A student I had quite a number of years ago, who had confided in me that he had experienced much bullying, especially during his high school years, shared a crucial insight with me, one which was the fruit of “wisdom born in pain.” “Bullies,” he remarked, “move on. It’s easy for them. They forget about the incidents in which they were cruel to someone, and don’t give it a second thought. But it is harder for the bullied to move on!”

The idea of “moving on,” of simply not thinking of the pain that one has caused someone else, is not limited, of course, to bullies, but the basic idea remains the same.  Classic illustrations of the type in secular literature
are the characters of Tom and Daisy Buchanan as depicted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s unforgettable description of them is as follows:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby [New York, 1925, repr., 1953, pp. 180-81.]

Did Joseph’s brothers’ simply “move on” after what they had done to him in Parashat Va-Yeshev? The answer to this question might be a mahloqet bein ha-mepharshim ha-rishonim. In the beginning of Genesis Chapter 38 (verse 1), the Torah states: About that time Judah left his brothers and camped near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. Why did Yehudah leave his brothers? According to Rashi (following Bereshit Rabbah, ch. 85), this separation was not initiated by Yehudah. When the other brothers of Joseph saw Jacob’s intense grief; they deposed Yehudah from his position as the unofficial head of the fraternal clan. “Had you advised us to let him go, we would have listened to you.” According to this opinion, the brothers, immediately after the sale had begun to regret their action, and had definitely not “moved on” in the aforementioned careless way.

On the other hand, R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Ralbag, Shadal and others (essentially for chronological reasons that will not be discussed here) all maintain that the events depicted in Genesis 38 (viz., Yehudah’s marriage to the daughter of Shua, the story of Er and Onan, and the episode with Tamar) reflect events that transpired before the sale of Joseph. In my opinion, an important corollary of this view is that the evidence that is brought to suggest that the brothers at that point in time already had a change of heart automatically disappears. Thus, it may very well be that until the encounter of the brothers with the mysterious ruler of Egypt, the brothers had in fact “moved on,” in spite of Jacob’s obvious pain! They did not even think about their treatment of Joseph, much less regret it!

In Parashat Va-Yeshev, the case of Joseph and his brothers can be viewed, from one perspective, as a classic example of “the bully, the bullied and the bystander.” As the bullied, Joseph had an imperative, no matter how hard, to “move on.” And, thank God, he did so as best as he could. (With all appropriate diffidence, I wonder if Joseph’s self-perception as “the bullied” might be a reason why he did not try to contact Jacob his father during all the years that he was in Egypt, an issue discussed by Ramban and R. Yitzhak Arama, the author of the work ‘Aqedat Yitzhak, among others. Perhaps, for reasons of psychological survival, Joseph had to “move on” and not let the fact that he was bullied so cruelly by his brothers defeat him. But by contacting Jacob, while of yet not knowing if his brothers were still intent upon bullying him to death, he would be returning to the system that had almost resulted in his demise!)

But although originally Joseph was “the bullied,” the wheel of fate starts to turn in Parashat Miqqetz.

Now Joseph was the vizier of all the land; it was he who dispensed rations to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed low to him, with their faces on the ground. When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but acted like a stranger toward them and spoke harshly to them. He asked them, “Where do you come from?” And they said, “From the land of Canaan, to buy food.” For although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. And Joseph recalled the dreams that he had dreamed about them (Genesis 42:7-8).

      When Joseph, the second-in-command to Pharaoh, realizes that the ten men in front of him are indeed his brothers, he also realizes that his successful endeavor to “move on” is threatened by the mere appearance of his brothers. He must, consequently, see if they have no longer “moved on,” that is, if they had, in retrospect, thought about their previous actions and had realized that they had acted horribly towards their younger brother.  Thus, the elaborate scheme in which Joseph tries to replicate, as best as possible, the events leading up to his own sale. He does this by first getting his brothers to bring Benjamin to Egypt, and then, casts Benjamin as the “Joseph figure” in the restaging of the play. Would the brothers resent that Benjamin’s initial preferential treatment by the mysterious ruler of Egypt? Would they leave him in Egypt, presumably to a short hard life of slavery, followed by an anonymous death, as they had left the scene and after he was sold so many years ago?

The original test that the brothers must pass to prove that they are not spies is to bring Benjamin to Egypt. Robert Alter, “Joseph and his Brothers,” Commentary 70:5, (November, 1980), pp. 59-69, on p. 64, wrote the following analysis: “The test has a profound logical function in the oblique interrogation of the brothers: if in fact they have left Benjamin unharmed all these years, the truth of their words will be confirmed, that, despite past divisiveness, “we are twelve…brothers, the sons of one man.” (Genesis 42:11). I would add that moreover, if there was an indication that brothers were kind to Benjamin, the child who now structurally occupied the same position that Joseph had (viz., a son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel, and the son of his old age), there would be evidence that, if they could do it again, they would not repeat their behavior towards Joseph.

At the conclusion of Parashat Miqqetz, Joseph ensures that his silver goblet is placed in Benjamin’s sack. He now construes another test: how far would the brothers go to save the other son of Rachel?

Regarding the subsequent confrontation between the ruler of Egypt and the brothers after the goblet is found in Benjamin’s sack, Alter writes: “This is the final confirmation by the brothers themselves of Joseph’s dreamt-of supremacy, their necessary subservience. It is also an open admission of guilt which at least psychologically must refer to the real crime, the selling of Joseph, and not to the imputed crime of stealing the silver goblet. Judah may understandingly feel that he and his brothers cannot prove their innocence in regard to the stolen goblet, but he could not seriously believe that it is an act they have knowingly committed, and the crime that God Himself has at last found out is certainly the making away with Joseph.”

Thus, the brothers have indeed no longer “moved on.” They are approaching the moment of self-reckoning where they truly realize how horribly they had acted. It is Judah, who initiated the sale of Joseph, who, speaking on behalf of his brothers who subsequently steps forwards and completely renounces his previous behavior.

When Judah and his brothers re-entered the house of Joseph, who was still there, they threw themselves on the ground before him. Joseph said to them, “What is this deed that you have done? Do you not know that a man
like me practices divination? Judah replied “What can we say to my lord? How can we plead, how can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered the crime of your servants. Here we are, then, slaves of my lord, the rest of us as much as he in whose possession the goblet was found.” But he replied, “Far be it for me to ac thus! Only in he in whose possession the goblet was found shall be my slave; the rest of you may go back unhindered to your father” (Genesis 44: 14-17).

The full dיnouement of the story will occur when Judah will offer to stay by himself alone in Egypt (re-creating what had actually happened to Joseph), and will plead for Benjamin to return to Canaan with the rest of his brothers. At that point, Judah will have fully renounced the way of the bully, and will have fully empathized with the person that he had participated in bullying. This culmination of the story will be treated at length in Parashat Va-Yigash.