Pardes

[onionsoupmix]

If you just read chumash Bereishis straight, it sounds like the quite a few of the avos and their children were morally corrupt and petty people. Yaakov acquires his blessings from his father through lying. Leah and Rochel keep fighting over who has more children and whom Yaakov will sleep with tonight, Rochel steals the terafim,Shimon and Levi

Comments

[anonymous]

I'm not sure that making major mistakes necessarily makes one a morally corrupt person, from the perspective of one's entire life. I've always considered the essential thing about Yehudah to be that he does these things, like condemning Tamar and selling his brother, but then is able not only to come to realize that he was wrong but to admit it publicly and do what he can to fix the problem. When he tells Joseph how Binyamin is so much more important to their father than any of the rest of them, he has made peace with the fact of his father's favoritism, and does what he can to protect Yaakov's feelings even though Yaakov is still openly more concerned about the welfare of one of his children than the others. Yaakov may not have learned from his parents' mistakes in picking favorites, but Yehudah has learned from his own mistakes. This loses all of its punch if he never made any mistakes in the first place.

As for whether Yaakov was right to steal the blessing, it's interesting that the direct result of this is that he gets to spend the next couple decades being tricked by his uncle. Though this isn't necessarily inconsistent with a cosmic plan -- it was part of the cosmic plan that the Israelites be enslaved, but the Egyptians still do it by choice and get punished for that choice.

[onionsoupmix]

Interesting argument. I think that you are correct in the case of those who acknowledge their mistakes and attempt to fix the problem, like Yehuda. But what about those who don't, such as Shimon & Levi?