As he sent his brothers off on their way, he told them, “Do not be quarrelsome on the way.” (Bereishis 45:24)

When Yosef reveals himself to his brothers and tells them to return to Yaakov their father to bring him down to Egypt, he warns them not to argue on the way. The simple meaning of this is that after the story unfolded and the brothers realize that they made an incorrect judgement, there could be squabbling between the brothers over who was at fault. However, Chazal tell us that this verse is referring to the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. This is the type of learning when two people are fighting with each other. They are not angry with each other; rather, they are both searching for the truth with devotion.

Rav Yehuda Asad, a contemporary of the Chasam Sofer, wonders why this warning was necessary now.

The simple explanation is that people involved in Torah study can become passionate to the point of irresponsibility. To illustrate this, many years ago, I had a job in a slaughterhouse. I would ride there every morning in a car driven by the senior shochet, who was a student of Reb Elchonan Wasserman and Reb Baruch Ber Lebowitz. Upon entering the car the first time, I was warned: “In this car, we do not have any heavy discussions in Torah learning.” When I asked why, the senior shochet explained that not long beforehand, in the heat of an argument he turned around to scream at a person who was sitting in the back seat about something with which he did not agree, which nearly caused a collision. At that point the driver and all the passengers accepted upon themselves to only discuss “light” Torah subjects, which should not warrant such passionate responses. Here too, Yosef warns his brothers not to get involved in Torah study, as it could cause them to be irresponsible in their journey.

Rav Yehuda Asad gave another explanation that prior to Yosef being revealed, if one would have had to decide which mitzvah was more important – honoring parents or learning Torah – one could have concluded that honoring parents was more important. But after Yosef revealed himself in Egypt to his brothers, we learned that learning Torah was more important than honoring parents (this was determined by the fact that Yaakov received a punishment of Yosef being “missing in action” for 22 years, corresponding to the 22 years that he was pursuing a livelihood in the home of Lavan, but not for the 14 years he spent learning). Thus, Yosef was worried that this discovery would cause them to get too involved in their learning on the way home.

However, now that this halacha is clear, why did Yosef tell his brothers not to learn on the way to their father?

My answer to this is that there are sometimes situations in which Torah must be put aside to do a mitzvah which must be performed right now and cannot be performed by anyone else. Yosef understood that there was a need to push aside the mitzvah of learning Torah to remove the pain from Yaakov’s heart. This is a mitzvah “overes” (time sensitive) that could not have been done by others, and therefore the brothers were obligated to stop learning even though under normal circumstances learning Torah is more important.

I would like to add that maybe Yosef assumed that the brothers would not factor in their father’s pain sufficiently while dealing with this question. This is based on the brother’s reaction in last week’s parsha when they said, “This tragedy has befallen us because we did not respond to the anguish of Yosef when he cried to us.” Therefore, Yosef felt the obligation to instruct his brothers to not learn Torah on the way so that they could put their father’s pain in the right perspective.

I have a personal friend who is a great Torah scholar and a busy Rav. He is also a maggid shiur in a yeshiva, yet he takes time to go to hospitals to visit sick people that he doesn’t even know. Though he accounts for every moment of his time, he saw a void in regard to his compassion for others, therefore he closes his gemora to bring joy to others. May we learn from this behavior to try to bring joy to people who are in pain, especially if we are the ones who are specifically in a position to do so.