One of the first stories in Tanach is that of Kayin and Hevel. In it we learn that humanity’s first siblings had history’s first sibling rivalry. Their struggle over recognition was epic. It is no exaggeration to say that it was existential; it resulted in history’s first murder.
Sibling rivalry is everywhere in the latter half of the Book of Bereshit. Yitzhak’s sons Yaakov and Esav engaged in an unending struggle for their father’s blessing and the inheritance that came with it. Yaakov’s 12 sons came to new levels of sibling rivalry; Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery to erase their father’s favoritism and prevent the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams.
Sibling rivalry is still with us. In our multi-generational work with families – in counselling or mediation – we have seen the human toll that competition over property, money, or status can take emotionally, physically, and financially. Sometimes parents take a strict equality approach; each child gets the same share of the assets. Sometimes, they take an equity approach; some children get preferential shares proportionate to their needs or the service they provided to the family. Sometimes, parents use the terms of the will to punish, reward, or send a message.
Regardless of the intentions of the parents, sibling rivalry in matters of inheritance is often experienced by the children as a struggle over validation of their worth in the family. Sometimes they rally together, and sometimes they break apart. We have seen siblings that exist across the spectrum of sibling rivalry: some who will protect the other at all costs, others who will not speak to one another. In that sense, the struggle is existential.
In matters of inheritance, the Talmud and the Rambam provide the following guidance.
Talmud Shabbat 10B
| A person should never distinguish one of his sons from among the other sons by giving him preferential treatment. As, due to the weight of two sela of fine wool that Jacob gave to Joseph, beyond what he gave the rest of his sons, in making him the striped coat, his brothers became jealous of him and the matter unfolded and our forefathers descended to Egypt. | לְעוֹלָם אַל יְשַׁנֶּה אָדָם בְּנוֹ בֵּין הַבָּנִים, שֶׁבִּשְׁבִיל מִשְׁקַל שְׁנֵי סְלָעִים מֵילָת שֶׁנָּתַן יַעֲקֹב לְיוֹסֵף יוֹתֵר מִשְּׁאָר בָּנָיו, נִתְקַנְּאוּ בּוֹ אֶחָיו וְנִתְגַּלְגֵּל הַדָּבָר וְיָרְדוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ לְמִצְרַיִם |
Rambam Laws of Inheritance 7:13
| Our Sages commanded that a person should not differentiate between his children in his lifetime, even with regard to a small matter, lest this spawn competition and envy as happened with Joseph and his brothers. | צִוּוּ חֲכָמִים שֶׁלֹּא יְשַׁנֶּה אָדָם בֵּין הַבָּנִים בְּחַיָּיו אֲפִלּוּ בְּדָבָר מוּעָט שֶׁלֹּא יָבוֹאוּ לִידֵי תַּחֲרוּת וְקִנְאָה כַּאֲחֵי יוֹסֵף עִם יוֹסֵף: |
The sale of a sibling into slavery is perhaps the cruelest act of family rivalry imaginable. It devastates the one who is betrayed, and it traumatizes the perpetrators with guilt and shame. Rightly or wrongly, the unequal treatment the children experienced cannot be removed from the psychological underpinnings of the events.
No matter how severely the estate plan creates a rift in the family, there is always hope; for even the sale of Joseph came to a positive end. The Book of Bereshit tells us that Joseph and his brothers eventually rallied together. They were able to repair their relationship and transcend their former rivalry. The last chapters describe a united set of brothers, now a family redeemed.
The story of Joseph is compelling because sibling dynamics are elemental to human society; this also runs deep in evolutionary programming. Evolutionary biologists speak of this in terms of genes, but in our brains, we might understand it as a sense of identity, of connection, or even a striving for immortality. We are all interested in self-preservation. Yet, how likely would we be to take all the food for ourselves and let our siblings starve? An evolutionary biologist would say about twice as likely as not, because each of our siblings carries a genetic code about 50% identical to our own. This question can also be formulated in terms of what gives us the best chance of survival. There is even a formula for determining the probability of altruism called Hamilton’s Rule.
On a practical level, sibling rivalry plays out in various places in our current political environment. When many speak of the Holy Land’s major religions, they pit Judaism, Christianity, and Islam against each other as rivals for a limited share of the inheritance of Abraham’s estate. Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candice Owens are among those claiming that the Jewish sibling, the State of Israel, is receiving preferential treatment. Against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they argue that the US gets no direct or appreciable benefit from its involvement with Israel. They summon some of the vilest tropes of historic antisemitism in service of their argument.
Here in Canada and other Western countries the situation has a different sibling dynamic. For the elected leaders the question is which constituency will assist them in reelection: will a Muslim, Christian, or secularist constituency carry the swing vote to help keep them in power? If so, then they will be the favored child. Being in the minority in all cases, the Jews are bound to get the smaller share – we are the Cinderella of the family of nations.
Through the framework of sibling rivalry, we have come to understand that defence of Israel and its historic share of the inheritance is more important than ever. Holocaust survivors remind us to be wary of sharp economic downturns and of wide economic suffering; this is when populist movements are most likely to gain their support for antisemitism. Were it not for the economic distress and inflation of the Weimar Republic, Hitler would not have found fertile ground in which to nurture the seeds of genocidal hatred. He used longstanding rivalries to turn predominantly Christian Europe existentially against the Jews.
We have seen it again in this generation as fundamentalist Islamic leaders and their Marxist allies from the far Left in the West have turned the world against Israel so spectacularly since 7 October 2023. The fulcrum of today’s blood libel is Israel’s military and economic power. Israel is to be blamed for all the world’s oppressive power dynamics. For example, this is how the mayor-elect of New York City got a free pass to say, “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” Against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they argue that Israel has impoverished not only Gaza, but the entire region and the entire diaspora of Israel’s Abrahamic siblings. They imply that Zionists are not only responsible for oppression in New York City, but by extension the Jewish oppressors are coming to small towns everywhere.
In matters of sibling rivalry, ultimately the question is this: should we privilege protecting ourselves or privilege protecting the group? In this case, the group – our family – is the Jewish people. This is very much the question that Joseph and his brothers had to resolve. The answer, according to the Torah and the science, is that in nearly all cases we must protect the group. This will translate directly into the Hebrew midwives’ willingness to sacrifice their security to protect the Hebrew babies in the first chapter of the Book of Shemot. It will translate to Moses asking why one Hebrew beats the other, even as he himself struck down an Egyptian the day before. It will translate into Joseph trusting his brothers to return his body to Israel, even though they were the ones who sold him to slavery in the first place.
The Torah, the history, and the science are clear. It is our ethical duty to be loyal, productive members of the nations where we live and to be loyal to our fellow Jews and our national homeland. This is not an either/or proposition. It is an existential imperative.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rosenblatt and Dr. Terry Neiman
