In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes the rivalry among Jacob’s children and the plot that resulted in Joseph being sold into slavery.

Several questions come to mind. Jewish tradition reveres all Jacob’s sons as great and righteous men. They were raised to be the heirs to the legacy of the patriarchs. They bore on their shoulders the burden of building a nation that would declare the unity of God to the world and be a light to the nations. They were not barbarians.

Why then did they condemn Joseph to death just because he dreamed he would one day rule over them? Why was that a capital offense? Even if Joseph considered this particular dream prophetic, maybe it was not. And if they also considered it a harbinger of the future, why didn’t they accept it as God’s will? After all, someone had to be the leader. Maybe God preferred Joseph, just as Jacob did.

Furthermore, after all the kindness Joseph had shown the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, why did they join Leah’s sons in the plot to eliminate him? After all, they knew the leader would not be one of them. Shouldn’t they have preferred Joseph as the leader to one of the others?

Finally, why did Jacob await the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream with anticipation? Even if the dream was prophetic, it probably foretold a future time when the kings of Israel would be descended from Joseph. It surely didn’t occur to him that it would be fulfilled during his lifetime with Joseph sitting on the Egyptian viceroy’s throne.

In order to understand the issues at stake in these events, we have to go back to the selection of Isaac as the second patriarch and the selection of Jacob as the third patriarch.