Community Magazine December 2013

20 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE 212.594.2020 | www.therdgroup.com Offices in Manhattan and Long Island SERVING THE COMMUNITY f o r o v e r 4 0 y e a r s Experience helping four generations of community families minimize taxes and structure their financial lives KNOWLEDGE. EXPERIENCE. SOLUTIONS . Call Jeffrey Resnick , Managing Partner, for referrals or to set up an appointment. ways. Each year, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, a goat was sent out into the wilderness to symbolically banish all our sins. This goat, the Meshech Hochmah comments, is reminiscent of the goat which the brothers slaughtered after selling Yosef, so they could dip his cloak in its blood and make it appear as though he was devoured by an animal. Additionally, there was a special red cloth hung in the Bet Hamikdash which would miraculously turn white when the goat reached the desert, which announced to the people that their sins were forgiven. Our Sages teach that this cloth weighed two sela’im – the precise same weight as Yosef’s special cloak (the ketonet pasim ). Once again, as we seek to achieve atonement for the offenses committed against our fellow Jew, we must atone for the root cause of all such offenses, the sale of Yosef. For this same reason, the Bet Hamikdash was situated specifically in the portion of the tribe of Binyamin. Binyamin was the only one of the brothers who did not participate in the sale of Yosef. He was still young, and was home with his father at the time the other brothers sold Yosef to the Yishmaelite merchants. Binyamin was thus the only brother who did not have the stain of this incident on his record. And therefore our holy Temple, the place where we serve the Almighty and beg for forgiveness for the wrongs we have committed, was located specifically in Binyamin’s territory, the territory that was clean from this grave sin of betrayal against a brother. Our tradition also teaches us that the asarah haruge malchut – the ten righteous sages executed by the Romans – were killed to atone for this sin. These ten men included some of the most righteous and brilliant scholars our nation has ever produced, such as Rabbi Akiva, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Rabbi Yishmael Kohen Gadol and Rabbi Hanina ben Tradyon. These ten tadikiim were brutally tortured to death – to atone for the sin of mechirat Yosef . The scourge of strife and in-fighting continued to run rampant among the Jewish nation even during that period, and ten righteous sages were taken to atone for the sin committed by Yosef’s ten righteous brothers, which was the root cause of all fighting and discord among the Jewish people. Was There Reconciliation? Anyone who has studied the story of Yosef and his brothers might be troubled by this notion. Is it really true that the brothers’ sin against Yosef continues to plague us? Wasn’t this sin forgiven already in Egypt, when the parties were still alive? Didn’t Yosef and his brothers make up? Indeed, it would certainly appear so. In Parashat Vayehi, in the final chapter in this story, we read that after Yaakov died, Yosef’s brothers were afraid that with their father gone, Yosef would seize the opportunity to get even. As the second most powerful man in the world, upon whom the brothers relied for their livelihood, Yosef was in the ideal position to exact revenge for his mistreatment by his brothers. Terrified of this prospect, the brothers tearfully approached