A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture by Rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar in Los Angeles, where she gave a speech at Mechon Hadar in New York City entitled, “Can Jewish Ideas Change Your Life? Can they Change the World?”. Rabbi Brous’ speech focused on Jewish tradition’s command that we see ourselves a part of a greater whole, and she makes the claim that all of Sefer Bereishit represents a journey to emphatically answer “Yes!” to Cain’s question of, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I thought about this speech for the past several weeks, and how we can teach our children to look beyond themselves and their own selfish needs, and what are the consequences for failing to achieve this ideal.
In Parashat Vayeshev, we are exposed to the harsh reality of what happens when Joseph’s brothers capacity for cruelty nearly destroys the Jewish people. After their anger at Joseph reaches a boiling point, Joseph’s brothers spontaneously decide to enact their revenge against Jacob’s favorite son in the beginning of our parasha, ripping off Joseph’s multi-colored coat, throwing him into a pit, and ultimately selling him into slavery. In order to cover up their crime, our parasha states that Joseph’s brothers, “took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the tunic in the blood” (Bereshit 37:31). While an initial reading of our parasha might lead the reader to assume that the brothers only slaughtered the goat to find a suitable source of blood for the cover-up, our commentators argue that the brothers were as cruel to the goat as they were to Joseph.
Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, otherwise known as the Hizkuni, compares the sacrifice of the brothers to a text in the Talmud about Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian commander charged with destroying the temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. (Hizkuni on Genesis 37:31). The Talmud states:
“R. Hiyya bar Abin said in the name of R. Joshua ben Korhah: An old man from the inhabitants of Jerusalem told me that in this valley Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard killed two hundred and eleven myriads, and in Jerusalem he killed ninety-four myriads on one stone, until their blood went and joined that of Zechariah, to fulfill the words, “Blood touches Blood.” He noticed the blood of Zechariah bubbling up warm, and asked what it was. They said: It is the blood of the sacrifices which has been poured there. He had some blood brought, but it was different from the other. He then said to them: If you tell me [the truth], well and good, but if not, I will tear your flesh with combs of iron. They said: What can we say to you? There was a prophet among us who used to reprove us for our irreligion, and we rose up against him and killed him, and for many years his blood has not rested. He said to them: I will appease him. He brought the great Sanhedrin and the small Sanhedrin and killed them over him, but the blood did not cease. He slaughtered young men and women, but the blood did not cease. He brought school-children and slaughtered them over it, but the blood did not cease. So he said, “Zechariah, Zechariah, I have slain the best of them; do you want me to destroy them all?” When he said this to him, it stopped. Nebuzaradan felt remorse. He said to himself: “If such is the penalty for slaying one soul, what will happen to me who has slain such multitudes?” So he fled away, and sent a deed to his house disposing of his effects and became a convert” (Babylonian Talmud Gittin 57b).
In this talmudic legend, a commander with a particular penchant for violence is mortified at the sight of blood coming from all the victims of his massacre, and changes his ways because he recognizes the horrors that come from his bloodlust. For the Hizkuni, when killing the goat, Joseph’s brothers were like Nebuzaradan, so blood-thirsty that they would viciously slaughter any living being.
In the Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, the scene where the brothers slaughtered the goat was cruel and gruesome, and serves as an archetype for any instance where a person’s sanguine desire for blood and revenge dwarfs their sense of compassion. The Guide states:
“The goat had no horns and it said to the brothers, “You are killing two lives”-this teaches that it was a female and pregnant. When they came to slaughter it, it cried out in a voice that reached the heavens, so that the angels came down to see, “Joseph lives and I die! Who will tell Jacob?” One of the winds went and told Jacob what the goat said. But in the end, “His heart went numb, for he did not believe them” (45:26). So the goat cried out, “Earth do not cover up my blood!” And till now, the goat’s blood is damp on the earth, until the Messiah comes, as it is written, “I will smelt them as one smelts silver “ (Zechariah 13:9)- the silver for which they sold Joseph, as it is said, “They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver” (37:28)” (Rambam, Guide for the Perplexed 3:46).
In this interpretation, the slaughtered goat was not an ordinary sacrifice, but a vulnerable animal whose cries were ignored by Joseph’s brothers. Furthermore, Aviva Zornberg writes that the blood from this goat “comes to represent the human responsibility for suffering,” a symbol of all that humans are capable of destroying (Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, 272). One cannot read the account of Joseph’s brothers throwing him into the pit without recognizing the cruelty the brothers show towards Joseph, yet the Rambam’s interpretation reminds us that cruelty seldom exists in isolation, and those who are willing to debase the humanity of one living being will likely show a similar disinterest towards every living being.
At the beginning of her talk, Rabbi Brous pointed out that the moment that Judah stands up for Benjamin in front the mysterious Egyptian bureaucrat that turns out to be Joseph is the first moment someone in the Torah completely transforms their selfishness into selflessness (Bereishit 44:18-34). I agreed with Rabbi Brous’ analysis, and think the moment the brothers are reunited several parshiyot later appears even more dramatic when one considers how cruel our rabbis felt the brothers were when they sold Joseph in the first place in this week’s parasha. Sadly, while humanity has tremendous capacity for compassion, we also have tremendous capacity for cruelty. By extension, as we teach our children at Schechter how to go out and make their mark on the world, we must remind them while they have the capability to use power in ways that will take goodness and holiness out of our world, Judaism commands us to use power to put compassion and transcendence back into our world. May each of us embrace the challenge to see outside of ourselves, not ignore the cry of the goat or the needy person in our midst, and allow care for the Other to transform all of humanity.
Shabbat Shalom!
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