D’var Torah – December 20

I hope this finds you all well.

We all have favorites – favorite sports teams, favorite restaurants, favorite holidays, you name it. It’s natural. We instinctively are drawn to some things over others, and there’s nothing wrong with that. On top of that, if our preferences weren’t already deeply ingrained, they are reinforced again and again through our education and other societal structures. Remember in kindergarten having to write down your favorite color, your favorite animal, etc.?

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having favorites unless it clouds or blinds our better judgement.

In this week’s parsha of Vayeishev* we see such an example. Jacob openly shows his preferential bias towards Joseph, his second youngest son. Jacob lavishes Joseph with a multi-colored coat, which Joseph’s brothers see as a symbol of Jacob’s partiality.[1]

Joseph does what probably most 17-year old’s who know they have an exalted status do…he runs with it!  He tells his brothers that he dreamed that he will rule over them.[2] The rest (Joseph’s brothers throwing him into a pit, selling him into slavery, and telling their father that a wild beast killed his favorite child), as we say, is history.

This favoritism and the subsequent anger it stocked quite literally changed the entire trajectory and course of the Jewish people.

Is the lesson here that we’re actually not allowed to have favorites? No. But it does mean that we have to manage and often put our biases in check. Sometimes picking our favorite isn’t the best choice or the right call.

Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah taught in Genesis Rabbah, “Play no favoritism: because Joseph got a multi-colored coat, the brothers ‘hated’ him.”[3]

Bizrat HaShem, with God’s help and guidance, may we in life be guided towards the answers and solutions we need, not the answers and solutions we like or want.

Wishing you a Good Shabbos and a wonderful weekend.

L’Shalom,

Rabbi Aaron Stucker-Rozovsky