Torah This Week
Welcome to Torah This Week, where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the Torah portion of the week.
PARASHAT MIKKETZ
(Genesis 41:1 - 44:17)
Four sets of brothers fight in Genesis - Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers-but only in this last case is there a complete reconciliation.
Concerning the first pair, Cain murders Abel.
Abraham expels his son Ishmael from his house, so that he will exert no negative influence on his younger brother, Isaac; the brothers only meet once more, to bury their father.
Esau wants to murder Jacob, but when the two brothers finally meet twenty years later, they fall on each other's neck, kiss, make peace, and "bury the hatchet." Apparently, though, each remembers where the hatchet is buried, because they never see each other again.
Finally, there are Joseph and his brothers. In Joseph's early years, his brothers hate him, and sell him into Egyptian slavery. Years later, after Joseph sees that they have sincerely repented, he makes peace with them. 'I am Joseph," he reveals to them (they had thought him to be a high Egyptian official), and soon thereafter, they move from Canaan to Egypt to live with him.
A postscript about this story's repercussions 4,000 years later: There has never been a pope more beloved by the Jewish community than John XXIII, whose secular name was Joseph Roncalli. In October 1960, two years after he became pope, John XXIII requested a meeting with world Jewish leaders. When they entered the room, Pope John's first words to them were, "I am Joseph your brother".
(Joseph Telushkin)
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