Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, this is Ari Levisohn. We’re starting a whole new sefer this week with Parshat Shemot.

For the last four parshiyot of Sefer Bereshit, we’ve been reading about Joseph and his family. But now, with Parshat Shemot, the scene has completely changed. B’nei Yisrael, the Israelite people, have been living in Egypt for generations. It’s been long enough for the Egyptians to forget how Joseph saved them in a time of famine. In fact, that’s one of the first things we read about in Parshat Shemot: There was a new king in Egypt who did not know Joseph (Exodus 1:8). Instead, we hear about the early life of Moses. We hear about how he was born an Ivri, an Israelite, and was separated from his family as a baby because of Pharaoh’s persecution.

The stories ahead of us in Shemot have new causes of su ering, despair, and hope. One thing is for sure: These stories won’t have anything to do with Joseph and his family. We’ve left them behind in Sefer Bereshit. Except recently, something made me start to wonder … What if the Joseph story isn’t over after all? It started when I came across this really intriguing midrash. I showed it to Beth Lesch, one of our scholars at Aleph Beta. And in the conversation that followed, we realized that even though we’re in Sefer Shemot, the Joseph story is far from over. Here we are.

Hey Beth.

Beth Lesch: Hey Ari. How are you doing?

Ari: Good, how are you?

Beth: I am good. What's on your mind today? What are we learning?

Ari: So I came across this midrash, and it's a really interesting midrash on its own, but it also led me to ask some questions. And those questions led me down a really cool path, and I found some really cool connections, and I'm really excited to share them with you.

Beth: Okay, amazing. It sounds fun. Take me to the midrash, Ari.

Joseph’s Bones

Ari: All right, let's jump in. So it's the very end of the Exodus. After all ten plagues are done, the Israelites are getting ready to leave, and right before they leave, the Torah says וַ יּרִַּח משֶֹׁה אֶת-עַצְמבֿת יבֿסֵף– Moses took the bones of Joseph and he brought them up out of Egypt with the Israelites (Exodus 13:19). And here's where the midrash jumps in. It asks the question: How did Moses know where Joseph was buried?

So here's the answer they give.  סֶרַח בַּת אָשֵׁר נשְִׁוַֹיּרְָה מֵאבֿתבֿ הַדּבֿר– So Serach, the daughter of Asher, was still alive from that generation of Joseph, and she remembered them burying Joseph, and she instructed Moses as to where Joseph was buried.

Beth: Okay, I'm wondering where they're going with this. Keep going.

Ari: Okay.  עָמְדוּ מִצְרִים וְעָשׂוּ לבֿ אָרבֿן שֶׁל מַוֶֹכֶת– So the Mitzrim, the Egyptians, made him a metal co    n,  וְשִׁרְּעוּהוּ בַּסּיִלבֿס– and they threw him into the Nile.

Beth: We're talking about… we're going back in time now and we're saying: “At the time of his burial, what did they do? Where did they put his bones?” They did this. This is her intelligence: They put him in a metal box and they threw him into the Nile.

Wow, that's resonant. I don't want to get too ahead of things, but this would not be the first time that… or actually, this would be the first time! This would be the first time that an Ivri in Egypt was put inside of a – some kind of receptacle, a box, and thrown into the Nile. Interesting. Keep going.

Ari: Yeah, so let's just finish it, right. So then on the way out of Egypt, when Moses came to get the bones of Joseph, he came and he stood at the banks of the Nile.  וְצבֿוֵחַ וְאבֿמֵר– So he screams and he says: Joseph, the time has come where the Holy One, blessed be He, is redeeming His children.  אִם אַוָֹה מְגלֶַּה אֶת עַצְמְ מוּטָב– If you reveal yourself, great. And if you don't reveal yourself, then we did our part. You made us promise to take you out of Egypt, but you're not revealing yourself. So it's not our problem. Okay.  מִיּדָ צָף וְעָלָה אֲרבֿנבֿ שֶׁל יבֿסֵף– So immediately the co        n of Joseph floated up and came right up to Moses, and he took it out (Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 2).

Beth: Okay, Ari, this is fabulous. It's just such a great example of how fun midrashim are. There's so many fun details here that I want to dig into.

Ari: Before we even get to that, whenever we look at a midrash like this, one thing we like to do at Aleph Beta is ask the question of: Where are the rabbis coming from? And of course, the answer is almost always: They saw something going on in the text and they had some kind of careful reading of the text that led them to this.

Beth: I think what we often find, when we read the Midrash generally, is that what the text of the Torah was saying subtly, the rabbis are saying the opposite of subtly. Meaning, the rabbis are telling us this story because they're trying to convey some other idea, and it's the same idea that's being conveyed in the text, except the text is being subtle about it and the rabbis are sort of being fantastical about it. And that's where midrash and peshat can meet and can overlap.

Ari: Exactly. Okay, so on that note, you pointed out that there's one detail here that feels really reminiscent of something that actually, at this point, hasn't happened yet.

Beth: So when I think about being thrown into the Nile… in the first chapter of the Book of Exodus, we hear all about how Pharaoh decreed that the baby boys would be thrown into the Nile. But this detail is really bringing me to the specific story in the second chapter of Exodus, which is that there was one baby boy in particular who was thrown into the Nile, but not just in an ordinary way. He wasn't just cast into the Nile, he was put into a box first, and then the box was placed into the Nile. And that baby, of course, is baby Moses.

Another thing I just want to throw on the table is that Joseph's box comes out. It doesn't stay in the Nile. And Moses's box also comes out.

Ari: And now comes this midrash at the end of the Exodus story, and it's saying that that thing that happened to Moses, it actually happened previously to Joseph. So the midrash seems like it’s trying to link Moses and Joseph. And I was thinking, you know, why? Why are the rabbis trying to link them? And here’s what I thought: If we were to just kind of zoom out and be like, Okay, what does Moses have to do with Joseph? Why would the midrash even be connecting the two of them? – so I guess the first question we have to ask is, if we open up the Torah text, is there anything there that suggests that Moses and Joseph are similar to each other?

Joseph and Moses

Beth: Okay, let me think about that for a second. I mean, a lot of stu is coming to mind. I mean, they're both born into Hebrew families. They both experience a separation from those families. They both kind of end up being a part of Pharaoh's family, so to speak. Yeah, that's pretty unique, kind of having that –

Ari: They become Egyptian royalty.

Beth: They both start out as Hebrews and become Egyptian royalty. And then, I think, kind of hold on to both identities simultaneously, in ways that are sometimes complicated. So, yeah, it doesn't seem so unexpected that the rabbis would pair these two characters.

Ari: And of course, they also both are leaders of B’nei Yisrael in certain ways, leaders of the Israelites.

Beth: I mean, I guess Joseph is a leader. He's the one who brings them down to Egypt, and they all follow him down there, whereas Moses is the one who leads them out. So they're kind of bookends of the same story in that way.

Ari: So I want to get a little bit more specific. So what I'm going to do here is, I'm going to set up some of the highlights of Joseph’s and Moses's lives.

Beth: When you say specific… you know, when I think about Joseph and Moses, like big picture, big themes, I can think of a lot of similarities. But when you get down to the specifics of it, they have very di erent lives. But you're telling me we should focus on some of those more specific, smaller episodes and we're going to see more parallels emerging.

Ari: Yeah.

Beth: Okay.

Ari: So in Joseph's life, basically the first thing we know about him is that his brothers hate him, and eventually he has some dreams and he kind of starts to see himself as somehow a leader of his brothers, of what is the original B’nei Yisrael, like the children of Israel, Jacob.

Beth: In other words, back in the beginning of Parshat Vayeshev he has these dreams, everyone's bowing down to him. It's the sun and the moon and the stars and the sheaves of wheat. And his brothers hate him, and he sees himself as a leader of B'nei Yisrael.

Ari: Now, the next thing that happens is he gets sold into slavery in Egypt. Once he's in Egypt, eventually – after a little bit of some success, a little bit of a rocky period – eventually he ends up as Egyptian royalty. He's second to the king. And now jumping ahead, to the end of his life, here is where the midrash fills in. We know that he died and the Egyptians embalmed him. But what the midrash says is that those Egyptians cast Joseph into the Nile, and then eventually comes along Moses and retrieves him out of the Nile.

Beth: Right. So, Ari, let me just make sure I'm following here. You are spotlighting these key episodes in Joseph's life that we learn about, in almost every case, from the biblical text, His brothers hate him. He sees himself as a leader of B’nei Yisrael. His brothers betray him. He becomes Egyptian royalty and then is cast into the Nile. So, yeah, but we're filling that in with the help of the Midrash. Like, we didn't – if it weren't for the midrash, we didn't know that it was into the Nile. We just know that they prepare his body in some kind of way, and then that Moses comes along and retrieves him from the Nile. Again, that's only with the help of the midrash. If we're just reading the text, what we learn is that Moses retrieves his bones, but we don't know where he retrieves them from.

Ari: Right, exactly. So Beth, we’re trying to figure out why the midrash seems to be linking Moses and Joseph, and we’re basically wondering if the rabbis saw something in the text that they’re responding to, some other links between Moses and Joseph. So we just went over a bunch of important moments in Joseph’s life. Now what I want to do is to go look at Moses’s life and see if we notice any parallels. I think maybe we should start with the one thing that we know the midrash is highlighting, with Moses retrieving the bones of Joseph from the Nile.

Beth: So the last event in Joseph's life, that Moses came and retrieved Joseph from the Nile, you're asking me, does anything like that happen in Moses's life? So let me think about that. So obviously Moses is cast into the Nile, but it's not another Ivri, it's not another Hebrew who takes him out. It's bat Pharaoh, it's the daughter of Pharaoh, who takes him out. His mother casts him into the Nile.

And I guess that's sort of like a double parallel to Joseph's life. With Joseph's life, when you think about it, who put him in the Nile? Egyptians put him in the Nile. And who took him out of the Nile? So, an Ivri took him out of the Nile. It's the opposite with Moses. With Moses, it was a fellow Ivri who cast him into the Nile. And then it's an Egyptian who retrieves him. It's the daughter of Pharaoh.

Ari: So you said the order is swapped. Right? And I'm suggesting, just suggesting, that maybe this midrash is getting us started filling in the rest of these parallels.

Beth: Okay, maybe the pattern continues. So maybe if we look at these other highlighted episodes in Joseph's life, we're going to find that the same thing, but the inversion, happened to Moses.

Ari: The inversion and in inverse order.

Beth: And in inverse order. Because the episodes that the midrash connects… it happens at the end of Joseph's life and at the beginning of Moses’s life. So maybe they're like two arrows that are going in opposite directions. Okay, Ari, it's a very enticing theory. And if it doesn't work, we're just not going to publish this podcast.

Ari: Exactly.

Beth: It's okay, there's nothing to lose.

Two Arrows Going in Opposite Directions

Ari: Right. Okay, so we're working forwards in Moses's life.

Beth: In other words, before… let's talk about Joseph for a moment. At the very end of his life, Joseph was taken out of the Nile by Moses. Before that he was cast into the Nile. What happened to him before that? Before that he was Egyptian royalty. Okay. Now looking at Moses's life, Moses started his life by being cast into the Nile. Then he was retrieved from the Nile. Do we see that after being retrieved from the Nile, he becomes Egyptian royalty?

Ari: He does indeed.

Beth: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Okay, very cool. Yep, I see that he becomes the sort of adoptive son of bat Pharaoh, which makes him the grand-baby of Pharaoh. I think that su    ces to call him Egyptian royalty.

Ari: Let's see if this pattern continues. Eventually, Moses's time as Egyptian royalty comes to an end, right? And there's a whole story about how this happens. It starts by Moses going out to go check up on his brothers.

Beth: Whoa. Aha. Okay. Which is parallel to Parshat Vayeshev, when the brothers are out shepherding and Jacob comes to Joseph and says: Do me a favor. Will you go and see the welfare of your brothers?

Ari: Right! Which sounds like such a simple thing, just go see how they’re doing, make sure everything’s okay. What could go wrong? But of course, it can’t really go more wrong than what actually happened. They throw him into the pit and they sell him.

And something really similar happens to Moses. Moses also goes to check on his brothers, meaning fellow Israelites. And when Moses goes out, he also has his brothers’ best interest in mind. He sees an Egyptian taskmaster abusing one of the Hebrew slaves and he kills the Egyptian, and at first he thinks that he's going to get away with it. But then he goes out another day and he sees a fight going on, not between an Egyptian and Hebrew, but between two Hebrews, between two slaves. And he criticizes them for fighting each other. And then they tell him: “Are you going to kill us like you killed the Egyptian?” And Moses seems to realize that people found out about what happened.

Beth: “The thing is known.”

Ari: “The thing is known,” right (Exodus 2:14). Now, it's interesting. He finds that out from these other Hebrews. So it seems as if the Hebrews may have actually betrayed him?

Beth: The way that I had always read the story was that because the Hebrews clearly know, that signals to Moses that, oh, maybe there were witnesses that you didn't realize. If the Hebrews knew, then maybe others knew too. Maybe some taskmasters saw it, maybe someone close to Pharaoh saw it. You want to say that maybe it was the Hebrews who betrayed him? It could be, but I don't think that's necessary.

Actually, I do think there's reasons to say that these are inversely related. That language of “the matter is known” is interesting to me because sort of the opposite happened in Joseph's life. In Joseph's life, you know, when his brothers threw him into a pit and then sold him to Egypt, the matter was not known. Right? Like they covered up a crime and they did it successfully. They hide it from their father.

Ari: Oh, wow, nice. Yeah, I think that sounds right, that really fits. So both Moses and Joseph go on an unsuccessful mission for the good of their brothers. They're both going out, they have the best intentions in mind, but things go terribly wrong. And both of them end up leaving what they consider to be home against their will. I mean, Joseph is actually kidnapped, Moses is forced to run away.

Beth: Ari, this is very cool. There's really so many connections between this moment in their lives. Joseph heads out towards his brothers with their welfare in mind, as you said, you know,  רְאֵה אֶת-שְׁלבֿם אַחֶי– look out for their peace, their welfare (Genesis 37:14). But he ends up being betrayed by the brothers that he means to look after. So too, with Moses, he heads out to see how his brothers are doing and stands up and defends them, and then maybe is betrayed by them, but at the very least, they don't appreciate what he's doing for them.

Ari: They throw it back in his face.

Beth: They throw it back in his face, right. And in both cases, that moment leads to him being separated from his family and ending up in a di erent land. Moses runs away to Midian. Ari, that is very cool. What's next?

Ari: All right, we got one more stop. Working backwards in Joseph's life, before things fall apart with the brothers, there's one big event that happens to him.

Beth: Before this whole mess with Joseph getting sold into slavery in Egypt, it all started out with, you know, the beginning of Parshat Vayeshev. You know, his brothers hate him, there's jealousy, he's got these dreams, delusions of grandeur maybe – maybe delusions, maybe, you know, prophecy. And that's like where the whole mess starts. There's this hatred in the family.

Ari: Exactly. So, you know, back to Moses now,  So he’s gone from the Nile to being Egyptian royalty, to seeing his brothers and having it all go wrong and leaving his home to go to Midian. What's the event that ends his time in Midian?

Beth: So Moses, he flees to Midian. He's there, he meets his wife. And really the next and last thing that we hear in Midian is the burning bush. He's shepherding his father-in-law's sheep, and all of a sudden God reaches out to him and they have a conversation and God says, I want you to go back to Egypt and I want you to talk to Pharaoh and bring My people to freedom.

Ari: And essentially tells him: You are going to be the leader of the Jewish people. Now Beth, does that sound familiar?

The Nature of Leadership

Beth: Yeah. I'm a little skeptical, but I think I see where you're going with this. In other words, what if we don't call Joseph's dreams “delusions of grandeur,” right, because that's a bit of an unfair term. Joseph had dreams, dreams that, for all we know, were sent to him by God. He received this message that he is going to lead – I mean, at the time, the entire Jewish people, so to speak, is just his brothers, right? So he's going to rule over them.

And here we have sort of the same thing, which is that God is reaching out more explicitly to Moses and saying, Hey, I want you to be the leader. I want you to rule over your brothers. There isn't that negative connotation of, you know, you're the head honcho and we're just the ones who are serving you. But…

Ari: In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It's Moses saying, Please, I don't want to do this. I'm not the man for the job. I don't want to be the leader.

Beth: That's really interesting, Ari. You're right that, whereas in Joseph's case you might say he was kind of grasping for that mantle of leadership a little prematurely. Like, who told him he's going to be a leader? All he did was have these dreams, and before you know it, he doesn't have any problem telling his brothers – Ari: He’s going telling the world, telling his brothers.

Beth: Exactly. Like sort of lacking in tact, you know, if I can say so. Whereas Moses is much more reluctant, much more: No, I'm not the right man for the job.

There's something else I'm seeing here which is a bit of an inverse parallel, which is that… how do I put this? Moses, to the extent that he's going to lead the people, would you say that he's going to be ruling over them? It's a di erent kind of leadership, isn't it? What Joseph says to his brothers when he tells the dream that gets them so ticked o is basically like: You're going to bow down to me, like, I'm going to be a monarch and you're going to revere me. You know? And they say, you're going to rule over us?

But that's not what's happening with Moses. Moses is liberating them. He's a servant leader, right? He's bringing them out of slavery. He's doing everything that he's doing for their benefit. Which, I mean, maybe you can start to understand then why each of them gets such di erent reactions from their brothers, you know what I mean?

Ari: That’s really interesting, Beth. You’ve been pointing out how as we see these parallels, we’re also noticing there are a lot of things that are inverted, and here, where they both find out that they’re destined to be leaders, sort of the way they take that news is one of these inversions, where Joseph seems to be all excited about it and Moses is really fighting it. And it sounds as if you’re suggesting, maybe that has something to do with what happens afterwards.

Maybe we’ll get back to that. But for now, we’ve basically finished these parallels, and so I just first want to say, I guess about midrash… this is a really cool pattern, but it's a little counterintuitive because all these things are happening in the reverse order. And I don't think I ever would've seen this if the midrash hadn't set things up like that, hadn't set us up starting to look backwards in one way and forward from the other way, and see how their lives are paralleling each other in the inverse.

Beth: I totally see that.

Ari: And then I also wanted to ask you for your thoughts on these parallels? Like what do you make of them?

Beth: I'm tickled by what you've shown me, but I don't feel like I'm any closer to the answer of, “So what?” How does this – why did God write the Torah this way? What do I make of it? How does it change the way I understand their stories? What's the “so what”?

Becoming a Leader

Ari: I think there are a lot of possible interpretations to this. I'm not going to pretend like I have the only one. I think one thing that it does seem to be clear is that this is not the entirety of Moses's life. It's everything that leads up to him becoming a leader. So somehow in the process of Moses developing into the leader he needs to be and to the leader that B’nei Ysrael needs – the one who's going to take them out of Egypt, out of slavery – somehow that requires him retracing Joseph's steps and undoing kind of everything that happened to Joseph.

Beth: I like that you used the word undoing, which feels to me like tikkun language. It feels to me like there was something that went wrong in Joseph's life, in Joseph’s generation. And we need to go back and deal with that stu , deal with that baggage, deal with those loose ends before being able to move forward. So Ari, what exactly went wrong, and how is Moses making it better? Do you have a theory about how this all fits together?

Ari: So there seems to be this journey back to this last parallel, the parallel where Joseph and Moses each learn of their leadership responsibilities. So I want to mine that. Let's jump in first to Joseph's story, to this moment where Joseph has these dreams, he believes that he's going to become the leader of the children of Israel.

So let's talk for a minute about what went wrong. From the beginning, Joseph's brothers seemed to hate him. And, you know, somewhat understandably so, right? He's basically stolen all of their father's attention, all of their father's love, you know, in their father's mind, they're an afterthought now.

Beth: Right? We would say it's – their hatred is, if not justifiable, it is understandable.

Ari: Understandable, right.

Beth: My heart goes out to them. It doesn't sound like a very pleasant experience to be born into a family where your father explicitly favors one brother over all the rest.

Ari: Right. But they're able to deal with those feelings. The language the Torah uses is וְ  א יכְָלוּ דַּבְּרבֿ לְשָׁ ם– they're not able to speak peacefully to him (Genesis 37:4). They don't have anything good to say to him. But seemingly what that implies is, well, if they didn't have anything good to say to him, then they just didn't say anything to him. They didn't want to have anything to do with him. They went on living their lives as shepherds, trying to avoid Joseph as much as possible, and that was able to keep things under control.

But then Joseph starts dreaming. And he comes to them and he says: I have this dream that you're all bowing down to me. I'm ruling over you. Beth, let's put ourselves into the shoes of Joseph's brothers when they hear about this dream. You know, here's their little brother. He's already stolen their father's love. But now he's suggesting something even worse. He's going to rule over them. That their little brother is going to be standing over them as they bow to him.

Beth: It's unforgivable chutzpah.

Ari: It really is. I have a younger brother myself. That would infuriate me.

Beth: Yeah.

Ari: And I think if you put yourself in the shoes of someone like Reuben, who is the oldest of eleven other brothers, you know, that was a big responsibility. He was a leader of, really, a clan, and he probably took a lot of pride in that role. And here comes Joseph who says: Nah, you're not the leader in this family. I'm the leader in this family.

Beth: That's infuriating.

Ari: And the Torah tells us  וַיקְַנאְוּ-בבֿ אֶחָיו– they were jealous of him (Genesis 37:11).

Okay, let's jump back to Moses.

Beth: Yeah. I mean, there doesn't seem to be anything like that going on in Moses's life.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you thinking what I think you're thinking? Okay. Hold on. So if we're talking about Joseph being a leader and his brothers reacting to the declaration that he's going to be a leader and their reaction is one of jealousy… so in the Moses story, we see the opposite of that. Is that what you're thinking?

Ari: Sure is. Moses also had a big brother. His name was Aaron.

Beth: Cool. Whoa.

Ari: And if we ask, how did Aaron respond to hearing that his little brother is not just going to be the leader of the family, but he's going to be leader of all of the children of Israel, which now number somewhere around –

Beth: This is really cool, Ari. Aaron could have been threatened, he could have been jealous, he could have sold Moses into whatever, right? We don't see that at all. We kind of see the opposite, don't we?

Ari: We do. Right after, right at the end of the burning bush story, Hashem tells Moses: Aaron your brother is coming to greet you, and he's going to see you and he's going to be happy in his heart (Exodus 4:14). He's truly going to be happy for you.

Beth: Happy that I, God, have appointed you to the position of leader of the people. Wow.

Ari: And Beth, if that would've been something hard to do in the case of Joseph's brothers, let's think a little bit more about exactly what Aaron is accepting. Not just is Moses going to be the leader of the entire Israelite people, but Aaron is now going to have to basically be Moses's assistant. He's going to have to do the dirty work of talking, because Moses was incapable of talking, and he is going to do all this while Moses is going to get the credit, And yet Aaron doesn't just accept this, but he's truly happy for Moses, and he gladly takes on this role as second to Moses.

Happy in His Heart

Beth: Wow, yeah. Ari. That is really, genuinely cool. It's really beautiful to think about it.

I'm so glad you're bringing us back to that moment after the burning bush. It's always intrigued me, because you've got this conversation between God and Moses. God keeps saying: Be the leader, be the leader. You're the guy. And Moses's like: No, no, no, I'm not the guy. I can't do this. Moses says: I'm slow of speech. My tongue is heavy. I'm not the guy for the job.

But then God says something a little bit mysterious, a little bit out of nowhere, which is, you know: Isn't Aaron your brother? He'll speak for you and he's coming right now toward you. As you said, he's going to see you and he's going to be happy in his heart. And it's like, where is that coming from? Moses had a concern. His concern was, I can't speak well. So God reassures him, speaks directly to that concern, says: Don't worry, someone will speak for you. Okay. To what concern is God speaking when God says, Don't worry, Moses, Aaron is coming forth to meet you, and when he sees you, he's going to be glad in his heart?

Right? It makes you wonder if maybe Moses was concerned, Moses had that self-awareness about how his older brother was going to react to his ascendance.

Ari: Right.

Beth: He has compassion there and he has sensitivity there. And it's like, the two of them together – Moses being self-aware, Aaron being able to celebrate his brother's successes – it's a beautiful combination, and what it results in is brother leaders.

Ari: Rashi even quotes the Midrash that Aaron was rewarded for this with the kehunah, with the priesthood.

Beth: That's beautiful. It sort of reminds me of, like, someone who runs away from pride is the one to whom the greatness is given. Right, so because he was able to be happy for his brother – that his brother would be a leader – so he's gifted leadership himself.

Ari: So you know, Joseph's brothers’ jealousy towards him – which again, it's an understandable jealousy, but it was a very intense jealousy – led to the disaster of selling their own brother, and eventually they all end up as slaves in Egypt.

Beth: So it's self-destructive. The Aaron-Moses model is, you're happy for each other, you work together, and then you both end up as leaders, and the whole people gets redeemed.

And the Joseph model is, you resent one another and everyone ends up in slavery.

Ari: Right, So if brotherly jealousy is what brings them into slavery, then there is one thing that can bring them out. And Rabbi Fohrman talks about how, you know, a lot of the ways that the sale of Joseph are redeemed through the korban Pesach on a national level, but I think before that happens on a national level –

Beth: Hold on, Ari, I just want to interrupt, because I'm familiar with that piece that you're referencing, but I think to everyone else who's listening, they're like: What did you just say? The sale of Joseph is redeemed by the korban Pesach? By the Passover o ering?

So yes, everyone, that is what Ari said, and yes, that does sound wild. And it's true what he said, Rabbi Fohrman has a theory about it. We can put the link in the show notes for you. But yeah, this is part of a pattern, this idea of looking at the narratives of the avot, of the forefathers, and seeing the ways in which future generations need to replay them. The language we use at Aleph Beta is: “Remember, but choose a di erent ending.” So this is yet another “remember, but choose a di erent ending.”

Ari: And you know, I think before that happens on a national level, it happens on an individual level, with one family who does it right. And so maybe that’s what we’re seeing here, the way Moses’s life, starting in the Nile… it seems to pick up from Joseph’s death, and it moves back through Joseph’s life till it gets to that pivotal moment when everything fell apart. And now Moses and Aaron get this chance to replay it, but like you said, they choose a di erent ending. And wow, look at how powerful that is, the power of siblings supporting each other. Like, there's no limit to what they can achieve. They can take slaves and lead them into freedom.

The Power of Siblings

Beth: Wow. Ari, there's a lot here. You shared with me that you have the experience of being the oldest brother in your family. I'm an only child, but I am a mother of brothers and sisters. My kids are still pretty young, but I get so excited when they look out for one another's interests and they show compassion and they show empathy for one another. You know, like if the five-year-old sister gets hit on the head on the soccer court by the ball, then the seven-year-old brother runs over and very genuinely says: Are you okay? And come, do you want to play with us?

And I love it when he does that, but you know what I don't see them doing as much? Which is no slander against my kids, it's just that it's very hard. It's one thing to show compassion when your sibling is weak. It's really hard to show compassion when your sibling is strong, like when they're doing something that you want to be able to do, and they're doing it better. That challenge is, it's probably beyond the league of a seven-year-old. And as we see in the Torah, it's often beyond the league of grown adults.

Ari: It's so hard. I have some really talented younger siblings. and wow, this speaks to me so personally, but it's also really inspiring. Because when someone like Aaron is able to get over that potential jealousy and is able to really support his younger sibling like that, it's not just good for Moses and it's not just good for the entire Jewish people, but it's good for Aaron too.

Beth: I think there's like a kind of simplistic way of looking at it, like a vending-machine way of looking at it, which is, if you can show that you're happy for your sibling, then God will give you all of the gifts too. You know, we can give that version of the story over to the five-year-old. But there's a whole other layer of empathy here that I'm really appreciating, which is: Let's think about Moses. What prompted God to say to Moses, "Don't worry, Aaron will be happy when he sees you"?

Does that change the way that you see your siblings at all? Knowing that you are trying to do the right thing by putting your ego aside and being genuinely happy for them in, you know, in their triumphs. And maybe you don't even realize what they're living with, which is the self-awareness of the younger sibling to say: I really don't want to overshadow my big brother. I really have to tread carefully here.

Ari: That's such a great way to put it. You know, Moses really needed to hear that Aaron was supporting him, and he couldn't have done it, or he at least wouldn't have done it if Aaron wasn't at his side. Look what God had in store for Moses, all the things he wanted him to accomplish. But he needed his big brother's support to do that.

Beth: Very cool, Ari, thanks for sharing this with me. This is really great. This is a new take on the life of Joseph, on the life of Moses, and on the parsha for sure. I really enjoyed it.

Ari: Thank you for joining me, Beth, and helping me uncover this beautiful family story at the heart of this national one.

Beth: Totally. I think you should probably go give your younger brother a call. All right.

Take it easy, Ari.

Ari: Bye, Beth.

I love so many things about this piece. But one thing I especially liked was that it gave us the chance to dive into a midrash and see how it sheds light on the text in amazing ways. At first, Beth and I wondered why the rabbis were giving us this story about Joseph’s co n being raised up from the Nile. But when we pulled on that string a bit, it led us to this whole group of parallels and inverse parallels between Moses and Joseph. And those led us to something we’d never thought of before: a new take on Moses’s leadership and a new take on his relationship with his brother Aaron. And beyond that, it reminded us of the pitfalls of sibling relationships, but also the amazing opportunities when brothers support each other, which is something that Beth and I both found so meaningful in our own lives.

We talked today about Moses’s relationship to his brother Aaron, but he also had a sister, Miriam. And in a di erent part of our conversation, Beth and I actually found another midrash, which led us to a really interesting discussion about Moses’s relationship with his sister. We are going to post that on alephbeta.org as a web-exclusive epilogue. There’s a link in the show notes, go check it out. And while you’re there, you can hear more about the idea of “Remember, but choose a di erent ending.” It’s in Rabbi Fohrman’s piece where he talks about the sale of Joseph being redeemed by the Pesach o ering. That link is in the show notes too.

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by me, Ari Levisohn, together with Beth Lesch.

Into the Verse editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our senior editor is Daniel Loewenstein.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our editorial director is me, Ari Levisohn.

Thank you so much for listening.