Sibling Rivalry (Rabbi Sacks on Mikketz, Covenant & Conversation)

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to Covenant & Conversation essays, Rabbi Sacks' commentary on the weekly Torah portion, explores new ideas and sharing inspiration from the Torah readings of the week. You can find both the video and the full written article on Mikketz available to watch, read, print, and share, by visiting: https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/mikketz/sibling-rivalry/ A new FAMILY EDITION is now also available: https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-family-edition/mikketz/sibling-rivalry/ For more articles, videos, and other material from Rabbi Sacks, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org and follow @RabbiSacks. The Rabbi Sacks Legacy continues to share weekly inspiration from Rabbi Sacks. This piece was originally written and recorded by Rabbi Sacks in 2010. With thanks to the Schimmel Family for their generous sponsorship of Covenant & Conversation, dedicated in loving memory of Harry (Chaim) Schimmel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listen to these words that are among the most fateful and reverberating in all of Jewish history.
0:06.4	Vayaake Yosef et Achav, behem lohi ki-ruhu, Joseph recognized his brothers, but they didn't recognize him.
0:16.1	Now, the Torah is a deep book and we make a great mistake if we think we can understand it on one superficial
0:21.5	level. On the surface, the story is simple. Envious of him, Joseph's brothers initially planned to kill him.
0:28.6	Eventually they sell him into slavery. He's taken into Egypt and through a series of vicissitudes,
0:34.3	he becomes Prime Minister second only in rank and power to Pharaoh. It's now many years later.
0:40.3	The brothers have come to Egypt to buy food. They come before Joseph, but he no longer looks like the man
0:46.4	they knew many years before. Then he was a 17-year-old called Joseph. Now he's 39, an Egyptian ruler
0:54.0	called Sofnus Panehach, dressed in official robes
0:57.3	with a gold chain round his neck, who speaks Egyptian and uses an interpreter to communicate with
1:04.0	these visitors from the land of Canaan. No wonder they didn't recognize him, even though he
1:09.8	recognized them. But that is only the surface meaning.
1:14.3	Deep down, the book of Baratius is exploring the most profound source of all human conflict.
1:20.8	Freud thought the great symbol of conflict was Lius and Oedipus, the tension between fathers and
1:27.1	sons. Baratius thinks otherwise.
1:30.1	The root of human conflict is sibling rivalry. Canaan Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and
1:36.6	Esau, and now Joseph and his brothers. Joseph has the misfortune of being the youngest. He symbolizes the Jewish condition. His brothers are
1:46.7	bigger and stronger than he is. They resent his presence. They see him as a troublemaker. The fact
1:53.3	that their father loves him only makes them angrier and more resentful. They want to kill him.
1:59.3	In the end, they get rid of him in a way that allows them to feel
2:02.3	a little less guilty. They can conct a story that they tell their father, and then they can settle down to life
2:08.5	again. They can relax. There is no Joseph to disturb their peace anymore. And now they're facing a stranger
	...

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