How to Approach Family Members Who Leave You Feeling as if You Can't Speak A Friendly Word to Them

When you read the beginning of this week’s parasha you see that Joseph’s brothers are less than enamored with their little brother.  Whether their enmity for him stemmed from the fact that their father loved Joseph more than any of them, or whether it stemmed from the fact that he brought back bad reports about them to their father, the end-result was that they hated him so much that they could not speak a friendly word to him.  (Gen. 37:4)

Two Torah commentators looked at this situation very differently. For the 17^th century Torah scholar, Rabbi Yonatan Eibeschutz of Prague, “the real tragedy was not that the brothers hated Joseph but the fact that they could not to talk to him.” Perhaps had they spoken to him they could have found some common ground and gotten past their hatred.  For Rashi, it was laudable that these brothers refused to vocalize words that were not felt in their hearts.  This Torah commentator saw this as a way of maintaining shalom bayit, peace in the home.  Which scholar’s interpretation or world view speaks to you?

We do know that the brothers spoke to Joseph after he told them his dream about their sheaves of grain bowing low to his sheaves of grain.  But their hatred grew even as they answered Joseph with the following words, “Do you mean to reign over us?  Do you mean to rule over us?”

Was it better for the brothers to keep the lines of communication with Joseph open even though they hated him or would it have been better for them to cut off all communication with him and to avoid him all together so their hatred would not be vocalized?

If I were to argue from Rashi’s position I might offer the following :  If you harbor hatred for another individual, you are better off not espousing your hatred via harsh language.  Avoiding saying what is in your heart is actually taking the high ground. If I were to argue from Eibeschutz’s position I might offer the following:  It is not productive to avoid engaging in conversations with someone you hate .  If you don’t interact with such an individual the likelihood that your feelings will dissipate is greatly lessened.  It is only through such interactions that you might find some common ground.

Perhaps the issue is not whether one should talk to another individual or not if you harbor hatred in your heart for them, perhaps the issue is how to let the hate go rather than holding onto it.   And if you let the hate go, and approach life from the view that you should love your neighbor as yourself, then the question might be how do you go about approaching the individual who you feel has caused you pain.  Do you make contact and have pleasant conversations or avoid contact and any conversation?

These are not easy questions addressed by our Torah portion and as you can see and the Torah does not give an explicit answer to this real-life situation.  Ultimately in future parshiyot we will see that Joseph matures, does not hold a grudge against his brothers who threw him into the pit, and is capable of forgiving them without taking revenge. Who knows, maybe that’s the answer that Torah wants us to learn although today’s parasha doesn’t leave us with a definitive answer for dealing with this real life situation that I will venture to say has arisen within the lives of many of us.

Shabbat Shalom.