Vayeshev – Executive Function

 Vayeshev is about executive capacity: when vision outruns judgment, when authority precedes restraint, and when leadership instincts appear before the internal structures to carry them.  Yosef has to learn executive function the hard way, and eventually—according to the Gemara in Sotah, which says he conducted himself with “rabbanus”—it may literally be what nearly kills him before his brothers. 

Still: Yosef cannot suppress his dreams. They are not fantasy; they border on nevuah. The Torah never criticizes him for dreaming. But it does criticize how he handles those dreams. Like Yaakov before him—laughing silently while Esav cries over the loss of the brachos, dooming later generations—Yosef may possess truth, but lacks executive modulation. Vision without restraint becomes provocation. Not malice, not arrogance—irrational exuberance. This is his first executive failure:  knowing something true does not license saying it unfiltered.

Yosef’s second failure is subtler. Chazal describe him as mesalsel b’se’aro; not vanity per se — premature self-presentation: acting like a ruler before being one.  Enter Mrs. Potiphar—not just as a seductress, but also a stress test. Yosef is not saved by willpower. He is saved by dmus d'yukno shel aviv: an external regulator.  And the Midrash’s edge is sharp: had he believed he could “do it once” and shut her up (“Olam haba? With you? The things I do for Egypt”)—he might have rationalized himself out of eternity.

Instead, he’s falsely imprisoned, but the ten years aren’t enough, yet.  R. Shimon Shkop’s insight is surgical: the extra two years are not because Yosef asked the sar ha-mashkim to remember him—but because he asked twice: initiative turns into over-management. Yosef is almost there — and when he finally exits prison, he is transformed. He plans. He delegates. He delays. He controls information. He governs hunger, fear, and timing.  He has learned executive function.

Now contrast Yehuda, the other executive.  Yehuda does not endanger himself; he endangers everyone else: his proposal to sell Yosef succeeds—and he is blamed for that success; he goes OTD in form if not in substance by marrying a Canaanite, leading to the deaths of his first two sons, and then he compounds their gross (literally and figuratively) mistreatment of Tamar—publicly and structurally—even with Yaakov and Yitzchak, according to Midrash trying to cover for him, apparently unaware of what has happened inside Yehuda’s home.  Only when Tamar forces recognition—tzadkah mimeni—does Yehuda experience executive awakening, learning not through temptation but through consequence.

So why is it that Yosef suffers for his “rabbanus”?  Yosef’s challenge is not morality. It is power calibration.  He is outward-facing, system-oriented, globally necessary. Egypt cannot survive without him. The brothers—by contrast—are inward-facing, identity-preserving, covenantal.   The hint of reconciliation comes with Yehuda and Tamar at the end of Chapter 38—the Davidic lineage: enduring, corrected executive power.  Yosef represents competence refined by restraint; Yehuda represents authority refined by accountability. The Torah does not choose between them: it teaches the need to learn when vision becomes authority—and when authority must learn restraint.

Vayishlach - Amalek Goes To College

 If Amalek didn’t go to college, it would have had to have been invented for him.

In “Microaggression and Moral Cultures” (2014), sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning argue that American universities have shifted from a culture of dignity, in which people absorb minor insults and reserve intervention for serious cases, toward a culture of victimhood, where even accidental slights are documented, broadcast, and brought to authorities. The change doesn’t merely reflect emotional fragility; it turns grievance into moral currency. Victimhood now elevates status and grants a presumption of innocence, allowing people to punish others without assuming responsibility. As reliance on third parties for justice increases, personal agency weakens, while the power to condemn intensifies. The result is a culture that licenses retaliation so long as the retaliation is framed as resistance.

That logic now shapes campus responses to the Israel–Hamas war. The oppressor-versus-oppressed narrative gives students a moral shortcut: support the “victim” and you are righteous, oppose them and you are immoral. Under this framework, endorsing violence does not require confronting its brutality. Chants for Israel’s eradication are treated not as acts of agency, but as performances of innocence—violence becomes morally cleansed if carried out on behalf of the oppressed. The righteousness of victimhood becomes a blank check for vengeance.

This secular worldview echoes the biblical chain of Esav → Eliphaz → Timna → Amalek, laid out at the end of this weeks’ parsha. Esav sells the birthright yet claims to be robbed, demanding sympathy to authorize anger. Eliphaz is sent to kill Yaakov but instead steals his wealth, insisting he had no choice: he avoids cost while harming another, outsources moral justification to authority, and uses identity (“a wronged son”) to excuse harm. This is victimhood converted into license. Timna transforms exclusion into ethnic grievance, turning pain into ideology. Amalek inherits the grievance without the injury, attacking not to win but to erase the symbol of a supposed oppressor. Once grievance becomes virtue, erasure becomes justice.

Amalek inherits neither the grievance nor the injury, only the narrative, and converts it into a cosmic truth-claim. They attack Israel not for strategy or justice, but in the name of a moral claim they never experienced, turning a secondhand story of “injustice” into permission for erasure. The Torah’s description of Amalek targeting the exhausted and the stragglers is not merely cowardice—it is grievance deployed as purification. And here Amalek institutionalizes something new: safek becomes ikkar—the central tool by which violence is justified. If one can cast doubt on the moral worth of the other, or the legitimacy of their history, or the purity of their identity, then annihilation masquerades as justice.

Amalek, then, is the ancient version of the Campbell–Manning student archetype. They possess no firsthand injury, yet claim the highest moral entitlement through a grievance they did not suffer, using it to justify punishment without accountability. Like the student who denounces others publicly but insists they are “only defending the oppressed,” Amalek harms while insisting they merely avenge a moral wrong already decided for them by narrative, not evidence. They outsource justification (“history demands it”), avoid personal responsibility (“we are only resisting domination”), and treat violence as ethical necessity rather than choice.

Campbell and Manning warn that “moral dependence” produces not weakness but the moralization of vengeance. A generation that won’t take responsibility for a personal slight will feel absolved endorsing atrocities if they are framed as solidarity. Esav cries injustice, Eliphaz enforces grievance, Timna sanctifies resentment, and Amalek purifies through destruction. Just as victimhood culture grants innocence by identity and power by accusation, Amalek cloaks aggression in borrowed moral outrage. They do not fight to win—they fight to prove themselves righteous.

And all for 50K a year on their parents’ dime.