Parsha for Kids: Vayeshev 2022
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Vayeshev 2022.
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Episode 9:
Hello! My name is Chana, and this is Parsha for Kids. The Parsha of the week is Vayeshev. Vayeshev means “And he lived.”
Who lived? And where?
This refers to Yaakov. Yaakov lived in the land of Canaan.
The story then switches to focus on Yaakov’s son, Yosef. Yosef, as you may remember, was the child of Rachel, Yaakov’s most beloved wife. Unfortunately, Rachel had died, which means that Yosef and his little brother Binyamin grew up without a mother. At the time the story in our parsha takes place, Yosef was seventeen years old.
Yosef spent time with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah. The sons of Leah used to be mean to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Bilhah and Zilpha used to be maidservants. The sons of Leah looked down on them, as if the sons of Leah were better than the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Yosef was disturbed by this behavior and so he would tell his father about what his brothers were doing, hoping that Yaakov would rebuke his children and fix the situation. As you can imagine, the sons of Leah did not appreciate that Yosef was telling tales about them.
Remember that Rachel had died, which meant that Yosef and Binyamin were growing up without their mother. This is an important fact because it explains how the rest of the events in the story could happen. You may remember that Sarah, Yitzchak’s mother, protected him, even going so far as to urge Avraham to send Hagar and Yishmael away. When she saw that Yishmael had been shooting arrows at Yitzchak and pretending it was a game, she knew that Yitzchak was not safe, so she intervened. Similarly, Rivka, Yaakov’s mother, had decided Yaakov needed to receive the blessings from his father instead of Eisav. So she came up with a plan to make sure that Yaakov would get the blessings. When she found out that Eisav wanted to kill Yaakov, she also made sure to send Yaakov far away so he would not be harmed. But Yosef did not have a mother around to watch over him and protect him.
Yaakov decided to give Yosef a kesones pasim, a fine woolen coat. One explanation of what a ketonet pasim is is a coat of many colors. Yaakov did this because he loved Yosef, since Yosef was the son of his old age. It may also have been that Yaakov was trying to comfort Yosef because Yosef was growing up without his mother.
You might have expected Yosef’s brothers to understand that a coat, even a very beautiful one, was no replacement for a mother. Unfortunately, they did not, and instead, they were jealous. They hated Yosef and could not speak with him peacefully.
At this point, Yosef discovered that he had a special talent. He had the ability to dream - and it seemed like his dreams reflected real life, a kind of prophecy that might one day come true.
Yosef excitedly told his brothers his first dream. He said, “We were binding bundles of wheat in the field. My bundle of wheat stood up straight, and your bundles of wheat bowed down to it.”
At this point, the brothers had a choice. They could have said, “That sounds like a nice dream, Yosef.” Or they could have said, “What do you think the dream means, Yosef?” But they took it in the worst way possible. And so they responded to him in an angry, upset tone, “Will you be king over us, or will you govern us?” And they continued to hate him because of his dreams and because of his words.
Yosef had another dream. He told it to his brothers, then repeated it again when he was in his father’s presence so that Yaakov could learn about it as well. In this dream, Yosef eagerly explained, “The sun, the moon and the eleven stars were all bowing down to me!”
Yaakov saw that Yosef’s stories about dreams were making his other brothers hate him. So Rashi explains Yaakov decided to rebuke Yosef harshly, hoping that would dispel the brothers’ hatred for him. Yaakov said, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will we come, I, your mother and your brothers, to bow down to you? This cannot be because your mother is dead!”
Unfortunately, this rebuke was not enough. Yosef’s brothers, other than Binyamin, were still jealous of him. And Yaakov, unbeknownst to them, waited for Yosef’s dream to come true- because he believed that it WOULD.
TRANSITION
Before we continue with the parsha, I want to talk about how Yosef relates to experiences some kids have in school. As we have mentioned, Yosef did not have a mother because his mother had died. Later on in the Torah, we will learn that there are three categories of people we have to be very careful not to hurt- the yasom, or orphan, the almanah, or widow, and the ger, or convert. All of these people are disadvantaged in some way and do not have the full protection of their family to help them. In Jewish law, an orphan refers to someone who has lost even one parent- it does not have to be that they have lost both of their parents.
Let me tell you a story about a boy. He liked to follow the rules and was really bothered when someone broke the rules to be mean to someone else. Sometimes, he would tell the teacher if he saw classmates doing mean or unkind things. He just wanted to make sure kids did not get hurt by other kids' mean words.
Whenever his teacher asked a question, he would always call out the answer. Not because he wanted to show off how much he knew. He did it because he just got really excited to share what he knew, just like Yosef was excited to share his dreams.
Some of his classmates became annoyed with him. What do you think they should have done? Do you think they should have said mean things about him? Do you think they should have made fun of him for telling the teacher on other kids, or for calling out answers to the teacher's questions? No. What they should do is become friends with the kid, if they could. Maybe over time, once they became friends, they could teach him some ways he could behave that would make it easier for him to make more friends.
Being able to see a situation from another person’s point of view is a very important skill called perspective-taking. If you were in this situation, you would be imagining what it would be like to be this kid. He probably feels confused that people don’t like him and isn’t sure why. He probably thinks everyone is just as excited to share the answers as he is. When you look at a situation through his eyes, and you understand him better, you will be better able to deal with him.
Unfortunately, Yosef’s brothers were not very good at perspective taking. They saw Yosef’s behaviors and believed the worst of him. They didn’t think about his missing mother, or that he wasn’t trying to be a show-off and that he was just excited about his dreams. Instead, they thought of him as an upstart who just wanted to rule over them. And since all of them were older than him, they didn’t think he deserved to be king.
TRANSITION
One day, Yosef’s brothers went to pasture their sheep in Shechem. That means they took the sheep to Shechem in order to eat the sweet green grass.
Do you remember where you heard about Shechem before?
That’s right! It was the name of the place where Dinah was kidnapped. It was the place where Shimon and Levi had killed out all the men of that city. In short, it was a place where terrible things happened. By telling us that the brothers went to Shechem, God as the writer of the Torah is foreshadowing, letting us know something terrible is about to happen.
Remember that Yaakov thought he had solved the enmity between Yosef and his brothers. By rebuking Yosef in front of his brothers, Yaakov likely believed that the brothers had seen Yosef put in his place and no longer hated him. So Yaakov asked Yosef to go to his brothers, see how they and their sheep were doing, and bring back word to him.
Yosef went looking for his brothers, who had moved on to a place called Dotan. Yosef followed them there.
Vayiru oto mei’rachok- and they saw him from afar- and said to each other, “Look, that dreamer is coming. So now, let us kill him, and we will throw him into one of the pits and say ‘A wild beast devoured him’ and let’s see what becomes of his dreams!”
It’s important that it says they saw Yosef from afar. Remember what I mentioned about perspective-taking, and how it’s an important skill to learn? They were not thinking of Yosef through his own eyes, through the lens of his own experiences. They were viewing him as someone Other than them, someone far away, someone who deserved what they were planning.
Luckily, Reuven, Leah’s oldest son, came up with a different plan. He said to his brothers, “Don’t do physical violence to him and kill him yourselves! Instead, throw him into this pit, which is in the desert, and don’t take him out of there.” In this way, Yosef would starve to death, but the brothers wouldn’t harm him themselves.
Rashi explains that Reuven did this in order to stall his brothers, because his plan was to come back at a later time and help Yosef get out of the pit.
TRANSITION
Yosef approached his brothers. They grabbed him and pulled off his coat of many colors. Then they threw him into the pit, which was empty. Rashi explains it was empty of water, but it did have snakes and scorpions in it.
We learn in a later parsha that Yosef screamed to be let out of the pit. But his brothers ignored him and instead they sat down to eat. This was very cruel. Most people would not be able to eat while they heard someone screaming to be let out, but Yosef’s brothers felt he deserved this punishment, so they did not feel guilty about what they were doing.
A caravan of people from Yishmael were passing by, carrying spices, balm and lotus.
At that point Yehuda, also one of Leah’s sons, had an idea. “What do we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?” he asked. “Let’s sell him to the Yishmaelites instead, and that way our hand won’t be against him.”
Yosef’s brothers sold Yosef to the Yishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. Then the Yishmaelites sold Yosef to another caravan of Midianites. The Midianites brought Yosef to Egypt, where they eventually sold him to a man named Potiphar, Sar HaTabachim. Sar HaTabachim means chief of the slaughterers. Rashi thinks this means that Potiphar was in charge of slaughtering the king’s animals, but others suggest that Potiphar was the head executioner.
You can imagine how Yosef must have felt. Here he had come to find out how his brothers were doing because his father had asked him to, and his brothers were talking about murdering him. They threw him into a pit and ignored his screams, then sold him into slavery. It would make sense for Yosef to feel very hurt, angry, betrayed and upset.
TRANSITION
Meanwhile, Reuven returned to the pit. When he saw Yosef was gone, he tore his clothes. “The boy is gone!” he exclaimed. “And I? Where will I go?” Because Reuven thought that as the firstborn son Yaakov would blame him for Yosef’s disappearance.
The brothers took Yosef’s colorful coat, slaughtered a kid goat, and dipped the coat in its blood. They brought the coat to their father and said, “We have found this. Recognize, if you please, whether it is your son’s or not.”
Yaakov recognized it and said, “It is my son’s coat; a wild beast has devoured him- Yosef has surely been torn up.”
Yaakov tore his own clothing and mourned over Yosef for many days. And all of Yaakov’s sons and daughters-in-law tried to comfort him but he refused to be consoled. There were many reasons for Yaakov to mourn this strongly. First, he believed he was the one who had sent Yosef to his death. After all, it had been at his command that Yosef had gone to check on his brothers. Second, Yosef’s mother, Rachel, was already dead. So Yaakov felt doubly torn to have lost his beloved wife and now his beloved son. Yaakov said he would mourn Yosef all his life and go down to his grave in mourning.
Something worth noting is that Yosef’s brothers deceived Yaaakov with blood that came from a kid goat. Remember that Yaakov deceived his father Yitzchak by putting the skins of kid goats on his arms so he would seem hairy like Esav. Once again, Yaakov’s choices, even though they were necessary, are coming back to haunt him middah kneged middah, measure for measure.
TRANSITION
The brothers became upset with Yehuda when they saw how fiercely their father mourned. “You told us to sell him,” they accused Yehuda. “If you had told us to bring him back to our father, we would have listened to you.” This is the conversation that Rashi says occurred.
Because of this, Yehuda left his family and decided to get married. He had three sons, named Er, Onan and Shelah.
Yehuda married off his firstborn son, Er, to a woman called Tamar. But Er was evil in God’s eyes, and because he was wicked, God killed him.
When a man dies without having any children, there is a mitzvah in the Torah for that man’s brother to marry his widow. Then, when they have children together, it will be as if those children are children of the dead man, so that he still has a legacy in this world. This mitzvah is called yibum. The widow does not HAVE to marry the brother if she doesn’t want to do so, but often she did want to do so.
So Yehuda told his son Onan to marry Tamar. Onan did so, but he was also evil in God’s eyes, and because he was wicked, God killed him.
At this point, Yehuda told Tamar to stay a widow in her father’s house until his son Shelah grew up. The understanding was that Shelah would marry Tamar once he was all grown up. But really, Yehuda did not plan to let Shelah marry Tamar at all. Now that two of his sons had died, he was afraid for the third. He thought maybe Tamar was the kind of woman whose husbands would always die.
Tamar really wanted to have a child from Yehuda’s family and she saw that Yehuda wasn’t allowing her to marry Shelah. So she changed into a disguise and wore a veil on her face. She met Yehuda and married him- all without his seeing her face. He promised he would give her a gift of a kid goat. (Again with the kid goats and people deceiving others!) But since he didn’t have the goat with him, he gave her his staff, his ring and his cloak to hold onto until he would send a servant later with the goat.
But by the time Yehuda sent a messenger with the goat, Tamar was gone.
Three months later, it became clear that Tamar was pregnant. Yehuda was angry because Tamar was supposed to wait for his son Shelah to grow up in order to marry him and here it was clear that she had married someone else instead!
You might think that Yehuda had learned not to rush to judgment. After all, the last time he did that, he ended up causing his father to mourn and his brothers to be upset. But no- Yehuda decided to sentence Tamar to death. Tamar came out calmly to be burned, and she held out the staff, the ring and the cloak. “Recognize, if you please,” she said, “whose ring, staff and cloak are these?”
Those words- Recognize, if you please- were extremely important. Because, you see, those were the exact words Yehuda and his brothers had spoken to their father when they brought him the colorful coat dipped in the blood of a kid goat. Yehuda was shocked, and he instantly understood that this situation was his fault. Once again, he had failed to take the perspective of another person- in this case, Tamar. He hadn’t thought about how lonely she was, alone in her father’s house, with no husband, and him not keeping his promise to marry her to Shelah. And now she was leaving it up to him to tell the truth- to answer her Recognize, if you please.
And so Yehuda admitted what he had done and said, “Tzadkah mimeni”- “She is more righteous than me.” And he realized that he was the one who had married Tamar while she had been disguised.
Tamar gave birth to twin boys, who were named Peretz and Zerach. And Yehuda learned a valuable lesson- what it felt like to be tricked and deceived, what if felt like to have your own sons die, what it felt like to mourn, and what it felt like to be told ‘Recognize, if you please’ when you weren’t expecting that turn of events. These lessons changed Yehuda, making him into the kind of person who would ultimately make the right choices.
TRANSITION
Now we return to Yosef’s story.
God was with Yosef and he helped Yosef so that everything he did went well. Potiphar was pleased by this so he appointed Yosef to a high position within his household.
It’s important to recognize that God was with Yosef. In many ways, Yosef was alone. His family had betrayed, hurt, and sold him away. He was in a new country, with no one of his faith or nationality. But luckily, God was with him when no one else was. And that is how it is in our lives as well. There will be times in your life when you feel lonely and afraid. Maybe the people around you don’t understand you. But that is okay. Because even when that happens, God is with you. God is always with you.
At this point, Potiphar’s wife saw that Yosef was handsome and good looking. She wanted Yosef to marry her. She told him this in secret.
Of course Yosef could not do this. His master’s wife was already married to Potiphar, his master! But this was a very dangerous situation. Because his master’s wife had more power than him. And he could not tell his master what was happening because maybe Potiphar would not believe him.
No one was watching Yosef when this happened. Potiphar was not in the house. But Yosef knew that even though other human beings would not know, God would know if he did something like marry his master’s wife. And Yosef knew he could not commit such a great sin against God.
Potiphar’s wife would not give up. One day, she grabbed Yosef by his garment, and it slid off of his body so she was left holding it in her hand. Yosef ran away from her. Potiphar’s wife was angry that Yosef would not do what she wanted, so she called the people in her house and claimed that Yosef had tried to hurt her. “But when he came to hurt me,” she said dramatically, “I grabbed his garment, and look, now I have it in my hand!” She repeated the story to her husband, Potiphar, as well.
Potiphar became extremely angry, so he took Yosef and placed him in prison. You can only imagine how Yosef must have felt. After everything that had already happened to him and the pit he had already been thrown into, he was being thrown into another pit, a prison. Why did all these bad things keep on happening to him?
But Yosef did not despair. He knew God was with him and he trusted in God. Yosef was helpful in the prison and the head of the prison started to trust him so much that he made him in charge of all of the prisoners. Everything Yosef was in charge of went well because God was with him.
TRANSITION
After these events, the cupbearer and the baker of Pharoah, the king of Egypt, sinned against him. According to Rashi, the cupbearer accidentally served Pharoah a glass of wine with a fly in it and the baker served Pharoah a loaf of bread with a pebble in it.
Because of this, Pharoah had the cupbearer and the baker thrown into prison, where they joined Yosef. They spent a year in prison, and then each of them had odd dreams.
Yosef came to them in the morning and saw that each of them looked troubled. He asked them, “Why are your faces sad today?”
They explained that each of them had dreamed a dream but there was no interpreter there to tell them what the dreams meant.
Yosef said, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell me the dreams.”
The cupbearer explained that in his dream, there was a grapevine with three buds that blossomed and then ripened into three clusters of grapes. He was holding Pharoah’s cup and he squeezed the grapes into it, then placed the cup on Pharoah’s palm.
Yosef explained the dream. “In three days,” he said, “Pharoaah will take you out of prison and give you back your job and you will place his cup in his hand as you used to do.” Imagining that the cupbearer was grateful, he added, “Please remember me when you get out of here, and mention me to Phaaroah, because I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews, and here too I have done nothing to belong in this dungeon.”
When the baker saw the positive interpretation of the cupbearer’s dream, he eagerly shared his own dream. “I had three wicker baskets on my head,” he said, “filled with baked goods that I would serve to Pharoah, and birds were eating from the basket on top of my head.”
Yosef explained, “In three days, Pharoah will remove your head from you and hang you on a gallows. The birds will eat your skin off you.”
On the third day, it was Pharoah’s birthday, and exactly what Yosef said came true. The cupbearer was restored to his former position and the baker was hanged.
BUT: the cupbearer did not remember Yosef, and he forgot him. And so he did not mention him to Pharoah.
We can learn from this last the importance of gratitude. When someone does us a favor, or helps ease our mind, it is appropriate to appreciate what they did for us and to show them we are grateful. When the cupbearer and the baker had been troubled, Yosef had given them the interpretations of their dreams. But as soon as the cupbearer left the prison, he forgot about Yosef and what he owed him- as the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” And so Yosef remained in prison.
TRANSITION
So here’s what we learned today!
It’s important to be kind to people who are different from us, especially the yasom, orphan, almanah, widow and geir, convert.
It’s important to learn to take the perspective of others. When we see things through someone else’s eyes, we are able to feel what they feel, and thus, to act to them in a nicer way. We should not see people from “far off” because that leads us to judge them too harshly.Instead, come closer and get to know them.
Even when we make terrible mistakes, we can learn from them. The story of Yehuda showcases this. Due to his own experiences, he learned what it felt like to have sons die and to mourn them, just like Yaakov was mourning for Yosef, who he thought was dead. Yehuda also learned that everything happens middah kneged middah, measure for measure. Yehuda had said, “Recognize, if you please” to his father while holding Yosef’s bloodstained colorful coat, and then the same was said to him by Tamar.
Even when terrible things are happening to you, and people are not being kind to you, God is always with you. God was with Yosef even when everyone else around him was treating him cruelly.
It is important to do the right thing even when no one is watching. Yosef had the opportunity to marry Potiphar’s wife but he didn’t because it was the wrong thing to do.
Yosef’s dream abilities continued to grow even when he was in prison. Unfortunately, because the cupbearer was not grateful once he got out of his bad situation, he did not remember to mention Yosef to Pharoah, which led to Yosef being stuck in prison. When things go well for us, we should remember to appreciate the people who helped us.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids (at) gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!