The following is a brief summary of some of thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha this evening. I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand.
R' Frand noted that within the story of the brothers' sale of Yosef, the Torah inserts the story of Yehuda and Tamar, before again continuing with the Yosef saga. Rashi on Bereishis 39:1 explains that this return to the Yosef story, links the story of Tamar with Potiphera. He further explains that both women acted in their respective manners because they believed that they were acting L'shem Shamayim. Tamar knew that she needed to undergo Yibum and so she went with Yehudah. In the same vein, Potiphera saw through astrology that Yosef was destined to have a child through her lineage, however she failed to realize that the mother of the child would be her daughter.
But if they both acted for higher purposes, why is Tamar mentioned positively and Potiphera is looked at with disgust?
R' Frand answered by quoting the sefer L'Lamedcha which tells a story of R' Schwadron. He was present in a shul for Parshas Zachor and when the Ba'al Koreh was about to read the Maftir, a man pushed the Ba'al Koreh away and read from the Torah himself. He loudly explained that only an older man with a beard should read Zachor.
R' Schwadron was unhappy about this event and he left the minyan and went to hear Zachor elsewhere. He later tracked down the pushy man and said to him - the minhag to have an older man read Zachor is a minhag, but to not embarrass someone is a biblical prohibition.
R' Schwadron said to the man - you could have politely taken the young Ba'al Koreh aside and asked to read, rather than publicly pushing him away and denigrating him for his age. Similarly, Tamar saw that she needed to act, but she did so without embarrassing Yehuda or herself. R' Frand quoted R' Berel Wein who said a person needs to ask, would Hashem want the act to be done this way? Potiphera should have considered that Hashem would not want her to commit adultery in order for Yosef to have children through her lineage.
R' Frand said a second vort again from the sefer L'Lamedcha, in relation to the use of a pesik note after the shalshles on Vayima'en in Bereishis 39:8. A pesik is a stop and in this pasuk, the pesik comes after Yosef resisted Potiphera and before he gave his verbal explanations why they should not be together. But why the pesik?
The sefer quoted a story involving R' Bunim M'Pashischa - he was in Danzig and staying in an inn which was also being patronized by Jews who were there for a buying opportunity. The men were sitting at a table drinking coffee, when they saw him sitting by himself, learning from a sefer. They did not know his identity, but they could tell he was Jewish, so they invited him to join them.
R' Bunim politely declined, but they pressed and asked why. He responded that they were drinking coffee with milk and the milk was not Cholov Yisrael. They responded to him - that is a chumra born out of a concern of camel milk being substituted for cow's milk. There are no camels within thousands of miles of Danzig, so why be concerned? But he stayed away.
Soon thereafter, the innkeeper's wife came over to their table and asked how they liked their coffee. The responded that it was delicious. She told them that it was extra special, because she had found a merchant at the wharf who was selling camel's milk and she added it to their coffee.
R' Frand summed up - at the end of the day, what is prohibited is prohibited and the reason is not as important as following the rule. So too with Yosef, he needed to resist and say no! Only after resisting her would he need to give an explanation, rather than attempting to fend her off with logical arguments.
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