The Dangerous Tattletale
When I was in Europe I was speaking once to an old melamed in the town where I was staying and he was telling me stories about the days of his youth. And among other things he was telling me about how the Jewish community dealt with mosrim, informers, in those days.
You have to know that the Russian government always was looking for ways and means of tormenting the Jews with unjust laws; and if somebody would be found transgressing one of the laws of the government, he could lose his life. And so the moser – the Jew who was willing to inform the government against his fellow Jews – was considered a danger, a serious peril to Jewish lives. That’s what we say every day וְלַמַּ לְשִׁ ינִים אַל תְהִי תִ קְ וָה. It’s a special tefillah against the malshinim, against government informers.
Drowning in the Mikveh
So this old melamed was telling me he remembers when he was still a young man how there was a moser in the nearby town of Verneh – that’s where the famous Warner brothers come from, from Verneh; they were from the same family as this moser – and the moser was judged and it was decided to get rid of him.
So this moser used to go to the merchatz on erev Shabbos, to the mikvah, and they drowned him in the mikvah. It was the psak of rabbonim. They pondered the situation; they weighed the options and it was decided that this was the best solution. What can you do? You have to save the Jewish nation. It was pikuach nefesh.
Now, you have to understand that this wasn’t just a European tradition from the medieval times; it was the common sense procedure of an ancient Jewish nation: a troublemaker, a loose cannon, can’t just be left to his own devices. If he’s a danger to the Jewish nation then he has to be taken care of. And an emergency situation requires an emergency solution.
Yosef: A Peril
And that brings us to Yosef Hatzaddik; that’s what happened with Yosef. Because it’s a question that bothers everyone. Why were Yosef’s brothers so opposed to him? It’s a puzzle to everyone. וַ יִשְׂ נְ אוּ אוֹתוֹ – They hated him! (Bereishis 37:4). So much that they wanted to get rid of him, to kill him. How could they think of such a thing? They were tzaddikim, after all.
The answer is what we’re talking about now: they considered him a serious peril to the family. After all, it was something very strange – he was always coming to their father and giving bad reports; always discovering certain flaws in his brothers’ behavior which he constantly reported to their father.
Now, the house of our Avos was a house of humility – nobody in this family ever cared for glory or ever sought power. And now all of a sudden in this humble home the brothers saw a snake growing up. A younger brother willing to go to the father with reports in order to besmirch his siblings! And so the brothers began to suspect that Yosef was building up a case for himself that someday he should take over the leadership of the family.
And he had dreams of grandeur too, hallucinations of becoming great! “A vision came to me at night, that all of you were bowing down to me.” Now we know that very often a dream comes at night about certain subjects that you think about in the daytime. If you think too much about it in the daytime, that dream comes at night to you. “So what’s he dreaming now,” the brothers said, “that we’ll bow down to him? It means he’s walking around all day long with these ideas, hopes, plans of subjecting us, of keeping us underfoot.”
Fulfilling the Dreams
And in addition, he’s telling us his dreams! Why is he telling us? Let him keep it to himself. Only that he’s imagining himself a prophet! He’s taking his ambitions and he’s portraying it in the form of prophecy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t tell them to us; it’s because he believes implicitly in his dreams.
It happened once: “You’re all going to bow down to me!” It happened again a second time. “You’re all going to serve me, and our father along with you!” So they saw he’s a false prophet, a man who’s going to pursue his ambitions.
Now how can a younger brother ever hope to gain control over his older brothers? There’s only one way – it’s the way of Roman elections. You know how the Romans elected a new emperor? By the stiletto.
It means he’ll have to slaughter his older brothers and he’ll grab everything. Absolutely, that’s what Yosef is planning. And so here, all of a sudden, there was growing up in their midst a viper, a peril to the future of this great holy nation. What’s going to happen to us? He’ll destroy the family for the sake of fulfilling his ‘dreams’, his grand ambitions! A prophet, you have to know, is obligated to do whatever he can to make his prophecy come true. And that means this self-declared prophet is a peril to the future of the family.
The Beis Din Rules
So they sat and they thought this over a long time. The Torah doesn’t tell us all details but they pondered and debated for a long time! What shall we do with him? And after weighing all the options they came to the sober conclusion that this wasn’t mere sibling rivalry; it was self-preservation, pikuach nefesh. And therefore, with heavy hearts, they decided that it was their duty, no matter how difficult it would be, to get rid of him. They had no alternative: either kill or be killed.
It was a Torah decision, a psak halacha: הַ בָּא לְהָרְגֶךָ הַשְׁכֵּם לְהָרְגוֹ – If you know that someone is coming to kill you, you don’t wait till he’s already standing on top of you to begin defending yourself. You set your alarm for early in the morning, before he gets up, and you kill him first! (Sanhedrin 72a). And so they weren’t about to sit back like lemelach and let this little schemer make his dreams come true – over their dead bodies.
The Righteous Brothers
And so when they concluded that it was a mitzvah to kill him they were a hundred percent certain that they had made a righteous decision. If you’re in doubt, even a little bit, are you going to pass such a tremendous sentence on a brother? So you must say they were convinced that they were right.
Only that at the last moment, in their mercy, they didn’t carry it out. They decided they could save their skin without killing him, by selling him in slavery. A slave in the ancient days wasn’t a man who would have any grand ambition. There were no abolitionists in those days and so slavery was forever. Once he’d be sold and carried out of the country, he’s finished; no more danger from him.
And so it’s important to understand that Yosef’s brothers had no regrets about what they had done. They were convinced that they were following the proper procedure. The truth is that they thought that executing him was what they really should have done; only that in a moment of weakness they yielded, or they had certain considerations to yield, and that’s why they were willing he should be sold in slavery. But they were absolutely convinced that they were right. They had heavy hearts of course – Yosef was their own flesh and blood after all – but they had done their duty, no matter how difficult it was. They had no regrets.
Everything Crashes
Now our sedrah, Parshas Vayigash, is many years later. And the brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain and they’re standing before the mishneh lamelech trying to persuade the Egyptian prince that they have no bad intentions, that they’re innocent. They’re bowing down to him and begging him for mercy.
And then, all of the sudden, he opens his mouth and says אֲ נִי יוֹסֵ ף – I am Yosef (ibid. 45:4). Yosef?! What Yosef?! How?!
And now, all of a sudden it hit them like a lightning bolt between the eyes. This was their Yosef! And he’s a prince and they are bowing down to him. They saw that he was a prophet, that what he had said had come true, and they were so overwhelmed that וְלֹא יָכְלוּ אֶחָיו לַעֲנוֹת – they couldn’t even speak (ibid. 45:3). When Yosef said two words, “אֲ נִ י י וֹ סֵ ף,” they were dumbstricken; they couldn’t answer.
Do you know why they couldn’t answer? Because they had nothing to answer! All of their terutzim and explanations, a big building of justifications, came crashing down.
Self Justification
You know, when you get in a fight with your wife so the first hour you feel bad about it. An hour later and she’s off to work, you feel you’re right. Two hours later, you’re sure you’re right. And the more the time passes, the more right you become. After a week you’ve already built a skyscraper of justifications. Because a human being is always justifying himself. That’s human nature.
But for Yosef’s brothers it wasn’t only one week. It wasn’t a month or even a year. This story is twenty two years later! It means that for more than twenty years the brothers had been justifying their decision, their opinion of themselves and of their brother, building up and reinforcing that building of self-righteousness. And so it was some edifice by this time! It was a skyscraper of righteousness! Absolutely they were right! Not just right; righteous! 100% righteous!
But when they heard those two words “אֲ נִ י י וֹ סֵ ף,” the whole thing came crashing down and collapsed into dust. They had a thousand answers! They could have written long Torah maarachas justifying themselves! But they realized in one moment that the answers were worthless; they weren’t justifications that would stand up under the light of the truth.
Because when Yosef suddenly opened his mouth and said “אֲ נִ י י וֹ סֵ ף,” that knocked them over. All of a sudden they discovered in a flash that he was a navi, chosen by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That they had bowed down to him twice like Yosef had prophesized once upon a time. And they had laughed at it. “Should we come and bow down to you?!” They were laughing at him and now they saw it came true. Now they saw the reason for the opposition was not the big edifice of righteous justification, of self defense to rescue themselves from his plan. No! It was something else, other more hidden motivations. And all of their deliberations – “What should we do with our brother, Yosef? How can we act l’shem Shomayim and protect ourselves?” – were a self-deception. The brothers had unwittingly duped themselves.
