Bereshit – Growing with the Parshah

Vayechi: The blessed disagreement

Don’t try to change anyone –
except yourself!

You find yourself disagreeing with your spouse, clashing with your business partner, arguing with your child.
You know you’re in the right, and you’re desperate to get the other person to see that.
What do you do?
Yaakov Avinu is on his deathbed. Yosef takes his two sons, Ephraim and Menasheh, to get their Grandfather’s blessing. Yaakov will be blessing both boys simultaneously, placing one palm on each head. Jewish tradition considers a person’s right hand to be the stronger one spiritually. As Menasheh is the firstborn, with more significant privileges and responsibilities, Yosef wants him to receive the more prominent blessing. He intentionally places Ephraim on Yaakov’s right-hand side and Menasheh on his left.
But Yaakov sees things differently. Through prophetic vision, he realises that Ephraim is destined to become greater than his older brother. Thus, Yaakov feels that the more prominent blessing would benefit Ephraim rather than Menasheh.
But rather than switching them around, Yaakov does the unexpected: he stretches his right arm over his left arm in an X shape!
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Mendelsohn of Komemius, gives a beautiful explanation for Yaakov’s behaviour:
Yaakov had no wish to change his son’s position. He merely wanted to do what he had to do without fuss. Yaakov’s response to the conflict was to change his way of doing things. To do what he felt was right while respecting Yosef’s position.
It’s a lesson for all of us. Disagreements aren’t about changing other people’s views. On the contrary; they could be springboards for own growth. It could be a matter of understanding the different viewpoint while still disagreeing, strongly even. It could mean overhauling our perspectives completely. Or it could be a case of just choosing our battles wisely. But when interacting with others with opposing views, the goal must be about changing ourselves. For the better.

(As heard from Rabbi Shimon Semp)

Vayigash: “We were wrong!”

Admitting our mistakes is hard but so, so worthwhile!

Towards the end of last week’s parshah, Yosef’s brothers encountered the second-in-command of Egypt. Unbeknownst to them, they were talking to none other than Yosef himself, the brother they had cruelly sold into slavery so many years before. Yosef is unsure whether they have repented since those days and put them through a series of tests. He eventually gets them to go back and bring their youngest brother Binyomin, whom he tries to take as a slave. At that point Yehudah gets up and flatly refuses to hand over Binyomin, giving himself up as a slave instead. His argument is so strong that eventually Yosef breaks down and reveals himself.

But the story begs the question: there were 10 of them! And they were with Yosef for quite some time. If you read the story carefully, you’ll notice that Yosef dropped several hints regarding his true identity. He knew what colour the wood of their cribs was at home. He sat them around the table in order of age, oldest to youngest. How is it possible that none of his brothers became suspicious?

Perhaps they didn’t want to think that. Subconsciously, the brothers preferred to stay in denial. Because recognising who he was would have meant admitted that they were wrong. And that, as we all know, is the hardest thing for a person to do.

I said that none of the brothers recognised Yosef. But that might not be entirely true.

When Yehudah makes a case for his brother, he keeps bringing up what his father said. He mentions his mother twice. He stresses how it would kill his father to have to lose his youngest son. It’s as if he recognised Yosef and was telling him “it’s your father, your brother, your mother!”

And indeed, on a subconscious level, that may well have been the case. And even that recognition, on a lower level of awareness, may well have affected Yehudah’s excellent choice of words to Yosef. It’s hardly surprising that it was Yehudah who chose to recognise Yosef. The root of the word ‘Yehudah’ is ‘hoda’ah’-meaning ‘admission’. And that admission ultimately broke Yosef.

Admitting that we erred is not comfortable at all. It’s not the default human reaction. But if we can acknowledge our mistakes, to ourselves and to those whom we’ve wronged, we only stand to gain.

(As heard from Mr Harry Rothenberg ESQ. Click here for the original shiur)

Parshas Vayeishev: dream and do!

This week, we follow the fortunes of Yosef (Joseph). Sold into slavery by his brothers (their justification for doing so is a subject for a different piece), he ends up in Egypt, serving General Potifar, one of Pharaoh’s chief officials. After refusing to have forbidden relations with Potifar’s wife, Yosef is thrown into Prison.
It is there that he becomes famous for an unusual talent, one that would bring him from being a lowly criminal to become the viceroy of Egypt.
Here’s how it happened.
One day, Yosef encountered the king’s former butler, in for letting a fly get into the king’s goblet, and he seemed a bit glum. When Yosef asked what was bothering him, the butler told him about a very perplexing dream the night before. In it, he saw a grapevine with three bare tendrils. Suddenly, the Tendrils quickly sprouted fat juicy grapes. Immediately, he plucked some of the grapes, pressed them into wine, pressed the wine into Pharaoh’s cup (which he happened to be holding), and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hands
Upon hearing this dream, Yosef interprets it seamlessly. The three tendrils represented the remaining three days the butler would have to spend in jail. After that, he would be pardoned by Pharaoh and reinstated to his former position, serving Pharaoh as if nothing had ever happened.
I would imagine that the butler and the other inmates were probably a bit sceptical. Some of them perhaps felt that the long years in prison had affected Yosef’s mental health. But lo and behold, to the amazement of all, Yosef’s prediction came true, and the butler was let off the hook.
Word of the young prodigy dream interpreter spread through the jail. The baker, who was serving time for dropping a pebble into the bread (even back then, world leaders were unpredictable- some things never change!) tried his luck and ran his dream by Yosef. In his case, the dream saw him balancing three baskets on his head. The top one held an assortment of baked goods, which were consumed hastily by some rather impudent birds. Perhaps he regretted asking. Yosef explained that the three baskets represented the three days he had left before he would be executed. Again, Yosef was right on target, and the poor met his Creator three days later.
The question that begs to be asked is: How did Yosef know who would live and who would die?
Of course, the simple explanation is that Joseph used Prophetic vision. But I recently heard an amazing insight in the name of Dayan* Chanoch Ehrentreau, head of the London Beth Din and one of North West London’s most senior Rabbinic authorities.
The dream of the butler involved ACTION on the butler’s behalf. It was the butler who pressed the grapes and made the wine. Yosef saw that he was a doer. The baker, by contrast, was completely passive. He simply stood there, without even waving his hands to shoo away the birds!
It’s a principle that so many great people have shown throughout history. We all have dreams. But only those of us who are proactive and do something about our dreams are helped by Hashem to make them reality.
Let’s keep dreaming big dreams. But let’s DO something with them when we wake up!

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*(A Dayan is a Rabbi who serves as a judge in a Jewish court of law)

Parshat Vayeira: He did it for us!

Our forefather’s sacrifice gave us the tools for life

Imagine that you are one of the most influential people in the world, the spokesman for G-D in This World. And you’ve been teaching a pagan world that practices like giving up your children are wrong. You yourself have a child, whom you love more than anything else. G-D has promised that through this child you will become the founder of His Chosen Nation.

And then G-D asks you to sacrifice your only son.

It’s not a challenge that anyone can relate to. Certainly not in 2017. But we know that the Torah is eternal. if the Torah goes into such detail about the story of the Akeidah, how Avrohom Ovinu (our father Abraham) was tested in this way, and was stopped by Hashem just as he was about to plunge the knife- it must be relevant to us in some way.

G-D worded his request in a very detailed fashion. ‘take your son, your only son, whom you love, Yitzchok’

Why was that necessary?

The Sfas Emess explains that Avrohom had to go through three stages of processing the request.

‘Sacrifice your only son’. It would have been easier if Avrohom had other sons. But that was not the case
‘Whom you love’- Avrohom might have fallen out with Yitchok. But the Torah speaks about the tremendous love he had for him.

‘Yitzchok’. The child whom Hashem promised would be the guarantor of the Jewish People, is now to be sacrificed by his father.

But surely Avrohom would have jumped to do G-D’s will in a heartbeat. Why did he need to go through these stages?

The Gerrer Rebbe explains that Avrohom certainly didn’t need to go through this process. Not for his own sake. But he did it for us. By accepting the challenge the way he did, Avrohom planted the seeds of inner strength in our DNA, giving us the power to overcome our own struggles even thousands of years later.

The next time we are faced with a test, be it praying with more concentration or not shouting at the guy who blocked your driveway, lets remember that we do have the wherewithal to succeed. It’s in our blood.

As heard from Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser. (click here to view a video of the original lecture)

Parshat Noach: It’s all in the plans

G-D has His plan for you. And it’s a good one!

Why do good people suffer while bad people prosper?

That’s a question that’s been asked over and over, throughout the history of the world.

It’s even possible that even Noach had voiced this question. The Torah tells us that he had to wait 500 years before having his first child, after watching everyone else in the world have children at the young age of 100.

This was the man who was the only righteous person in his time. The man remained completely cut off from the falsehood and corruption of the world around him. He surely didn’t deserve this!

One couldn’t blame him for asking the question.

But G-D, of course, had a plan.

Giving Noach children at a normal time in his life would have been disastrous at worst and very troublesome at best. Had they grown up to be wicked, they would have reached the age of a ‘bar onshin’, a person liable for Heavenly punishment, long before the flood. Thus, they would have drowned with the rest of that generation. If they would have turned out righteous, Noach would have had several generations of descendants to consider in his ark building plans. Considering how long it would take him to build one ark, he certainly wouldn’t have fancied the headache of building a fleet of them! In His infinite kindness, G-D timed the arrivals of Noach’s kids to take place within 100 years of the flood to prevent either of these outcomes.

If Noach had indeed asked the question, the flood was G-D’s answer to him.

During World War II, the British ‘treated’ some of their German Jewish refugees to a free trip to Australia, along with other ‘enemy aliens’ (many of them were Nazis). The boat was the cheapest they could find, manned by a crew of the lowest criminals in Brixton Jail. One day, the bored crew thought it would be fun to attack their passengers. The poor Jews, who had lost family members to Hitler, now had to watch their only possessions being carelessly tossed into the ocean.

Unbeknownst to them, a German U-Boat in the area had the ship in its sight. Just before the captain gave the order, he noticed what appeared to be suitcases floating in the water. The luggage was retrieved and opened. Lo and behold, out came piles of books in…German! Clearly the British were transporting a group of POWs somewhere.

And thus, the Jewish refugees arrived safely in Australia, escorted by a German U-Boat that had nearly torpedoed it.

Challenging life situations often make no sense to us human mortals. But in Hashem’s unlimited perception, it’s all part of the Grand Plan for us and the world.

(Idea heard from Rabbi Yissochor Frand. Based on Rashi, Bereishit/Genesis Ch.6, V.9. Story heard from Rabbi YY Rubinstien.)