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Why did the brothers sell Yosef, and what was the deeper machloket between Yaakov and his sons? The shiur develops the thesis that the sale centered on two competing visions of kingship: Yaakov held that only through Yosef's total selflessness—malchus as pure service—could Klal Yisroel later harness the power of Eisav embodied in Yehuda's malchus. The brothers disagreed, believing Yehuda's malchus could begin directly without Yosef's prerequisite stage.
This shiur tackles the fundamental questions surrounding Mechiras Yosef. Rabbi Zweig opens by noting that the brothers paskened halacha (הלכה) to kill Yosef, and Yehuda's intervention to sell him instead appears to have been correct—so much so that Hashem (ה׳) Himself joined their cherem not to tell Yaakov. Rashi (רש"י) states that everything that happened to Yosef was midah k'neged midah for his own misdeeds (speaking lashon hara about his brothers), yet we know Mechiras Yosef is an aveira so severe that the Asarah Harugei Malchus, the machtzis hashekel, and many later tragedies serve as kaparos for it. How can both be true? And why do the Bnei Hashfachos (sons of Bilhah and Zilpah) participate in the sale if Yosef's dibas ra'ah was only about the Bnei Leah, as Rashi says? The shiur then focuses on a critical textual difficulty in the pesukim describing the sale. According to Rashi, the brothers pulled Yosef out of the pit and sold him to the Yishmaelim, who sold him to the Midyanim, who sold him to Mitzrayim. Yet the pasuk says "Va'yavru anashim Midyanim" *before* it says the brothers pulled him out. Why does the Torah (תורה) interrupt the narrative flow to mention the Midyanim merchants passing by before telling us the brothers executed the sale? This strange order led the Rashbam to a radical reading: the brothers never actually sold Yosef at all—while they were eating, Midyanim pulled him from the pit and sold him themselves, and the brothers are only blamed indirectly for their negligence. The Or HaChaim offers yet another approach involving promoters and financiers. But Rabbi Zweig finds both approaches unsatisfying.
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Bereishis 37 (Parshas Vayeishev)
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