For My Brothers & Friends' Sakes

Let's get personal. It's time, once again, to take the Torah's lessons seriously and internalize them.

Brothers (and sisters) are special people. Ask someone who has one or more. And ask someone who doesn't. Ask someone with a good relationship with his siblings, and someone with a poor relationship. Or none at all.

The Book of B'reishit is not filled with wonderful stories of brotherly love. There's a little of that, but there is a lot of the opposite. Whatever caused Kayin to kill his brother? What did they say to each other? The Torah hints at words before the deed, but does not supply them. One wonders.

Avraham had problems with his brother (actually, his nephew, but those are brothers once removed). He had standards that his nephew and his shepherds did not seem to care about. Yitzchak and his brother Yishmael had their problems. Although things seem to work out well later in life, the enmity continued through the generations. Yaakov and Eisav? Big problems. They almost reconciled, but not quite. Yaakov and Lavan (another brother once-removed) had serious problems.

Lots of different standards in life working here and there to explain the problems. And then we come to Yosef and his brothers. Perhaps the saddest brother-brother story of the whole Book. because they were supposed to be on the same wavelength. All sons of Yaakov. All following in the Avraham-Yitzchak-Yaakov tradition. And still, they had their differences.
Since all of the relationships mentioned until now set patterns for many future generations, our history is filled with KAYIN-HEVEL situations, and Avraham-Lot situations, etc. etc. And Yosef-brothers situations.
Most of us have brothers, and uncles and nephews, and cousins (which are also brothers, once removed from each side). And fellow Jews are brothers also, removed a whole bunch of times, and fellow human beings are also brothers — just further removed.

A different point for a moment. Remember the politically correct approach of child psychology that says that the child is not bad, just what he's doing is bad? Maybe it's time to take a serious look at this idea as we try to relate to our fellow Jews. (I don't know how ready we are to try it with our sworn enemies, but...) I'm not suggesting that anyone give up his/her principles. From my personall perspective, three areas come to mind: religious vs. non-religious, Religious Zionist vs. religious non- and anti-Z, political right vs. political left. This is what I meant by getting personal. These are my three areas. Argue the issues. Not against the people. (more in the future IY"H)