Parshas Vayechi 5784
Seventeen years later and it appears that we’re back to square one. For all the kindness Yosef has repeatedly shown his brothers, for all the conciliatory remarks and the insistence that he bore no grudge against them, they are nonetheless concerned that with the passing of their father Yaakov, the fissures between Yosef and themselves have been torn wide open. They muse to themselves following Yaakov’s passing, “Perhaps Yosef will bear hatred against us and will repay all the evil we’ve done to him.” (Bereishis 50:15)
Rashi explains that these concerns did not appear out of thin air. Rather, the passing of Yaakov did bring a marked change in Yosef’s behavior in its wake. Whereas Yosef had previously dined alongside his family, since Yaakov’s passing he now dined alone.
The brothers jumped to an understandable conclusion: While Yaakov was alive, Yosef put on a good show and a friendly face. But with his father gone, there was no longer a need to keep up the charade, and he distanced himself from the brothers who had scorned him in his youth.
The brothers’ assessment may have been reasonable, but it was in error. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 100:8) provides a glimpse into Yosef’s actual thinking, and it couldn’t be further from what his brothers assumed. When Yaakov was alive, he would seat Yosef alongside him at the head of the table, and Yosef obliged. But what was he to do now in his father’s absence? On the one hand, his office as viceroy of Egypt demanded that he sit at the head. Yet his place within the family made such distinction uncomfortable. Could he assume more honor than Reuven, the oldest of the brothers, or than Yehudah, who had been blessed by their father with the sovereignty over the developing nation?
Yosef was in a pickle over where to sit, so he sat nowhere. He took his meals in private, avoiding the inherent awkwardness of the situation and of the uncomfortable conversation he’d need to have with his brothers. Yosef was out to protect his brothers, but, sadly, ended up hurting them.
We sometimes imagine that we are doing a great service to our relationships by avoiding the difficult topics or ignoring the elephant in the room. We don’t want to bring up the frustrations and annoyances, often because we don’t want to hurt the friend, spouse, or sibling’s feeling.
But as Peter Bromberg so brilliantly put it, “When we avoid difficult conversations, we are avoiding short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction.”
Had Yosef tackled the issue head-on, there would have been short-term discomfort. He and his brothers would all over squirmed over the conversation over who really ought to sit at the head of the table. But had everyone been forthright in their concerns, had everyone kept a friendly and concerned tone, the family would have emerged on the other side of the uncomfortable conversation with clarity in how to move forward and conviction in their love for one another. There would have been discomfort, but no dysfunction.
What happened to Yosef is what happens to us. We try to protect the feelings of others; we don’t want to engage in a conversation that may cause hurt or ill-will. So we retreat. But in that retreat we do more harm than good. We’re not only depriving ourselves of a relationship that could be more emotionally rich and meaningful, we are depriving the person opposite us of the same. In an effort to preserve the relationship, we can come to undermine it.
Not every gripe needs to be shared, not every complaint needs to be aired. But in the course of any close relationship, issues will continue to arise and continue to irritate. Avoiding those issues isn’t doing our spouse, friend, or sibling a favor any more than ourselves. When these challenging moments begin to bubble up, we can’t just walk away from them. When we eat alone, we’re not only punishing ourselves, but those we used to dine alongside as well.