Preferential Treatment with Our Kids

How do you choose one child over another?

No, I'm not talking about the grotesque moral dilemmas faced in the most extreme examples, like in the Holocaust, when a parent was given an ultimatum - this child or that one. 

Every so often the examples we face are far more mundane. It could be financial. Or, even our time. Is it who needs us the most, or rather, who will feel more hurt if we give the time to another, to his or her sibling. 

Joseph himself was to face that question, and in a manner of speaking, he wanted to correct the wrong that he felt his father had done. He tries to upend Jacob's plan, and right his father's hands when he chooses Ephraim over Menashe, though Menashe was the oldest. 

Jacob says, "No, you are right, Menashe will be great, but Ephraim's offspring, and descendants will be greater." Jacob thus gave Ephraim the primary blessing. 

All of the forefathers struggled with that dilemma, and dealt with it in different ways. Avraham never got closure; he was forlorn, beseeching God, that Ishmael walk before Him. That, God said, would not be the case. And so, Isaac and Jacob were faced with the same conundrum, Isaac realizing his mistake and then placing his full backing behind Jacob, and yet Jacob, wanting to walk in his father's footsteps took the bold step of choosing one, and even giving him preferential treatment; he cared about all of his kids, but Joseph served him, learned from him, was Rachel's firstborn. 

He treated all of the sons like "brothers" the verse teaches, and yet at the same time brotherhood requires a recognition that one is meant to lead and another follow, no less of a challenge.