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Why didn't Yaakov believe his sons when they told him Yosef was alive? The shiur distinguishes between a shakran (liar) and a badai (one who creates his own reality). The brothers weren't lying when they brought the bloody tunic—they genuinely believed Yosef was "dead" in the halachic sense of total severance. Yaakov's distress (vayafag libo) stemmed from realizing his sons couldn't distinguish between their constructed reality and objective truth.
Rabbi Zweig opens with Rashi (רש"י)'s comment on Bereishis 45:26, where Yaakov doesn't believe his sons' report that Yosef is alive. Rashi explains that "ma tivo shel badai"—the nature of a liar is that even when he tells the truth, he is not believed, because he lied earlier. Rabbi Zweig raises a fundamental difficulty: the brothers never actually told a direct lie. They brought the bloody tunic and let Yaakov draw his own conclusions. How can Rashi invoke the principle about liars when no explicit lie was told? A second major difficulty emerges from the Gemara (גמרא) in Sotah (9b) regarding Shimshon and Delilah. When Delilah finally learned the truth about Shimshon's strength, the pasuk says "vatayda Delilah ki higid lah es kol libo"—she knew he had told her everything. The Gemara asks how she knew, and answers: "nikkarim divrei emes"—words of truth are recognizable. Yet Shimshon had lied to her twice before. If truth is self-evident even from a proven liar, why couldn't Yaakov recognize the truth when his sons told him Yosef was alive? The two principles appear contradictory: Rashi says a liar isn't believed even when telling truth, while the Gemara says truth is always recognizable.
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Why does the Midrash connect Pharaoh's expulsion of the Jews to the mitzvah of shiluach hakan? The shiur develops a chiddush that Pharaoh's sin wasn't only drowning the children, but the insensitivity of expelling the parents afterward. The deeper analysis reveals that Pharaoh may have valued the Jews greatly and wanted to control them—making his expulsion an act of tremendous cruelty, not liberation.
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Bereishis 45:26
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