| FAMILY BATTLES |
| The closer they are, the harder they fight. |
| "Here comes that dreamer!" they said to each other. "Come now, let's kill him." 37:19 |
| Joseph and his brothers fought bitterly - almost to the death. Nobody, it seems, can fight like brothes and sisters. Their very closeness seems to rub sale in their wounds. Take a contemporary example: Esther Pauline Friedman came into this world 17 minutes before her sister Pauline Esther Friedman. The identical twins dressed alike, took the same classes, even shared the same purse, with one set of keys, one comb, one lipstick. They slept in the same twin bed. The first time they were separated, in fact, was afther their double wedding. The middle-aged Esther Pauline hooked a job replacing the original Ann Landers at eh Chicago Chronicle, calling herself Abigail Van Burne. Ann sniffed to Time that her sister Abby's column was "very imitative." The feud was on. For eight years the two women who dispense advice to thousands could not resolve a petty family squabble. Finally, the two were partially reconciled. They told journalists they were "very close." Yet bitter feelings lived on. Seventeen years after making up, Abby said about Ann, "If she looked old, if she needed a face-lift, believe me, it's because she needed it. I'm quite opposed to chopping myself up, but it was her right. Why not? When you cry alot, it's got to show." A Father's Favorite Joseph's story is the last of the brotherly battles of Genesis. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau all quarreled. Joseph set his 11 brothers against him by telling his dream of their bowing down to him. He was his father's favorite and perhaps flaunted it. So when his brothers got a chance, they paid him back. They sold him as a slave to traveling merchants, who took him to Egypt. Never expecting |
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