Parashat Vayeshev - English

Rabbi Claudio Jodorkovsky

Asociación Israelita Montefiore - Bogota

With our parashah, we leave behind Jacob’s stories in order to focus on those that have his children and especially Joseph, the best loved and favorite son, as main characters. 

For our last patriarch, Jacob, there is nothing uncomfortable or problematic in showing his preference for the son of his great love, Rachel, nor in expressing his favoritism through special treatment and chosen gifts.  And as a consequence of this unequal attitude, Joseph behaves with the haughtiness particular to a “spoiled” son, stirring up feelings of jealousy, envy, and even hate among the group of his older brothers.

But everything changes one day when Jacob sends Joseph to look for his brothers, who had moved away to take care of the livestock.  The brothers see him coming and agree on slaying him.  When they meet, they take away the “coat of many colors” that he had received as a special gift from their father, and thanks to his oldest brother Reuben’s  intervention, Joseph is not murdered but thrown into a deep dry pit, while his brothers decide what to do with him.

The story could have had a very different ending, but finally the brothers, moved by their jealousy and hate, decide to sell him to a caravan of merchants passing by, and Joseph ends up as a slave in Egypt, serving in the house of Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh.

Of this entire well-known story in our parashah, full of envies and family quarrels, there is one detail that highly disgusts and surprises me every year.  Once Joseph is thrown into the pit, and while the brothers discuss the best way to take out their revenge, the Torah tells us that they “sat down to eat bread” (Gen. 37:25).  Imagining the scene, I find the brother’s degree of cruelty and insensitivity unbearable:  Joseph sits at the bottom of a pit (according to the Midrash, full of poisonous scorpions and snakes), humiliated by his brothers and praying for his life, while they, however, sit and enjoy their food!

Reviewing the classic commentators, their silence before such a macabre image is surprising as well.  Among them all, Sforno (Italy, 15^th-16^th centuries) is the only one who reports on the degree of hate of the brothers, which led them to lose every emotional tie with Joseph and allowed them to sit down to eat and enjoy plentiful food. And although I identify with the Italian commentator and have always felt uncomfortable both with the brother’s attitude and with the silence shown by the rest of the scholars, I have to acknowledge that, after a lesson taught to me by my friend Rabbi Ariel Korob Z”l, I started to accept the cruelty of Joseph’s brothers and understand that, unfortunately, there are often similar situations where we human beings react in similar ways.

Rabbi Korob Z”L used to say that though the image of Joseph’s older brothers eating by the pit can seem repugnant to all of us, human beings are often insensitive to the needs of millions of our brothers who are suffering from destitution and extreme poverty, and instead of reacting to their desperate summons, we remain unmoved before their suffering and continue with our lives, enjoying the comforts with which we were blessed.  Just like Joseph’s brothers, how many times do we not keep on “eating our bread”, enjoying life’s pleasures, while we turn a deaf ear to the clamors for help from those in our neighborhood who need our help so as to make ends meet, or simply, to be able to survive?

We live in a continent that, although not the poorest, it is nevertheless considered to be the most unequal region in the world.  The differences between rich and poor are more and more alarming, and to the extent within our reach, we, as Jews, by the wisdom of our tradition, are called upon to empathize and listen to the summons of those who need and wait.

We must, therefore, learn to transform the reject we feel for the attitude taken by Joseph’s brothers into active solidarity towards those who live among us, in our cities and countries, and suffer due to social inequality.  We must learn from their error, so as to not remain unmovable and listen to their summons.

Shabbat Shalom uMeborah!