What principles do you stand for?
Just last week, we read the Torah’s account of Shimon and Levi’s principled stand on behalf of their sister Dina in Shechem as they could not tolerate standing by as she was violated. Yet, remarkably, this week we read about the same Shimon and Levi in the very same place doing the precise opposite, scheming to eliminate their own brother Yosef. Their attitudinal transition is described between the lines of the lead-up to their fateful meeting (Bereishit 33:16-17):
“I am looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are pasturing the sheep?” “They have moved on from this.”
As our Sages read these words, they saw Yosef seeking to connect to the brothers whom he may have earlier estranged by the gossipy tales he had shared about them with their father. But the brothers—specifically Shimon and Levi—were moving in the opposite direction. They had already consciously chosen alienation as they had moved on from “this,” from any feeling of brotherhood with Yosef (see Rashi). Indeed, as Yosef approaches them and they plan his abduction, nowhere in their discussion do they refer to him as their brother (37:19-22). It is only later in the story, when Yehuda speaks up with responsibility, that brotherhood is brought back into the story (37:26-27).
This troubling attitudinal shift in Shimon and Levi is apparently not simply an expression of personal grievance and resentment to Yosef. This is evidenced by the reappearance of this attitude generations later in two dramatic actions perpetrated by Shimon and Levi’s descendants, Zimri and Korach. Each of them publicly attacked Moshe, fomenting division within the Jewish people. Furthermore, Shechem, the location of the original pair of transitional stories, would be the place where the ten tribes rejected King Rechavam’s leadership, dividing the Jewish family and kingdom for generations (Sanhedrin 102a).
This pattern can help us locate the actual source of Shimon and Levi’s shift. The original Shechem story closes with Shimon and Levi piously dismissing Yaakov’s rebuke (34:31). Once their father was cast aside, the unifying structure of the Jewish family was broken. This was what allowed them to choose alienation from their brother.
Their attitude did not derive from a lack of brotherly passion but from a lack of commitment to the familial and communal unity of Klal Yisrael. That unity was represented in the days of Shimon and Levi by the father figure of Yaakov, in the days of Zimri and Korach by the Torah leadership of Moshe Rabbeinu, and in the days of the tribes by the throne of the Davidic Kingdom. Shimon and Levi’s irreverent rejection of the father would lead to Zimri and Korach’s similar dismissal of Moshe, and finally to Yeravam’s undermining of Rechavam.
There are many sacred principles for which we must stand, but if we as a people are ever to heal from the vain hatred, the sinat chinam, that has divided and harmed us since the days that Yosef was sold by his brothers, we need to stand up for the familial and communal unity of Klal Yisrael.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union (OU), the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization.
