Last week I extolled the virtues of family. The tale in this week's Parsha of familial brutality shocks us to the bone. Yoseif's brothers act on their hatred of him and callously plot Yoseif's murder. Only Yehuda's intervention saves him from murder and relegates him to a fate not much better: slavery in Egypt. Their actions toward Yoseif seem brutal; their disregard for their fathers devastation reveals an unimaginable lack of compassion.[1] Is thatJewish family?
No, that is not family. Family, as we said in last week's essay, stand by one another almost unconditionally, they do not plot and scheme against each other. They certainly do not kidnap and murder one another. How could these events happen in one of our greatest families ever?
An astonishing insight hides in the muddle of this puzzle: We assume the brothers and Yoseif all considered themselves to be part of one family. This is because we define family by the immutable blood relationships of parents, brothers and sisters. The Parsha opens the possibility to challenge these assumptions and this definition.
Yaacov sends Yoseif to Shechem to find his brothers and report back to him about their wellbeing. Yoseif gets to Shechem but the brothers are nowhere to be found. A man encounters Yoseif noticing that he is wandering through the fields with no clear direction. He asks Yosief what he is doing, and when told that he is seeking his brothers, the man answers: "They have moved off from this, for I heard them say ‘let us go; to Dotan" (37:17).
Notice the wording and the phrasing: "They have moved off fromthis," not "…from here." And notice the pause, the semicolon (atipcha under "neilcha" in the ta'amim) after "let us go." This implies their decision was to move on. Their destination, Dotan, was almost an after thought. That also explains the man's need to tell Yoseif the seemingly redundant information that they had moved from there. All Yoseif needed to know was where they were headed, he did not need to be told the obvious, that they were no longer in Shechem. Their decision to move on is what the man believed that Yoseif needed to know. What, or where were they moving from, and why?
The man, explains the Ramban expanding on Rashi and theMidrash, was the angel Gavriel. His reply to Yosief had a dual meaning: On the surface he gave Yoseif information. On a deeper level he gave him wisdom. Your brothers, he says, have moved on from "this," not from "here." They have moved on from this relationship. The Hebrew for "this" is zeh whose numeric value is 12. They have resigned from the group of 12. You are no longer a part of their family (see Siftei Chachamim).
The angel Gavriel reveals to us (Yoseif did not ‘get' the deeper meaning - Ramban) that it is possible to resign from a family. In much the same way as a marriage can be ended by a divorce, so even the blood-relationship of brotherhood can be terminated. Yoseif's brothers terminated their brotherhood with him.
This is not the first time in the Torah that the rights of brotherhood have been terminated. Sarah (with Hashem's support) insists that Avraham terminate Yishmael's brotherhood with Yitzchak. Hashem tells Avraham that Yitzchak and only Yitzchak is his heir. It is as if Yitzchak has no brother. Yaacov, by buying the birthright, frees himself from any brotherly commitment to Eisav. He steps into Eisav's place as heir. After their brief encounter with Eisav in last week's parsha, he places physical distance and boundary between himself and Eisav, and for all intents and purposes, never sees him again.
Family is not just about shared ancestry; it is also about shared values. The unconditional readiness we spoke of to protect and defend ones family rests on the assumption that one is defending a person whose belief system one shares. Often the Torah uses the word "brother" when no blood relationship exists. And often Chazzalwill comment "achicha bemitzvot" - provided he is your brother in as much as he regards himself to be bound by the same mitzvoth that bind you. Not everyone to whom we are related by blood is family, and not everyone in our families is related to us by blood.
Yitzchak and Yishmael did not share values; nor did Yaacov and Eisav. Yoseif was seen by his brothers to be driving a wedge between them and Yaacov. He was seen to be positioning himself as Yaacov's sole spiritual heir. This led the brothers to believe that they and he were not on the same spiritual, moral or religious page. They did not share values. They were not family. Family is not just about shared ancestry; it is also about shared values.
Raising a family does not mean merely procreating and providing ones progeny with food, shelter, education and a means to earn a living. According to some authorities one has not fulfilled the mitzvah of raising children (peru urevu) unless one has raised them to adhere to sound Torah values.
Members of a family need not agree on everything, but they need to agree on the values by which they navigate their lives and the beliefs that inform their choices. Raising a family with a common belief set is the most foundational role of parenthood. This role should never be delegated to educational institutions. Educational institutions provide information and skills; parents provide values.
We found the best place to teach our children values was when we discussed current events at our dinner table. We tried to teach our children by helping them relate their Torah lessons and Parsha divrei Torah to real life moral and ethical dilemmas. Values are expressed not only in the things we choose to do but also in the things we restrain ourselves from doing. We tried to teach values by intervening in our children's conduct showing them not only how to behave but also how not to behave. More than anything one teaches values by modeling them. One teaches values by making sacrifices for them.
That is the responsibility of parenthood. The nachas of parenthood is when children inherit the values of their ancestors not only theiryichus. Family is not just about shared ancestry; it is also about shared values. That, is family.
[1] There are many explanations of these events that give meaning and understanding to them. At all times we need to be mindful of the gigantic human stature of Yoseif's brothers, the sons of Yaacov, founders of our nation. The purpose of this essay as part of the "Relationships Series" is to understand these events against the backdrop of a family and its relationships.
