Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/83

Rh Brotherhood has always meant more to the Jew than to all other peoples, mutual love and tenderness, responsibility and guardianship, opportunity and cooperation.

A well-known story of the rabbis strikingly illustrates this Jewish conception of brotherly love. There were once two brothers, who possessed adjoining fields, which they had inherited from their father. One year the crops were bad, and famine and starvation threatened. One night, as he lay upon his bed, the older brother thought to himself, "My brother is younger than I, and needs his strength more". So he rose and went to his field, and took of his sheaves and put them in his brother's field. That same night the younger brother, lying upon his bed, thought to himself, "My brother is older than I, and married, and his needs are greater than mine". So he, too, arose and took of his sheaves, and put them in his brother's field. In the morning each found to his surprise, that in some mysterious way the sheaves, which he had put in the other's field, had returned whence they came. The next night the incident was repeated, and again on the third night. But on this night it happened that the two brothers went out to their fields at the same time. When they saw what each was doing, they kissed each other and wept for joy. And the act was so pleasing to God, that later the field, sanctified by the love of the two brothers, was deemed worthy to become the site of the great and beautiful Temple of Solomon.

In the second place, Judaism has applied its conception of brotherly love to all Israel. When the sons of Jacob went down to Egypt to buy corn and stood before their brother Joseph, whom they had wronged, they did not recognize him, although he knew them. Nevertheless, when, in order to test them, he pretended to believe that they were spies, and roughly asked them who they were, they unwittingly gave an answer which expresses an eternal truth. "We thy servants are twelve brethren", they said, "the sons