Brotherly Strife — and Its Price

The story of Yosef and his brothers takes up most of the last four parshiyos of Sefer Bereishis, a pretty good indication of its importance. And indeed, resonances of the tensions between the sons of Leah and the sons of Rachel are found throughout our holy texts. Taken together, they convey a message of the dangers of disunity to the fate of the Jewish People, and, at the same time, the power of unity.

Every year, during Mussaf of Yom Kippur, we recite “Eleh Ezkarah,” over the Asarah Harugei Malchus. That section begins with the ruler asking an august group of the greatest of the Tannaim: What is the punishment for one who kidnaps one of his brethren and sells him into slavery?

When they reply that the penalty is death, he inquires further whether the penalty was ever paid for the brothers’ sale of Yosef. Told that it was not, the ruler tells them that as the finest assemblage since the days of the children of Yaakov, it is they who will pay the penalty with their lives.

In The Queen You Thought You Knew, Rabbi David Fohrman detects a subplot of reconciliation between the children of Leah and the children of Rachel in Megillas Esther. The resonances between the Biblical text and Megillas Esther are striking. Yehudah’s words as he offers himself in place of Binyamin as a servant to the Egyptian viceroy, “For how can I go up to my father if the youth is not with me, lest I see the evil that will befall my father” (Bereishis 44:34), find their parallel in Esther’s plea to Achashveirosh to repeal Haman’s decree, “how can I see the evil that will befall my nation….” (Megillas Esther 8:6).