ספר בראשית

Genesis 45,24. “do not quarrel on the way.” ‎‎Rashi does not follow the traditional translation, but says ‎that Joseph told the brothers not to engage in halachic ‎discussions, and the subsequent differences of opinions resulting ‎while you are on the journey. If Rashi is correct, we must ‎try and understand why the brothers’ father, Yaakov, did not give ‎the brothers similar instructions governing their conduct during ‎their journey to Egypt?‎Besides, how could Joseph arrogate to himself the right to ‎give such instructions, when we have it on the authority of ‎‎Kidushin 30 that a person should strive to divide the ‎activities he performs (equally) into the three parts of his life, ‎devoting one third to the study of the written part of the Torah, ‎another to the study of the oral part of the Torah, ‎‎(Mishnah) and the third part to the discussions on the oral ‎part of the Torah in the Talmud. One difficulty of that statement ‎is that we do not know how long we are going to live, so how can ‎we make the correct division? The Talmud therefore corrects ‎itself, saying that what is meant is the way we divide each day of ‎our lives. It follows that each one of us is duty bound to study ‎some halachah on a daily basis. So how could Joseph forbid ‎this to his brothers?‎The statement in the Talmud can be seen as plausible if we ‎first consider two premises upon which it is built. 1) Yaakov had a ‎tradition that he need not fear ever being consigned to ‎‎gehinom provided that none of his children died during his ‎lifetime. (Rashi 37,35 based on a Tanchuma Vayigash ‎‎9. 2). A statement by our sages that the combined lifetimes of the ‎patriarchs would be 500 years, corresponding to ‎כימי השמים על ‏הארץ‎, (Deut.11,21). [According to a number of ‎commentators this verse describes the “distance” between earth ‎and the celestial regions through the intervening ‎רקיע‎, outer ‎space, being equivalent to 502 “years.” The combined lifetimes of ‎the patriarchs, were 502 years, though more than half of these ‎overlapped, and we do not know the criteria applied here, i.e. ‎‎“light years,” i.e. the time it takes light to traverse this distance, ‎or whatever other criteria are referred to. Ed.]‎If a human being were to know how long he was going to live ‎on this earth, he would be able to apportion one third of his life ‎to the respective study of Torah, Mishnah, and ‎‎Gemara. Based on the above calculation, when Yaakov saw ‎that Joseph had disappeared, he concluded that he must be dead, ‎so that one of the premises, i.e. that he would not have to worry ‎about spending time in gehinom had already lost its ‎comforting meaning. From that moment on he became afraid ‎that the second premise we have mentioned could also be ‎compromised, as he had no idea how long he would live. He was ‎therefore unable to instruct his sons to leave out the study of ‎‎halachah, i.e. gemara, for a single day. Joseph, who was ‎aware that his father had no reason to worry, as all his sons were ‎alive and well, was able to issue such a command without ‎endangering the spiritual future of his father. The brothers would ‎have lots of time to make up for the halachot they had not ‎studied while on the journey to bring good news to their father.‎