This week’s parsha is quite perplexing. The Torah tells us that Joseph spoke lashon hara, slander, about his brothers and that the brothers decided to kill him for it. “And each man said to his brother, ‘Behold, the dreamer comes. So now let us go and kill him and throw him into one of the pits, and we will say a wild animal consumed him, and then we shall see what will become of his dreams.’”

Of course, they settled on selling him into slavery and ultimately God’s plan was borne out, as Joseph put it at the end of the story, “Although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.” But how are we to understand the story of Joseph and his brothers? How is it possible that our ancestors, the foundation of the Jewish people, the children of Jacob, could have sinned so terribly?

One approach engages the p’shat, the plain meaning of the text: Ultimately, our ancestors repent and find their way, so perhaps the greatness of the Torah is that it does not color our ancestors as perfect but as all too human, so that we can relate to them and be hopeful about our own potential to repent and to lead a profound religious life no matter our faults.    

A second approach is a halachic one. The assumption here is that our ancestors kept the whole Torah before it was commanded and therefore must be acting in a halachic way. For instance, Rashi says that the slander Joseph spoke about the brothers included, among other things, accusing them of eating a limb from a living animal. The commentaries explain that when an animal is fully kosher slaughtered, even if it is still moving due to nervous spasms, it is kosher to eat. However, non-Jews, who are not obligated in kosher slaughter, must wait until the animal completely stops moving after it has been killed or they violate the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal. Thus, the strife between Joseph and his brothers is really their engaging in a halachic argument regarding the nature of their status before the Torah was given. Are they only obligated in the seven laws of Noah or, because they are Israelites, are they also obligated to keep Torah commandments even before they were given?   

A third approach to understanding the hostility between Joseph and his brothers comes from Jewish mysticism. As the Rabbi of Ishbitz put it, the brothers felt that Joseph through his speech was distancing them, the entire Jewish people at that moment, from Jacob, who was the Tzaddik, the most righteous person in his world. Thus, Jacob was the “Hasidic rebbe” of his generation and served as the people’s connection to God. In this paradigm, Joseph’s slander threatened to undermine the very purpose and future of the Jewish nation; so, having committed treason of sorts, he deserved the death penalty.   

I have laid out just a few possible ways of seeing the story of Joseph and his brothers, but our sages tell us that there are 70 facets to everything in the Torah. When we read of our ancestors in the Torah doing things which go against our moral grain, there are several ways to react. One is to take a dismissive approach and assume the worst about them, but if we view such stories only as examples of immorality then there are no depths to plumb and nothing to learn. Another approach is to do the opposite and always assume that our ancestors were perfect, but this also leaves us with nothing to be learned.   

Instead, I suggest that exploring the Torah’s 70 facets can leave us in awe of the Torah’s depth, train us to be open minded, and enable us to learn many life lessons from everything in it.