Weekly Torah Portion Vayeishev Part 11 according to the Kli Yakar Genesis 37:26 5776 37 vs 26

Is it going to work? Yeah. Great. Okay. Good evening everybody. As I mentioned, we're going to do Genesis 37 26. That's in pares. I'll read the verse first in English and then in Hebrew. Yehuda said to his brothers, "What gain will there be if we kill our brother and cover up his blood au?" It's a very strange puzz. What gain? What do we have to gain if we kill him and cover his blood? What kind of gain could we possibly be talking about? So it's kind of a little bit of quote from Rashi but that every place in Tanakh every place in the scripture that's mentioned the word beta is an understanding of the word some kind of financial benefit some kind of gain So, we're going to kind of address this throughout the night. What was on their minds? What was at least on Yehuda's mind? What kind of financial gain is there if we would have killed him? In other words, if there's no financial gain, then we won't kill him. If there's a financial gain, then we'll kill him. Does that make any sense? What kind of financial gain about killing your own brother? Yeah. This is like out of the ordinary. Very strange here. From where would we even possibly think that there's some kind of of uh financial gain from from murder? Al came near Lomar. Therefore, it seems this is what he's this is what it's saying. So we're going to discuss this a lot tonight that the main point of this jealousy that existed amongst the brothers or let's say could be Yehuda could be Ruvane but the brothers says all of them right the the they all had this jealousy the main point of their jealousy was over the birthright or we'll say the firstborn rights whatever rights go along with firstborn that the brothers felt that this beautiful jacket, this fine woolen tunic that was given to him because he was the first he was the the first borna. So now we're going to skip back. I mentioned to you we're going to go back to Pusk Gimmel. So if you go back to Lamad Zang Gimmel and I'm going to quote the verse and then we're going to see Rashi on that. So here we go. Line gimmel. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons since he was a child of his old age. and he made him a fine woolen tunic. Okay, esphob Yakov loved or Ysef love Israel loved Yseph more than all his sons. He was a child of his old age and he made for him and he made for him this special garment. So Rashi says to find it. Okay. Ben Zakuni. So there's different team that actually brings down three. I think starts off by saying well Yseph was born at Yako's old age. So he's called the child of his old age. Now uncle says that he was a wise son. And why was he a wise son? A mo all the wisdom, all the Torah that Jacob had learned for all those years in the in the yeshiva of Sheam and A he transmitted he gave over to that particular son Yoseph. And then he says as maybe as an alternative answer it says Shalom do that Yseph was called his son of his old age because of the zeun. Now there's a little bit of play on words because if you have the Zion of Ze the Kuf and the nun it sounds like you know zenim. So because of the splendor of his appearance he resembled uh Jacob. Okay. And so now that we saw that verse, we're going to go into our clear and go back to that verse to see what the clear actually says about this verse. So we're going back to page. So it's verse three. We're going to skip the first paragraph. We're going to start where it say it's right in the middle. Alternatively, everyone has it. Here, everything that Yakov had learned from Shame and Aver, these were the two Roshivas, great great grandparents. Um, he taught over to specifically Yosephon of Mash Lamad. Why? You know, we can ask why did it why did Yakov only give this information or the wisdom and pass it on to one son? He had many sons. Why did he not pass it on to all the rest of his sons? Certainly must be. It is hard to say about our forefathers. Uh the truth is our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These are the heads of the tribes that they were let's say they disliked this wisdom. They were not keen is a strong language. It's more than dislike. They didn't feel they didn't want to bond with their father Yakov to listen to him or listen about from the Torah that he had to offer a yo benzacunim hulo but as we saw Yseph was the either we had three different explanations what benzukunim was in Rashi that he was the son of his old age or he was the one who loved wisdom he was the wise son or the one that looked like him. He had the Zina. He continuously constantly turned to to to Yakov to learn and he yearned to listen from what came out of his mouth. whatever he had learned in his early yeshiva days from shaman alcane ao that's why yakov loved yoseph so much and vitarumo rashi says that this was what uncleus mentioned bakim hulo he was a wise son and there's a verse in Job in Eu it says In old age there is wisdom. So we understand a little bit here that not we're not we're not obviously talking about Yseph per se but when you look at our elders we should recognize that's where the wisdom is. So yeah maybe we are talking about Yseph also but I think it's referring to Yakovar and this is what the last explanation Rashi was. of Zeve Eonim do that his uh countenance right was very um um what's the word I'm used it before um it was exuberant and it was also similar to him because inelis in Ecclesiastes it says in chapter 8 alf That wisdom of man illuminates his face. So we see the wisdom both on his father and on Yseph. There was an illumination and that was a similar thing that they had in kaducian me. There's a hint here to what the rabbis have said in Gammorian. There might have been an argument. What's greater? uh learning Torah or doing actions and they all agree is that learning is greater but why I it's kind of like a catch 22 and it's a twist but the reason that the learning is greater is because it actually brings you to do the action which is obviously why some held the action was greater if you're going towards towards a goal but the tomwood brings you to the highest level of action because then you had to do it Right. So thusly we have the mentioning here of the completion or the perfection of Yseph in the verse that he was shephering his brother's flock. This comes to exclude any type of pastoring that's forbidden. So it's it's um even a pimp in Hebrew is is a is a row noose to to pastor is not always the most productive use of one's time. So here he says so this comes to he was a rower he was pastoring or shephering let's say the u his brother's flock this was to exclude that he was not doing uyote as they say he wasn't wasting his time with not just frivolous things but perhaps even forbidden things even even though right nevertheless The main reason that Yakov loved Yoseph was only from the aspect of this concept of wisdom zakunimulo. He was the wise child. He was the inquisitive one. He begged for more. He wanted to know about the universe, the cosmos and life itself, right? He was the wise cho because Tammud is greater than ma. Okay, now we're going to flip back. I just wanted you to see that because that's a little bit um pertinent to the rest of our discussion tonight. So, we left off where it's like if you just came in, it's page. It's chapter Z 37 verse 26. It's four lines down right where we saidimal as was explained above inimo. We did that. What is our real question? Let's review. The main question was what was Yehuda thinking by saying that what financial gain would there be if we kill our brother and cover his blood? So, we're I always had a theory about what he was saying, and you can tell me if you guys agree with me. I thought he was trying to reason. He was trying to persuade his brothers. He really wanted to save Joseph and he was trying to um he was trying to sort of like get them to go along with him and and maybe even appeal to their baser instincts. I think you're right. Um you're going to see it come much more clear as we go along. I think he's even leading into the answer right now. Since the law of the firstborn is that the firstborn receives in a in the inheritance double the amount of everyone else. In other words, if you have four children, one of them is a bakur. So you divide the estate into five portions. The firstborn gets two and everyone else gets one, right? Nothing left over. Okay. So he says, okay, now we have to wrap our heads around this. Remember if you know the story they went meaning the other sons took the sheep and they were gra grazing they were shephering they were pastoring the son of their father in a place called what is a very holy place don't get me wrong but it's also a miranio it's a place that has a lot of tragedy attached to it and advers adversity. It's a dangerous place because of the nations that surround the area. Oh, al-H that they really were they weren't that concerned. Perhaps these natives would would steal their flock, the stop the flock, because the the children of Yakov originally took them from that place. So, if we go to, you know what I have to do? I just have to turn this off for one second.