Until Arabs are ready to talk, there’s nothing to say

Many years ago, I recall sitting with a newly married couple in their late thirties, who were struggling with making their marriage work after many years on the New York singles scene. Before I could start the conversation on a positive note, the husband began to describe why he was upset with his wife and what she was doing wrong in his eyes. Every minute his wife would interrupt him to express what she felt her husband was doing wrong from her perspective. After a few minutes I tried to get them to speak with one another with an eye towards eventually getting them to share what each felt they themselves needed to work on, instead of directing their comments to me. But try as I might, they would not speak with each other nor even look at each other. As long as people will not communicate, they will not be able to reach a peaceful compromise. 

This is obviously a major factor in the morass in which we find ourselves, Jews and Arabs, in the Middle East.

This week’s portion, Vayeshev, is a case in point. How did things get so bad? One minute Yaakov is dreaming of angels and ladders up to heaven, and the next minute his sons are conspiring to kill their brother Joseph and leave him to die in a pit! Where did it all go so wrong? 

Clearly, Yaakov loves Joseph so much, it almost has to inevitably lead to the rest of his sons feeling slighted, and Yaakov’s bestowing on his beloved son a special Technicolor coat does not help. But the verse that really suggests things are out of hand is in Bereishit 37:4:

“And they hated him [Joseph] and could not speak to him in peace.” 

There is a powerful comment by the Ramban (Nachmanides) concerning the verse (when Joseph finds his brothers in the field and approaches them from a distance): “And they saw him from a distance, and before he came near, conspired to kill him.”( 37:18)

“It was because they only saw him from a distance that they could hate him so…”