"Do not hate your brother in your heart. You should certainly reprove your fellow man, and not bear sin on his account."  Leviticus 19:17

The Torah relates that Joseph's brothers disliked him because of his father's special love for him, (the 'coat of many colors') and because he brought 'an evil report' about them to their father ~ The content of that report is not mentioned in the text. Although Joseph was sincere, he should have reported the facts to Jacob, but without forming his own negative conclusions.

"They could not speak to him in peace" but they did not "hate their brother in their hearts."

Why didn't the brothers reprove Joseph, which would have been the correct thing to do?

It seems that the nature of the antipathy between Joseph and his brothers was something that, unfortunately, may all too often be observed in people today. The following story will illustrate:

A Rav suddenly found himself being studiously avoided by a butcher in his congregation with whom he was previously on very good terms. At first he paid no attention to the matter, but as the months went by, he felt increasingly disturbed by his obvious coldness. So one day he approached him. After a lot of humming and hawing he finally blurted out that he was deeply hurt by the Rav's allegations that the meat he sold was of questionable kashrut. The Rav denied the allegations, and asked him from what source he heard them. It came out that the butcher had offered a candy to the Rav's six-year-old son. The little boy had looked quizzically at him, and asked, "Is it kosher?" Not knowing the boy's nature, he believed that he had overheard something at home, and he was implying that his meat was not kosher. In fact his son always asked that question at that age, whenever he was offered something.

This story is representative of many upsets and quarrels.

At times we may suddenly feel cold-shouldered and avoided ('could no longer speak to him in peace') by someone who was previously thought of as a friend. We have no idea what we did to be treated in this way. The person who suddenly changed his attitude was not guilty of 'hating his brother in his heart' - he made his dislike quite obvious - by having entered the other into his file of 'people he doesn't talk to'.

People do this for various reasons - dislike of confrontation - asking straight out something like, "Why haven't we spoken together for the last month as we always used to?" We feel hurt, but think, "it's less painful for me to keep away from him than make matters worse by talking about the matter." We may go further and rationalize, "Well - he's not important enough in my life for me to go out of my way and get to the bottom of it." This is very typical of city living, where we meet many people in different settings. Or we might use the excuse, "We are different types of people - everyone to his own."

This very short-term way of handling upsets - by showing general dislike, but keeping real feelings to oneself, does not always work.

Those who think they can keep their feelings under the surface are surprized when suddenly something unforseen causes tensions to rise to the surface, and the whole underlying discontent that fermented for months or even years erupts into open, bitter and even violent personal conflicts, sometimes lasting generations.

Such was the dispute between Joseph and his brothers. At the first level (being the obvious favorite of Jacob and bringing the 'evil report'), the brothers showed their general annoyance at his conduct, but they did not work at getting to the heart of the matter. They thought they could 'let things ride'. But when the combination of Joseph's 'annoying' dreams and his falling into their hands at Dothan 'just happened', their wrath reached the 'boiling point' and all the underlying poison erupted into, "let us go and kill him and throw him in one of the pits and say that a wild beast ate him. Then we will see what becomes of his dreams."  Genesis 37:20

This brings us to the commandment of reproving another person. Speak gently, as soon as you sense that things are not right. Do not wait until the matter becomes unbearably painful, and try to clear the air before things get a chance to fester and grow.

"Do not let the sun go down upon your wrath."  Eph 4 26