עם מינויו של הרברט סמואל שהיה יהודי, לנציב הבריטי בארץ, נדרש הראי"ה קוק זצ"ל לתשובה בדבר ביטול הצומות. את תשובתו הוא פורס באגרת שלפנינו.

Yaakov remained in Canaan out of loyalty to his family heritage, whereas Esav divorced himself from the legacy of Avraham and Yitzchak, and therefore found a different land for establishing his permanent residence.

The reason why we find criticism difficult to handle is because it immediately places us in a position of inferiority in the speaker’s eyes – just as Yosef’s dreams placed his brothers in a position of inferiority.  What ensues, like in the story of Yosef, is essentially a power struggle.  We, like Yosef’s brothers, resent and resist our relegation to an inferior position, which of course entails resisting the call to change.

 When Yaakov settled in Chevron and reached old age, he hoped to “dwell in tranquility,” that he had already endured the full consequences of his scheme.  But this was not to be. 

Lofty goals, even if they are pursued with pure sincerity, do not always authorize us to suspend normal protocols of conduct.  Extraordinary circumstances warrant extraordinary measures – but only to a point.

It’s not enough to have the right goals – they need to be pursued the right way.  Good ideas must be followed up by good planning and good execution, for otherwise they will remain only as ideas.

Even the righteous among us, whom we would naturally consider deserving of a bump-free road along the journey of life, are, like the rest of us, beset by personal travails of one type or another.  We come into this world as employees, not vacationers; we are given problems to solve and responsibilities to tend to, and cannot expect to be left alone to relax in unbridled comfort and ease.

Not everything which can be said should be said.  What troubled the brothers was not merely Yosef’s aspirations of leadership, but also his indiscretion in expressing these hopes to them. 

It seems that Yosef felt too assured that the butler was his ticket to freedom.  The Midrash perhaps seeks to instruct that although we are allowed and urged to strategize and use available means to address our problems, we must never assume to have the definitive solution.

Reuven and the other brothers heard Yosef’s dream together, but reacted in opposite ways. Reuven’s response to Yosef’s dreams should remind us that there is more one way to react to what we hear, and it is up to us to choose the favorable response in the interest of avoiding unnecessary strife and contention.