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Why does Yehuda respond aggressively when Yosef offers leniency, freeing the brothers while keeping only Binyamin as a slave? The shiur develops a pshat that the brothers viewed themselves as co-conspirators in any family theft, making their collective slavery necessary for restitution and education. Yosef's refusal to accept this arrangement revealed a hidden motive—likely immoral designs on Binyamin—triggering Yehuda's fierce "vayigash" confrontation.
This shiur explores a profound difficulty in the narrative of Parshas Vayigash. When the goblet is discovered in Binyamin's sack, Yehuda confronts Yosef with surprising aggression, saying "ki kamocha k'Paro" (you are like Pharaoh). Yet this follows a series of exchanges where Yosef consistently showed remarkable leniency. The brothers initially offered that the thief be killed and they all become slaves; Yosef reduced this to only the thief becoming a slave while the others go free. After the goblet was found, the brothers again volunteered collective slavery, but Yosef insisted they go free. Why would Yehuda respond to such generosity with hostility? Rabbi Zweig presents two approaches to resolving this contradiction. The first pshat focuses on the concept of restitution versus punishment. When the brothers offered to all become slaves, they were proposing a practical solution: instead of the young, inexperienced Binyamin working alone for many years to pay off his debt, all the brothers—experienced shepherds and warriors—could work together and satisfy the restitution in a fraction of the time. From an economic standpoint, this made perfect sense. Yosef's insistence on keeping only Binyamin while sending the others away could not be explained by legitimate concerns about restitution or punishment.
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Bereishis 44:18-45:1 (Parshas Vayigash)
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