The Tears Of Two Brothers

“And Joseph fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on [Joseph’s] neck” [Genesis 45:14].

The poignant moment when these brothers are reunited after a separation of 22 years is one of the most tender scenes in the Torah. After a long chronicle of difficult cult brotherly relationships (Cain and Abel; Ishmael and Isaac; Esau and Jacob; Joseph and his other siblings) we finally come across two brothers who truly love each other.

The only children of Jacob’s beloved Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin shared the same womb, and when their mother died in Benjamin’s childbirth, we feel assured that Joseph drew Benjamin close to him, protected him, and shared with him the precious memories of the mother that Benjamin never knew. Their exclusive relationship must have made their eventual separation even more painful and traumatic. After all, Benjamin was the only brother totally uninvolved in the sibling tension and rivalry confronting Joseph.

Candlelighting, Readings:
Sabbath Candles: 4:26 p.m.
Torah: Gen. 44:18-47:27
Haftorah: Ezekiel 37:16-28
Havdalah: 5:30 p.m.

But we are left wondering: Where was the joy, the elation, the celebration? Why does the Torah only record the weeping of the brothers at their dramatic reunion?

Rashi cites and explains a Midrashic interpretation suggesting that these tears relate to the future destruction of the two Temples in the tribal land allotted to Benjamin, and to the destruction of the Sanctuary in Shiloh, in land allotted to Joseph (via son Ephraim). Rashi stresses that Joseph’s tears are for Benjamin’s destruction, and Benjamin’s tears are for Joseph’s destruction.

But why should Rashi extrapolate such terrible events in the future from the tears of the brothers? I believe that the answer lies in our being mindful of the brothers’ sin of selling Joseph, epitomizing the sins of enmity between people, internecine strife.

In the tradition of “the events of the fathers foreshadow the history of the children,” we can see that all tragedies to befall the Jewish people have their roots in the sale of Joseph into slavery. This act was the foundation of causeless hatred between Jews.

The Talmud [Gittin 55b-56a], in isolating the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple, reports an almost mundane event. A wealthy man had a party and wanted to invite his friend Kamtza. Inadvertently, his avowed enemy, Bar-Kamtza, was invited instead. Thrown out of the party and publicly shamed, Bar-Kamtza took revenge. He went to the Roman authorities and slandered the Jews in order to implicate them in crimes against the state. The rest is history.

Josephus writes that even as the Romans were destroying the Temple, Jews were still fighting amongst themselves. To this very day, we find the Jewish people split in enemy camps politically and religiously, with one group cynically and sometimes even hatefully attacking the other.

Indeed, during the Yom Kippur Musaf prayer, the author of the mournful Eileh Ezkera hymn of doxology, links the Temple’s destruction and the tragedy of Jewish exile with the sin of the brothers’ sale of Joseph.

Now Rashi’s interpretation assumes profound significance. In the midst of brotherly hatred, the love between Joseph and Benjamin stands out as a shining example of the potential for unconditional love.

Rashi links their tears during their meeting to the destruction of our Sanctuaries — the result of jealousy and enmity between Jew and Jew. Indeed, they each weep for the future tragedies that will befall their descendants. But although each brother will be blessed with a Sanctuary on his allotted land, the brothers weep not for themselves, but each for the other.

This act of selfless weeping and unconditional love becomes the only hope against the tragedies implicit in the sale of Joseph into slavery. The only thing that can repair that sin – and by implication the sins of all the causeless hatred between factions down the long road of Jewish history – is nothing less than a love in which the other comes first, love beyond reason or cause, when one weeps for the other’s tragedy rather than for his own.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook z’l, taught that if the Temples were destroyed because of causeless hatred, the Temple will only be rebuilt because of causeless love, exemplified by the tears of Joseph and Benjamin. Rashi is providing a prescient lesson for our troubled times. 

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone and chief rabbi of Efrat.