Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Vayechi

Wordless Waiver

January 9, 2025

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Rav Moshe Ze’ev Granek  

Thus shall you say to Yosef: “Please forgive the spiteful deed of your brothers and their sin for they have done you evil…”

Bereishis 50:17

Yosef’s brothers ask him in their father’s name to forgive them for selling him, but the Torah never says that Yosef did so. According to Rabeinu Bachyei, he did not, so the asarah harugei malchus were killed by the Romans in atonement.

How is Rabeinu Bachyei to be understood? According to R’ Chaim Palagi (Chayim Bayad 57), Yosef certainly did forgive them, but not verbally, and mechilah baleiv (mental forgiveness) does not suffice. But according to R’ Aharon Leib Steinman (Ayeless Hashachar), Rabeinu Bachyei only means that if Yosef truly forgave them, he would have done it verbally, so he must have felt he could not forgive them completely for some reason. But forgiving in the mind might be valid even according to Rabeinu Bachyei. Chut Shani (R’ Nissim Karelitz) quotes the Chazon Ish as saying that mechilah baleiv is valid, because the key element of forgiveness is relinquishing one’s grudge against the offender.

In the opposite case—where one forgives verbally but doesn’t really mean it—some authorities, including R’ Yosef Engel and R’ Reuven Grozovsky, say it’s valid, because (Kidushin 49b) dvarim shebaleiv einam dvarim (mental stipulations don’t matter). But according to the Chazon Ish, perhaps the key criteron of mechilah is the feeling of forgiveness, and without it the mechilah is invalid.