Shechem. The city where Dinah's brothers avenged her honor. The city where the brothers gathered after hearing Yosef's dreams. The city where hundreds of years later the Jewish people objected to the harsh regime of Rechavam (son of Shlomo Hamelech).
Is it mere coincidence that all three incidents occured in Shechem?
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch thinks not. He suggests that Shechem -- after Dinah's rescue -- came to symbolize human dignity and equality for Yaakov's family. In Shechem, a fervent "feeling of...belonging together" rose in the hearts of Yaakov's sons. They coalasced around a common cause, plotting to save their sister from a man who treated her "as a harlot" (Bereishis 34:31).
Every member of their family, the brothers believed, stood equally before G-d. None was subhuman, to be used by men drunk on pleasure or power. The family seemed united in this feeling. But then Yosef unashamedly tells his brothers that he dreamed of them bowing to him. They even see their father "pondering over [the second dream] and thinking of the possibility of its coming true." They grew alarmed. Rav Hirsch writes:
"[I]t was not so very long ago since Nimrod had introduced the idea of kingship into the world. Their cousins [i.e., Esav's sons] were already enslaved under alufim and kings in Seir-Edom. It was just in contrast to such dictatorship -- where the inhabitants were considered as mere bricks for building up the fame and ambition of a single dynasty, lowering the status of the individual -- that the family of Avraham were to be the realization of the establishment of human society on the basis of freedom and equality."
In an ideal society, "the value and nobility of every human being is recognized" and "the common mission of lishmor derech Hashem la'asos tzedakah u'mishpat as the expressed will of G-d is alone to have the dictating rule equally over everybody."
The brothers believed Yosef threatened the realization of his vision. Rav Hirsch asks: "What would become of their [i.e., the brothers'] future, and the future of the whole world, if they, too, were to allow themselves to be enchained by the ambition of one single individual?"
And so the brothers gathered in Shechem, "the place of the great deed of fraternity [to] get encouragement and incentive for, what seemed to them, the necessity for some similar decision."
And hundreds of years later, the same zeal for a society governed by human dignity and equality motivated the Jewish people to gather in Shechem to object to Rechavam's "misuse of power" in treating them like serfs rather than fellow servants of Hashem.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash