Reply To: Short & Sweet

Vayeishev: Cover-Up

When the brothers decided to kill Yosef, Yehudah tried to talk them out of it. He asked his brothers: מה בצע כי נהרג את אחינו, what do we gain by killing our brother, וכסינו את דמו, and by covering up his blood? But what was the added message of Yehudah referring to the covering up of the blood, after he already tried to talk them out of killing Yosef?

R’ Chaim Shmuelevitz is said to have had a fascinating explanation. The brothers ddi have a justification for why they wanted to kill Yosef. They held he was מוריד במלכות; that he was plotting to usurp the rightful place of the other brothers, or even that he wanted to entirely push them out of the being a part of the Jewish nation.

Yehudah chose not to directly address this charge. Instead he asked them: then why are you hiding? If you thought killing Yosef is the right thing to so, you would do so openly. Instead, you want to kill him in secret, and tell the world a wild animal got to him. The fact that you are not willing to publicly stand by what you claim to believe shows that you are lying to yourselves, and that deep down you know that.

We all have our internal justifications for why we do what we do. But if we’re embarrassed to admit them out loud, it’s a good sign that we don’t truly believe them.

לע״נ דוד חיים בן ישראל דוב הכהן
לע״נ ר׳ חיים דוב בן ר׳ בןציון שלום