Don’t Be A Spiritual Pushover

A Torah Anytime original series. The entire story of Yoseph going down to Mitsim and the brothers following him there and Yakov settling there and subsequently the entire Jewish people living there for hundreds of years. It can all be traced back to a single action, one action that caused it all. And that was Yako's decision to give Yseph a special coat, the Konus Pim, a uniquely majestic suit that Yseph wore. And this pim is what caused the brothers to be jealous of Yseph, which would led the brothers to send Yseph down to Mitsay, which led to his becoming second in command, which led to the other brothers needing him and then the eventual move down there and the enslavement. Right? We all know the story. Now, here's the overwhelmingly obvious question. What in the world was Yakov thinking? Doesn't every parenting booklet and pamphlet and course and seminar and convention preach to refrain from demonstrating favoritism amongst your children? Isn't showing favoritism the most basic rule parents follow? Why would YaKob give Yseph a special coat knowing the other brothers would find out about it? What exactly did Yakov have in mind? Perhaps the answer is that Yakov knew somehow that one day Yseph would stare in the face of seemingly unconquerable temptations and need an extra dose of confidence to overcome them. Perhaps Yakov felt that it was so necessary for Yoseseph to develop what Muservarim called Giva Deidusha holy hottiness that it was worth giving him this royal coat despite the potential rivalry that it would cause. Perhaps Yakov saw in his that there would be a day when Yseph would need every ounce of spiritual confidence he could muster to overcome the challenges and the temptations his life would throw at him. And perhaps this coat would give him that confidence. And look how right Yakov was. What's the approach Yoseph takes when he's approached by the wife of Potifar to commit a sin with her? You know what he says? He says to her, "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I represent? I am not some moral free lowife. I'm not some scoundrel from the street. I am the second in command of this house. This sin you speak of is beneath me." Ysef didn't say, "I can't sin because I'll get fired or I can't sin because it's bad." He said, "I can't sin because the sin is beneath me. I can't sin because I'm too big. I'm too holy." Because Yseph was trained in the art, a spiritual self-confidence. He was able to stand up to the temptations of Egypt. only because Yakov gave him auspim which may have looked like a colorful coat on the outside but was it was building a sort of suit of impenetrable armor on the inside and that led to the success of Yosephadic. Spiritual confidence is one of the most important tools in our spiritual arsenal yet it's the one we often forget the fastest. You know what's genuinely sad? How many people don't see themselves as holy? They don't see themselves as vessels carrying divine light. They don't see themselves as carriers of unimaginable spiritual energy. They see themselves as average, maybe even below average, just, I don't know, regular humans in a loud materialistic world, convinced that they're basically running on spiritual fumes. And besides for being completely wrong, this mindset is immensely spiritually dangerous. Because when you don't understand the value of what you're carrying, you're not going to protect it. Why? Why would I guard a watch if I think it's worth 15 bucks? I'll toss it in a drawer. I'll let my kids play with it. I'll wear it while I'm doing dishes. So, what happens when we think this way? Okay, we let our eyes look at whatever they want to. We let our ears take in whatever noise is floating around and then we shrug and we say, "Yeah, I'm just a mediocre Jew." What do you expect? A mediocre Jew only needs a mediocre amount of holiness to keep his engine running. But what if I told you you're not wearing a $15 watch, you're wearing a $15,000 Rolex? What if I told you the engine inside of you cannot handle a bargain basement gasoline from some sketchy back alley station where the attendant only has two teeth? It needs the good stuff. It needs the pure precision NASCAR NASCAR level fuel because that's what you are. You're not a Honda Civic sputtering its way down the highway. You're a Ferrari. And the minute you realize that, everything changes. Suddenly there's confidence. Suddenly there's stalts. Suddenly I don't hang out with just anyone. Suddenly I'm careful what I put in my body, what I allow in my ears, what I let my eyes consume. Sometimes the best defense we have against temptations and sin and negativity and the naysayers and the peanut gallery is reminding ourselves who we actually are. Majestic, royal, elevated. It is beneath me. I am a Ferrari in a parking lot full of Pontiacs. I am an eagle living in a world of chickens. I'm playing chess in a world playing checkers. That's not ego. That's identity. That is the attitude we need to live with. I remember once being in Switzerland on a blazing hot summer day, standing at the foot of Mount Titlas in the Alps and it was 95° at the bottom, absolutely oven weather. And I walk into the cable car and everyone is bundled up like they're going on some expedition to Antarctica. Winter coats, gloves, hats, the whole wardrobe. And I'm thinking to myself like, "Relax people. It's a little cooler at the top. Sure, but like let's not get over dramatic here." Well, it turns out I was the dramatic one. 5 minutes later, literally 5 minutes, we step out of the cable car and suddenly we're in the North Pole. 3 ft of snow, freezing, maybe 4°. My fingers were about to revolt. How could it be so cold up there? It was just 95 degrees below. The answer is because when you rise high enough above the world around you, you enter a completely different ecosystem. You are literally above the weather that affects everyone else. You enter a completely different reality. And that's exactly what godless looks like. If you elevate yourself above the noise, above the pettiness, above the jealousy and insecurity and nonsense of the world below you, you start living in a different spiritual climate altogether. One that's pure and clear and conducive to proper avoid hashem in ways people still at the bottom of the mountain can't even imagine. It reminds me of something my rebreha. There are two ways to deal with mice in the cat in a Catskill bungalow. Option one, you run around plugging holes every day. One mouse pops out here, another h mouse pops out there. You're basically doing whack-a-ole in pajamas at 2 a.m. muttering to hill and holding a broom. And it's exhausting and it never ends because mice will always find new holes. But there's a second option, and that is you lift the entire bungalow onto beams so high off the ground that the mice can't get to you in the first place. Problem solved. No drama, no broom, no mice. And he said, "That's the difference between small time chuva and big time chuva. Yes, you can fight every tiny flaw, every weakness, every distraction, plug this hole today, plug another hole tomorrow, or you can raise yourself so high, so much higher than the pettiness and the nonsense and the spiritual crumbs that the entire category of temptation simply can't even reach you anymore. Lift yourself and suddenly the battles you thought you had to fight vanish. That's how we need to act. Because when you're trying to figure out how to deal with your temptations in life, it's a pretty good rule of thumb to follow. Raise the bungalow. Don't chase the mice. Listen to this story. At the Audi convention where they were installing Ravisha Feinstein as the Nussi of Audrell, they asked Rabosh Bar Salvich to introduce Ravisha. The Reb gets up and he says something wild. He quotes the Garvin which says that it's proper to say some of a person's praises in front of him but not all of them because too much praise can lead to gya. So asks a pretty obvious question. He says why are we allowed to say even a little bit of praise? Isn't even a little gya dangerous? Why take the risk? Listen to his brilliant answer. He says sometimes a person is so many levels above the people around him. so far beyond the petty politics, so far beyond the noise that the simpleans down below literally can't understand him. And when they don't understand him, they start grumbling and they start whispering and they start doubting his decisions. And the danger is that even the leader himself might begin to wonder, maybe they're right. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing. So what do we do? We say some of his praises in front of him, not for him, but for clarity. To remind him who he is. To remind him that the peanut gallery is exactly that, a peanut gallery. To remind him that the loudest opinions often come from the cheapest seats. To remind him that the view from the mountaintop is very different from the view on the ground. Because even the greatest of the great sometimes forget how high they're standing. And if they can forget, how much more so us. Sometimes we need that reminder that we are too great to sin. We are too holy to roll around in impurity. We are too big to be small. Sometimes we need to hear our own praises. Not to get gya, but to get clarity. Clarity that lifts us out of the mud. Clarity that reminds us we belong in the sky. Clarity that tells us with confidence and with stalts we're not small people trying to be big. were big people who forgot who we are. Virtually every single time we beg Hashem to bring us home to Israel and to usher in the days of Msiah, we sneak in something else, a request for confidence and for pride and for Hashem to strengthen our spiritual backbone. It's everywhere. In benching we say we say even the Tyra itself it pairs these two together in says in the Ezra he says that that means standing tall with your shoulder back and your head up and you're not hunched and you're not apologizing you're not acting like a guest who just snuck into the wrong simah But you you raise two questions when you say this. First of all, isn't it user to walk with the literally writes? So why are we begging Hashem to help us do something when the says we can't do it? Now question number two is why are we so obsessed with going up to with our head held high with confidence restored? Shouldn't it be after everything we've been through, crusades and inquisitions and pgrams and exiles and genocides that our attitude would be, "Hashem, at this point in history, I'll take Msiah however he comes. Wheelbarrow, donkey, Uber, just get us there. Why insist on pride? Why insist on royalty? Why is the posture part of the gula package?" And here lies the answer that flips everything on its head. Pride isn't an accessory to the gula. It's not a cherry on top. It's a prerequisite. The gula cannot come to people who walk like they don't deserve it. Redemption can't land on a nation that slouches. Hashem isn't bringing us home like refugees banging at the door. He's bringing us home like princes returning to the palace. And princes don't crawl. They walk in the kias. Of course, it doesn't mean be arrogant. Of course, we can't walk with pride in ourselves or our money or our talents or our egos or our personal achievements. That's not pride. That's delusion with better PR. But Jewish pride, pride that you're a soldier in Hashem's army. Pride that you are part of the most compassionate, moral, giving, spiritually driven, eternity carrying people on earth. That's not arrogance. That's oxygen. It's the kind of pride that doesn't lift your nose. It lifts your soul. The kind of pride that doesn't make you look down on others. It helps you rise above the nonsense and the noise and the pettiness and the slouching spiritual posture that exile forces us into. We don't ask Hashem to bring us to eritral and also give us pride. We ask Hashem to bring us to through pride because the gula doesn't happen when we get out of exile. It happens when the exile gets out of us.