I guess for all of us the story about Joseph and his brothers is very well known. Also, Thomas Man, among others, has immortalized the story in a wonderful book which carries the same name. Even though the story is well remembered, that is not because of something supernatural that happens in it, like the split of the Reed Sea by Moses, or like the Revelation at Mount Sinai. People know the story very well, actually, because it has all the ingredients that a family story has. Moreover; it can be the story of every one of us.

The story of Joseph and his brothers, which start in chapter 37 of the book of Genesis and continues through the end of the book (chapter 50 of it), is the story of a family. Some modern commentators like to refer to this story, maybe based on the psychological terminology so well known and used in the last part of our century, as the story of a "dysfunctional family". I, personally, agree that it is a story of a family which has some problems dealing with feelings related to daily situations. In Joseph’s story we find the preference from a father to one of his sons, and then we find jealousy, anger, envy and enmity. This father –Jacob- may have problems dealing with his family (it is important to remember at this point also his complicate relationship with his brother, his uncle and his wives, beside the complexity of the relationship with his parents).

However –and despite the facts the Torah describes- what make Joseph’s history so interesting is that any person may find in the story, a reflection of his -or her- own family story.

Jealousy, anger, envy and enmity, are not rare components in some of our families, and even though a person is able to assure us: "That never happened in our family", we can agree that Joseph’s family, or to be more precisely, Jacob’s family –with all its complexity- can be, at least, one of the families we know well, may be in our friends environment or in our community.

To refresh your memory with the content of the story, the Torah tells us that Israel (Jacob) loved Joseph more than his other sons and he made for him an ornament tunic. Joseph had his two famous dreams and decided to tell them to his brothers, who hated him. Once Joseph was in the field trying to find his brothers (maybe trying to find the lost brotherhood), his brothers caught him, put him into a pit and finally sold him as a slave to Egypt. The rest of the story is also well known: After he had a bad time in slavery, Pharaoh appointed Joseph to be in charge of all the land of Egypt, he brought then his father and brothers to the fertile land of Goshen, and they, their children, and their children’s children remained there and lived well till a new Pharaoh oppressed them and made them slaves.

What is interesting in this story is that the brother’s enmity again Joseph, didn’t start with the ornament tunic, or with his famous dreams.

We read in the Torah:

We can not blame Joseph for receiving an ornament tunic. Also we may find some justification for his desire to tell the dreams to his brothers. We know that the dreams were part of a true prophecy, and he may felt spiritually compelled to tell them about it. Also, the prophetic nature of Joseph’s dreams can explain why "his father kept the matter in mind" (Genesis 37:11) . As RaSHI says: " ‘kept the matter in mind’: he was waiting when will (the prophecy) come".(see RaSHI there).

However, only he is responsible for bringing a bad report on his brothers to his father. Rabbi Gunter Plaut in his modern commentary on the Torah writes about our verse: "Traditional commentators attempt to whitewash Joseph’s behavior by saying that he merely did his job and reported what he saw". However, we can see that Rabbi’s Plaut opinion doesn’t reflect the wide specter of the Jewish commentators. What is really interesting is that almost all the Jewish commentators, the traditionally as well as the moderns, agree about Joseph’s misbehavior in bringing bad reports of his brothers to his father.

We read in Genesis Rabah and also in RaSHI who follows the Midrash in his commentary:

And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father" (Genesis 37:2): What did he say? Rabbi Meir says: ‘your sons are suspected of eating a part of a living animal’. Rabbi Shimon says: ‘they are putting their eyes on the daughters of the land (the cananites)’. Rabbi Yehuda says: ‘they look down on the servant’s sons and call them slaves’. Rabbi Yeudah bar Simon says: ‘he was punished for these three (things): even though when they prepared the kid to dip the tunic in its blood they slaughtered it, he was sold as a slave, and Potifar’s wife put her eyes on him" (Genesis Rabah 84: 7).

Another Midrash –Midrash Tehilim- sees in Joseph’s fault the reason his tribe was not elected among the others to serve as the priest tribe, and refers to him with the hard words: "He who slanders his neighbor in secret" (Psalms 101:5).