By Naomi Tamura

In this week's parshat, Vayeshev, Jacob favors Joseph to become king, which angers his brothers so much that they eventually sell him as a slave to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s top officials. Under Potiphar, Joseph becomes his personal servant, but is quickly thrown into a dungeon and starts to dream other prisoner’s dreams. Through this interpretation, he is able to detect when people are troubled. This is a pretty long parshat, lots of detail, and a lot happens. Something that I want to focus on is the relationships between the brothers. They hate Joseph -- When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all of his brothers, they hated him and could not speak to him l’shalom (37:4). They really hate him to the point that they believe he deserves to die. They throw into a pit so that he can be eaten alive by a wild animal. However, as the brothers are eating, they see a caravan come by they decide to sell him into slavery in Egypt instead. To persuade their father that he was in fact killed by a wild animal, they take his dream coat and stain it with the blood of a goat they had just slaughtered.

It’s crazy to me that his brothers hated him so much that they actually wanted to see him dead. Was it really jealousy and resentment, or something much deeper? I’ve been thinking so much about hatred recently… especially in the wake of the US elections. What compels people to hate so much? Is it simply for the sake of hate, or a reflection of our own insecurities, unhappiness, our own fears. Is it a choice we take to unite us against another as if we are locked into a zero sum game? Hating compels us to find people who share our aversion, and each time we share our story/our belief/our narrative, it’s solidified and rekindled again and again. But does this really make us happier, or is it just surface level closure that serves as a tool to ignite these flames of enmity?

I’m thinking about these political demagogues, their hateful rhetoric and actions, their blatant fear mongering that uses hatred as platform to build power and support. And so I’m thinking about the people who are inspired by this hate and use it in a similar way --- the two swastikas that were drawn on whiteboards on my campus on November 11th -- only three days after election day. The male staff member who physically assaulted a WOC for burning an American flag on the quad (he was later fired). The news articles after news articles of men ripping off Muslim womens’ hijabs. My friend whose Uber driver told her that he was excited for Trump to be president so he could ‘grab any woman he wanted.’ Another friend who bought an IUD because she is so scared she won’t be able to get one later. My mother, who worries that she won’t have anything tell her patients once Medicaid and Medicare are abolished. The call for a Muslim registry. The people I know and don’t know, who have been told to “Go back to _______” and have to ask themselves “do I belong here, is America a place for me?” I’m thinking about all of the recent appointments that threaten me, my values, and so many people that I love. And it still makes me so angry. Sometimes I’m compelled to build upon that anger and hate back, because it’s the only thing I feel I can do sometimes. With the stresses of school, work, and everything else going on in DC and the country, It’s hard to process anything without another notification of something else coming up. And so it’s hard to not resort to hate. Eventually Joseph’s brothers came to understand that hatred was destructive. They show the capacity for contrition and change. But is it that easy? Some questions I have: How do we free ourselves and our communities of hatred? Is hate ever justified? What purpose does hate serve? How can we and others begin to heal? Is healing even possible? So much to think about these days.