Kuty Shalev

What I’ve Been Waiting to Teach My Son

2026-03-31

I named my son Yosef Maor. It means “he will add light.” At his bris, I told our family why. I was honoring Rabbi Fohrman’s analysis of chapter after chapter of the Joseph story. Joseph the dreamer. Did his brothers really sell him? Why didn’t he send a letter home to his dad? Was civil war averted by Yehuda confronting Joseph? And many, many more echoes before and after. My youngest son’s name was honoring our history and reflecting the values that came out of these tough stories — the pivotal arc of the sale of Joseph. A family torn apart by jealousy, a son thrown in a pit, a father deceived with blood on a coat. It’s the worst thing a family can do to itself.

Joey is in high school now. He was studying the origins of Christianity — the debate over whether it was Jesus or Paul who really founded the religion. He was focused on the Last Supper, which was a Passover seder, and specifically the Pesach offering of a goat. He came home with questions. That was the opening I’d been waiting for.

Here’s what I showed him. Open Bereishit 37 and Shemot 12 side by side. The brothers slaughter a goat and dip Joseph’s coat in the blood to lie to their father. Generations later, the Israelites slaughter a goat — the korban pesach — and put the blood on the doorpost for everyone to see. The brothers ate a meal while Joseph sat in a pit. At the seder, the whole family eats together. Same elements. Opposite direction.

The throughline is honesty. The sale of Joseph was built on deception — a cover-up so complete that Jacob mourned a living son for twenty-two years. The korban pesach is the opposite. The Israelites slaughter the god of Egypt in full view of their masters. No hiding. No cover-up. Honesty, even when it’s difficult.

Our kids know the Torah stories. They can tell you about Joseph and his coat, about the ten plagues and the exodus. But connecting these stories into an arc — showing that the seder is a family repairing what a family broke, proved through the text itself — that’s what grounds identity. It’s the difference between knowing the stories and understanding where you come from. That’s what I wanted Joey to carry with him.

This insight comes from Rabbi David Fohrman’s “Goats & Coats” teaching on Aleph Beta. I’m chairman of Aleph Beta, but I’m writing this as a learner. This is what the content does when you actually sit with it.

Study Sheets

I made these for our family’s Shabbat table the week before Pesach. Feel free to download and use them with yours.

How I Made Them

Aleph Beta has an MCP server — a tool that lets AI search 1,500+ video transcripts. I used it with Claude to create these study sheets. Here are the actual prompts:

Prompt 1: “This afternoon I’d like to organize the Pesach learning with Joey this Shabbat about the Korban Pesach and its connection to the Yosef story. I want to print out some sheets of the relevant parts of the stories so they can work on finding the connections and then discuss what it means. I’m looking for the transcripts that discuss how this is a redemption of the brother’s throwing Yosef in the pit — as a nation we must stick together.”

Prompt 2: “Yes, pull it in Hebrew and English.”

Prompt 3: “Let’s do another printout of all of Bereishit chapter 37 and all of Shemot chapter 12. Let’s NOT highlight the text. And no questions on this one.”

Prompt 4: “Can we organize this last one so there is less white space and prints on fewer pages? Maybe put it in a table?”

Four prompts. Two print-ready study sheets. If you’re curious about access to the MCP to make your own, email me: kuty@kuty.sh