so these actors on G-d’s stage were unwittingly setting in motion His ultimate master plan of revealing His Torah to the Jews, a revelation that could happen only after being enslaved and then freed from Egypt. As it is written, “I am the L-rd your G-d, who took you out of Egypt.”
Ultimately, the dreams of Yosef came true, but not in the way that the brothers feared, rather in the way that Yaakov had hoped. When his brothers finally fell into his hands, Yosef recognized them as brothers even though they had refused to do so when he had previously fallen into their hands (Bereishis 48). What seemed like Yosef’s childlike, competitive behavior, turned out to be brotherly love.
“And Yosef said to his brothers, come close to me and they came close and he said, I am Yosef your brother whom you sold into Egypt. Now, do not be upset or angry with yourselves that you sold me here, for it was not you. It was G-d who sent me here to save your lives,” (45:4-6)
So Yaakov’s prophecy came true. “Vayishla’cheyhu mei’emek Chevron,” he sent Yosef from the depths of Chevron (37:14). The word Chevron comes from the word chaver, which means friend. Yaakov’s deepest wish, which was ultimately fulfilled, was that despite all the sibling rivalry, the profoundness of brotherly love would finally prevail.
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