Showing posts from December, 2015

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Parshas Vayeshev - Repentance and Exile

Parshas Vayeshev seems to start out following a very familiar narrative. The good brother and the bad ones. A father who doesn't quite seem to know what's going and sibling rivalry that escalates into a conflict between good and evil and will serve to define a nation. And yet, unlike Yishmael and Esav, all of the brothers remain as the founders of the Jewish Nation. Why is that? Once the brothers have kidnapped and sold Yosef into slavery, shouldn't they have been cast out as a lost cause the way that Esav and Yishmael were? How is that reconciliation proved possible here and not in the past? To start with, it helps to look at what's missing. G-d. None of the brothers mention G-d in Parshas Vayeshev at all. Nor does Yosef mention G-d until he refuses the demand of Potiphar's wife and at the very end where he is given the opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh's servants. After Yehuda has masterminded the sale of Yosef, both brothers go into exi