The Growth and Personal Development of Yosef

A Torah Thought For Parshas Veyeshev By Rabbi Aryeh Goldman

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The Torah tells us that Yosef made some mistakes when he was a “Young Man” (17 years old).

He was concerned by some of the behaviors of his brothers that he witnessed. The Torah told

us that he shared his concerns with his father. He told his father that he was concerned that his

brothers were doing things wrong and he wanted his father to help them. However, the Torah

alludes to the fact that he should have been more careful before he jumped to the conclusion

that they were doing something wrong. Had he been more careful about not criticizing their

behaviors he would not have judged them without looking into the situation sufficiently.

Similarly, the Torah tells us that Yosef had a prophetic dream. In the dream he witnessed the

fact that he would be the king and he would be ruling over his brothers. He thought that it was

appropriate for him to share this prophetic vision with his brothers. Hashem was literally

communicating with him and telling him what was going to happen to them! However, this was

also a mistake. He should have realized that sharing this dream with his brothers would lead

them to being jealous of him. He wasn’t sensitive enough to their feeling to be properly attuned

to how they would feel if he shared his dreams with them.

We are taught that even at a young age Yosef was an extremely righteous person, however

apparently, at that stage, he had some degree of weakness in his middos (for someone of his

great stature).

The Torah continues in the storyline and it tells us about all of the ensuing events that

happened with Yosef being sold by his brothers to Mitzraim after they initially had decided to

kill him. Then he was a slave for many years and in jail for many years. All of these hardships

came about through the actions of his brothers. Eventually Yosef found himself to be the

viceroy of Mitzraim. Soon after, as a result of a famine his brothers came to Mitzraim to look for

food for their family and Yosef introduced himself to them.

When the brothers recognized that they were speaking to Yosef, they immediately felt

overwhelmed with shame and guilt for what they had done to him, and they had a difficult time

facing him. Later on, they also expressed a significant fear that they had that Yosef would take

revenge from them because of what they had to him. They assumed that he would be angry at

them and he would want to take revenge against them for all of the pain that they had caused

him.

However, we see that not only did Yosef not take revenge against them to cause them any

physical harm, he also went out of his way to make sure that they recognized that he didn’t

bear any grudge against them. Not only did he try to alleviate their fears, he also tried to

convince them to not feel shame and guilt. He explained that all of the events were part of

Hashem’s amazing plan, for Yosef to be in a position to save the world from hunger, and they

shouldn’t feel bad for bringing the situation about.

It is awe inspiring to see the sensitivity that Yosef had for his brother’s feelings!

Additionally, many of the commentaries tell us that Yosef never revealed to Yaakov that the

brothers had sold had kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to Mitzraim. Yaakov spent the

last 22 years of his life with Yosef in Mitzraim, and he could have had many opportunities to

share the story with him. It would seem to be an obvious conversation that would have

happened. However, Yosef wanted to avoid speaking Lashon Hara about his brothers so he

avoided telling Yaakov what had happened.

Reb Yisroel Salanter teaches us that we don’t improve our middos (our character traits) without

working hard to change them. The natural way for human beings is to retain the same middos

problems throughout our lives. If we had tendencies toward anger, arrogance, jealousy, or any

other bad trait at 20 years old, it is likely that we will have those same tendencies at 40, 60, and

80 as well.

However, we see Yosef completely changed his ways. As a young man, he had some degree of

weakness in his compassion for his brothers. He found himself hurting their feelings and

speaking Lashon Hara about them. However, later in life we see that he demonstrated extremesensitivity toward them and he exhibited a super human capacity to not speak Lashon Hara

about them.

There are many lessons that we can learn from Yosef’s extreme sensitivity that he had for his

brothers at the end of his life. There are also many lessons that we can learn from the growth

that Yosef had from the beginning of his life to the end of his life. We are capable of changing

and we are responsible to change! The person who we are at 17 should not be the person who

we are at 27. However, those changes require us to put in the work to enable the change.