Selling Yosef for Shoes

     Parashat Vayeshev tells the unsettling story of mekhirat Yosef, the sale of Yosef as a slave by his jealous and resentful brothers.  The Midrash (Tanchuma, 2) relates that in exchange for Yosef, each of the brothers received two silver coins, which they used to purchase shoes.  The Yalkut Shimoni (Vayeshev 142) cites in reference to this incident the verse from Sefer Amos (2:6) in which the prophet censures Benei Yisrael “for their having sold a righteous person for money; a poor person for shoes.”  Chazal interpreted this verse as an allusion to the sale of Yosef, in exchange for whom the brothers received money for new shoes.

            The obvious question arises as to why Chazal found it significant that the brothers purchased shoes with the money received in exchange for Yosef.  Would their crime be judged any differently if they had used the funds for another commodity?  Does it really matter how they invested the ill-begotten money?

            One possibility, perhaps, is that Chazal seek to magnify the brothers’ crime by contrasting the triviality of purchasing shoes with the severity of their act.  They condemned their younger brother to a life of slavery and suffering – all for just a pair of shoes.  For Yosef, the consequence of this transaction (at least as foreseen at the time) was lifelong misery, torment and shame; for the brothers, it resulted in new pairs of shoes.  The Midrash emphasizes the sheer callousness of this act, as the brothers casually approached this transaction as simply an ordinary financial venture, paying no heed to its lifelong implications for Yosef.

            Additionally, however, it has been suggested that Chazal here use the term “shoes” allegorically, as a reference to the shoes which the brothers wore some twenty years later when they went to Egypt to purchase grain.  By selling Yosef, the brothers paved the way for their family’s exile, as Yosef ultimately rose to the position of Egyptian vizier, becoming the person responsible for the mass distribution of grain during the drought that struck the region.  Yosef’s brothers thought that they brought greater stability to the family by eliminating the member that had caused strife and resentment.  But in truth, in ways that they could not possibly have foreseen at the time, the sale resulted in the “shoes” worn on their way to Egypt, where they would begin the long, sorrowful chapter of subjugation and persecution in exile.  They thought they were sending Yosef into Egyptian slavery, whereas this crime in fact sent them and their descendants into Egyptian slavery.  Chazal therefore emphasized that through this transaction the brothers acquired “shoes” – they facilitated their own eventual relocation in Egyptand the onset of bitter persecution.