We’ve all heard the phrase, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” The meaning is clear. If we hold out for perfection, not only will we miss a lot of good, but we will also sabotage the good and end up with neither the good nor the perfect. Our Sages put it this way: “Tafasta merubah, lo tafasta—if you try to grab hold of too much, you will end up holding nothing.” There’s plenty of wisdom to be found there.

There’s a lot of research into what it means to be the oldest child (and, for that matter, what it means to be the youngest or in the middle). However, if you’re an oldest child, you don’t need the research to know that the struggles of the oldest child are very real, and we see them clearly in our Torah portion this week, Parshat Vayeshev.