You want to know what the comfort was for the brothers? It was these words, paradoxically: the words that Yosef said: “I see you. You had the worst of intentions for me, but Hashem had a different plan. So nothing bad happened to me. But all I have to get over is your bad intentions. And here I am telling you that with your bad intentions, I love you. With your report card, I love you. You know? With the way that you screamed at me, or the way that you behaved, or the way that you treated me, or with the way that you didn’t treat me, I love you.”
That’s when a person truly feels accepted, loved, and seen. If only more children and more spouses could hear these words from their husbands, wives, parents, and friends: “Yeah, no, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t even notice it.” “No. I know. It hurt me. But you know what? Look, I’m okay. So I don’t need to forgive you for something bad that happened. I just need to forgive your bad intentions. And you know what? I know that. I know that. The vast majority of our friendship, you’ve only ever thought to do good things for me. So I have to weigh up in understanding whether I love you or not, whether I trust you or not, and whether I feel like you’re a friend I want around or not. And the answer is a resounding yes: I care about you. I care about your kids.”
We sometimes strip away the humanity from these stories because they’re about such giants, such tzaddikim (righteous people). We strip away the humanity. Could you hear him saying to his brothers, “I’m Uncle Yosef. I mean, your kids are playing in my house. You think now that our father passed away, you think I’m going to watch my nephew and my niece—I just danced at their wedding last week—and watch them starve and not give them food? I’m Uncle Yosef. We may have had our ups and downs, but I love you.” Right?
Sometimes I think that the Torah—I just love you. The Torah just doesn’t get, like Rodney Dangerfield said, “I don’t get no respect.” The Torah doesn’t get the respect it deserves. People translate it as some dogmatic document. And it’s not only teaching you what day you can’t work, who you can’t marry, or how tall your sukkah (booth) is. It’s teaching you the greatest truths of every part of a human life: what your home looks like or feels like, what your relationship with your family should be, how you emotionally process betrayal, and how you respond to people who speak to you or do things to you in this way. When you double down on “you didn’t do anything,” and when you double down on “you did something, but it’s okay”: I see your flaws and I love all of you. What a magnificent lesson. What a way to speak to someone’s heart.