Parshat Vaychi
by Rabbi Avi Billet
After the brothers return from Yaakov’s funeral, they relate to Yosef that their father had instructed that Yosef should “look aside at their פשע (a form of sin which will be defined in a moment) and their חטא (same) which dealt badly with you, and [therefore] now [the brother’s personally request] look aside towards the פשע of the servants of your father’s God…”
Leaving aside whether Yaakov actually said this, or whether, as some commentaries note, they made this up, Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch asks how they could refer to what they did as a פשע. After all, a חטא is a sin committed by accident, an עון is a sin committed deliberately, and a פשע is a sin committed in a state of rebellion. We never find that the brother’s felt any kind of remorse over “rebelling.” They may have felt that they were not sympathetic enough to Yosef’s plight, or they may have regretted selling him as part of an actual thought process, but rebelling – as their flaw – never seems to be on their radar.
Rabbi Shternbuch concludes that while they did not regret their having him judged him as a danger to the family, the fact that they felt no sensitivity to their judging their own brother to death (their original intent before Reuven interceded on Yosef’s behalf), they may have felt that these thoughts, or lack of sensitivity, was a form of rebellion to their father. They felt now, as a result, that God would judge them in this manner, because God judges the righteous even for thoughts.
Yosef’s response to them is that there is no need for them to worry about being judged for thoughts, as he rejects the notion of a פשע and instead tells them, once again, that everything that happened was a result of God’s plan.
In thinking about this “plan,” one must assume that EVERYTHING that transpired as a result of the sale of Yosef was part of God’s plan. One aspect of God’s plan is that Yaakov’s “choice” to make Menashe and Ephraim into tribes, “just like Reuven and Shimon” was actually a part of God’s master plan.
Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes that Yaakov recounts (in 48:4) how he was given the promise to become a קהל עמים – a community of nations. The way it was told to him in 35:11 was “multiply, for a גוי וקהל גוים will come from you.” Noting that of the tribes, Binyamin alone was not yet born, the word גוי must refer to Binyamin. By extension, the words קהל גוים must refer to Ephraim and Menashe, thereby suggesting that way before they were born, they were slated to be counted as Yaakov’s children, as two distinct tribes.
Rav Hirsch goes on to say that the phrase קהל גוים/קהל עמים “assigns the people of Yaakov its distinctive mission. This people is to consist of diverse tribes of differing traits, while maintaining complete unity through one common task. This people should represent the agricultural nation, the merchant nation, the warrior nation, the nation of scholars, and so forth. As a model nation, it should demonstrate for all to see that the one great mission – common to all men and all nations and as revealed in God’s Torah – does not depend on a particular vocation or trait. Rather, all of mankind, with its rich diversity, can equally find its calling in the one common mission.”
“The division of the nation into diverse tribes, and the resulting division of the Land into different provinces for the different tribes, whose distinctiveness is thus to be retained – that is what is indicated here. Only thus is there any importance to Ephraim and Menashe becoming two distinct tribes. Without the division into diverse tribes, all distinctiveness would be absorbed in the consolidate mass of the nation as a whole…”
In a way, we can say that the brothers’ “original sin” was in not accepting Yosef as being different from them. They wanted him to toe the line, to not cause disruption, to not shake or overturn the apple cart. But Yosef couldn’t be put into a box of their design, because Yosef was unique, and distinct, with different drives and passions, and different life goals. He was going places they couldn’t foresee, because they were stuck in their relatively provincial existence.
But were they so provincial? A number of them exercised unique qualities – Shimon and Levi certainly went out on their own in Shechem. Reuven had a strange interest in Yaakov’s marital space (as a real youngster with the dudaim and later on with whatever he did with respect to Bilhah). The Torah emphasizes that when Yaakov blessed his sons, he emphasized “each getting his own blessing” (49:28), clearly in response to individual characteristics they all carried, some of which Rav Hirsch articulated above.
In a contemporary sense, we can’t all be doctors, or all be accountants, or all be plumbers, or all be academics/scholars/rabbis/Kollel-leit, or all be bankers, or all be business-people. We are all wired differently, we think differently, we live differently. We look different.
Yes, we have a Torah which preaches a kind of uniformity in terms of Mitzvos and a degree of service of God. But we all recognize that there are different paths even just culturally – Ashkenazim, Sefardim, Edot Mizrach, Temani, as well as sub culturally, from right to left religiously, from right to left in political thinking and leaning, how men and women interpret tzniyut, how men and women style or show their head hair (everyone) and (for men) their facial hair (including beards and peyot), to how much emphasis people place on minhagim (customs), to which Halakhic code books we follow completely versus where there is a debate or where things are open for interpretation, how much are things not explicitly stated in the Torah viewed as “Torah level” (such as if declared such in the Talmud or in poskim – or when it is debated), what is considered a Halakha L’Moshe MiSinai versus what doesn’t really fit in that category.
While I was unable to find it, I recall a video put out by Chofetz Chaim Foundation during the covid shutdowns
, in which they emphasized the need for the Jewish people to not get at each other’s throats over issues of disagreement. It was close to the 2020 election as well, and society was really torn apart (I don’t think much has changed for the good, unfortunately, except that we are not yet heavily involved in a presidential election – we’ll surely see things heat up this coming summer). They put images on the screen pointing to polar opposites, noting that we can’t let these viewpoints divide us (some of these I recall clearly from the video, after the political one are ones I’m adding): stay closed v stay open; social distance v return to normalcy; mask or not mask; vaccinate or not to vaccinate; republican or democrat; to use the Internet for communication or only to use phones for communication; to allow mixed seating at non-Tefillah related functions or separate seating all the time; to follow a strict order of societal norms or to be more open to different views. Their point was that none of these differences (there are surely many more) – and in some cases they are very strong differences – should get in the way of Jews seeing we are all one family. And in a family, everyone is welcome at the table, even if we bring strong differences to that table.
Yaakov certainly learned one important lesson which he applied twice in the parsha, from very personal experience with his own father and brother: when you bless your children, call them in together, and bless them each according to their traits. Raise them up for their own qualities, and don’t compare them to one another for ways in which you wish for them to be the same. Yaakov first did this with Yosef’s sons, and later did this with his own sons. He celebrated their diversity, while emphasizing that they are all one family.
We get reminders of this every day. In the IDF, while we don’t get the same kinds of reports of those injured, we see how the cross section of those who have fallen in battle, range from all types of Jews on the religious spectrum – from not at all, to yeshiva students, to rabbis (in miluim). This is Am Yisrael, and it’s time for us to remove barriers – celebrate our diversity instead of trying to crank out everyone to be exactly the same. Unquestionably, making everyone be the same was never what God intended, and it was never what Am Yisrael was meant to be. Am Yisrael is a tapestry: many diverse threads of different colors and shades bound together to make a beautiful picture.
May we merit to see this, appreciate this, and live this as our reality.
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