Remembering Secrets Week # 3

Remembering Secrets Week # 3
"Looking for My Brothers" Track # 4

יהודה כ"ץ - את אחי by YehudahKatz

This song was brought to me by my friend Josh Lauffer, a great musician with a beautiful voice and an enormous soul. In one of our A.M.I. (Artists and Musicians for
Israel) Jewish identity workshops Josh sang this beautiful moving song, Et Achai Anochi Mevakesh. I asked him where it came from and he told me that it was composed by students in one of his previous workshops during the summer Nesiah program in Israel. With his permission, I started singing it at concerts and teachings all over the world. The audience reactions were filled with joy and compliments.
The words are so deep. After a conversation with his father, Jacob our forefather, Yosef the Tzaddik goes to search for his brothers. His brothers who hated him for his dreams and preferential treatment. Why was he looking for them? He understood that the Divine plan for The Nation of Israel could not be complete without them. When he meets a shepherd in the fields he answers, "I am SEEKING my brothers" .He was not simply looking for them in the physical sense. It was extremely important to him to find his brothers and make peace with them.
So what happened? The Torah continues, "And they saw him from a distance …. And they plotted to kill him." So many times I have asked myself , students and friends the following, " So your brother or sister can be annoying at tines, would you ever GOD forbid think of harming them ( I can't even get the absolute words out of my mouth) in such a devastating manner? Of course not!"
Yet, Yosef's brothers saw him and were prepared to kill him. The Talmud tells us that they set up a judicial and decreed the death sentence upon him.
How is that possible? The great sage and commentary the Ramban ( Nachmanodies) explains that the answer is written in the actual text of the Torah. "They saw him FROM FAR AWAY". Had they been able to see him from close up. Had they invested what it takes to understood where he was coming from. Had they given him the respect5 that perhaps his ideas, though they whole heartedly disagreed with them, might have some virtue, then certainly they would have never been able to think of killing their brother.
May we all be blessed to take that extra step to understand someone else, someone who we think is different than we are; to listen and think that perhaps there is some value to a different point of view.
What do you have to say?
Shabbat Shalom,
Yehudah Katz
Tekoa, Isarel