Learning From Other Jews - Rabbi Eitiel Goldwicht

as human beings we tend to like to define everything in our life we like things to be clear we like to put everything into boxes even the people around us ourselves we have a definition for who we are what type of people we are what type of community we live in and what are the people around us but a lot of times it's the definitions it's the boxes we set up for ourselves that bring the challenges into our life because see that's what happened in this week's torah portion the brothers are made up of 12 brothers those are the tribes of israel and each one brings something very unique to the entire jewish family but they didn't see that in yosef they felt that he was slightly different and therefore that's what led to the exile of the entire jewish people i'm here on my second delegation of idf soldiers young students young professionals that came from israel to new york city to follow up with their birthright students and sometimes stepping away from israel for just five days for just one week gives us a whole new perspective of how we should look at our people in our own land we give sometimes too many boxes oh you're like this and you're like that and you're different than me and i'm different than you but that's what leads to all the challenges in our people if perhaps we could step away from it could reunite the jewish people and that's what we'll bring to the ultimate redemption of the jewish people totally unity and that we'll be able to live up to our potential as a people and as a nation shabbat shalom from new york city [Music]