Yosef and the Power to Forgive: Chizuk for Iron Sword by Rabbi Aschi Dick

okay so welcome everybody uh it's really not an easy time K is really going through a difficult time so you know that I've mentioned this many times and I'm going to repeat myself because there's no there is no limit to how many times this needs to be repeated we're ding for k um we're praying for the hostages so we just begin this year with a prayer that a should first of all protect the soldiers and a should protect the hostages and should protect all the residents of Israel and all the Jews around the world and very soon everybody will come back home and as I mentioned previously that oftentimes the only the only constellation that could be given is that there will be a time when and the resurrection of the Dead will arrive and then everybody will be to see the loved ones coming back and uh mentioned the story previously that I had a friend who lost a daughter and I wanted to console him I didn't know what to say and I told him I said you know something when somebody loses a loved one what one must remember is that as painful as it is the person hasn't disconnected from the loved one the person has said bye to the loved one the loved one has gone away for a limited amount of time there will be a time then our mouths will be filled with laughter because families will come back together people will get to see the loved ones that they had not seen for so long and that's the only thing that could really console a person when he loses a loved one especially under these tragic circumstances and the people who have given up their lives for the defense of the Jewish people they have they are on a higher level they're on the level of great sikim because they gave the lives for cl and just to briefly address the tragic incident with the three hostages that were killed obviously we believe that God let that happen we have a belief as Orthodox Jews that's what we're Tau that you know everything happens from a Divine Source a k who orchestrates things from behind the scene he even when we don't see it and it's easy to fall into the bitter blame game that person is at fault this person is at fault if only the solder would have been a bit more precautious if you would have waited a second the truth is that we say everything is in the hands of exception otherwise a person is predetermined there are things that we can control with our but obviously this was not something that depended on because it happened in moment wanted certain could have given the Peace of Mind who could could have put the soldier in the state of mind that would have saved these three heart the lives of these three hostages so this is something that was determined in we learned in the that of determines who will live who will die so therefore we have to approach we have to come with an attitude of an attitude of faith in God and as I said the idea is that these people that died into these tragic circumstances will come back there will come a time for and they will join us okay so that's what we need to keep in mind it saves us from falling into the bitter name game okay so I wanted to just talk about a little bit of this week's par Y is somebody from whom we can learn okay personally I'd like to share and tell you that if I had to ask who would be my role model and I would tell you that my role model would be y okay now just put yourself in the shoes of Y okay he did everything that asked of him to do he was the role model he was somebody who lived exactly as God expected a person to live his father yob says go to your brothers he listens without questioning his father the mysterious nees but the Great of self-sacrifice he goes to his brothers knowing that his brothers might harm him he never imagined that his brothers would sell him down into Egypt or that his brothers would attempt to kill him had he known that y certainly would not have gone because there is no obligation for one to give up his life in order to perform the Mitzvah of K but still he knew that going there might get him hurt might get him harassed and he went anyways with a great deal of self-sacrifice he comes we all know the story okay that he comes and his brothers sell him there's a a joke you know that probably all heard this joke anyways but there is a joke that you know somebody his wife used to go to SCH every year and she used to cry she used to cry when she used to hear the story of the brothering by the way the great of theor he was a very emotional person and it was known that when he got alah we in the when he came to the par that we read last week when we read when he get Aliyah and they would read from the Torah how the brothers sold ysep into Egypt they had to interrupt the lady because he used to break down and cry okay so that was a very emotional person would literally cry and weep every single time they would get up to the episode of the Brother s y I remember that when I came to the L so RAB gold mentioned that when RAB sh should be should be well the great of University also very influential in the so mentioned that when came to they was middle of the a lot of people were dying a very tragic episode in Israeli history and when got up to read the they he literally broke down and cried for a full minute they could not continue reading so these were the is the great sik the righteous people of of am they used to really feel the pain of their fellow Jews and that really is the Hallmark of a great person right a person could learn lots of Torah Tor is extremely important but T Torah has to be learned with the right do Tor has to be learned with the right character traits there's a gr in Evan the famous so his sa for which is collection his teachings his ethical teachings so in the first chapter there in the 11th um in the 11th section of the first chapter he says that tah is compared to rain we read in the par that says about the T let my teachings Fall Like Rain he says why is the T compared to rain he says the rain causes uh plants to grow however it depends what type of plant grows depends on how you plant the seeds if you plant a poisonous uh plant so then the rain will make a poisonous plant grow if you plant a SE a plant that's good that has medicinal benefits then that's the plant that will grow he says it's the same thing when it comes to learning Torah right the Torah is like rain the Torah empowers a person it increases it gives more power gives more potency to the m the character to the character traits that a person has the girl tells us that if somebody has let's say hatred in this heart because hatred is the worst Med hatred is the worst character tra or GA arrogance so if God forbid somebody has hatred or arrogance in his heart when he learns the Torah the tah will only make his arrogance more the T will make his hatred more so therefore if a person has character traits and he learns Torah the Torah will make him even more evil right because it's like rain he says before we learn Torah the person a person has to increase his love for the best preparation for T is to increase your love for fellow Jews he says so this way when you learn the Torah you will love Jews even more okay A person he an awe of so a person learns the T the T will be like rain T will increase his awe of AEM so therefore the gr says there's an obligation for person to for person to do a bit of a soul search for person to do an inner accounting to see if there's hatred in his heart if there's arrogance in his heart and to get rid of that arrogance to get rid of that hatred replace that with love for the Jewish people and then the Tor will increase the Tor will strengthen the good character traits that you have inside so T is the most important Mitzvah but T is unlike other Mitzvah okay unlike other Mitzvah that you know you give s so you get reward for giving s but T is different T is the greatest Mitzvah but only if you make sure to get rid of the arrogance of your heart to get rid of the hatred in your heart to increase your love for so that's why tah is different in other mes T is like rain okay so therefore the Hallmark of the G the Hallmark of the righteous people of the Jewish people was their love for the Jewish people okay there are many people that knew the entire to you have people that knew the entire tal by heart they knew all of the all of all of the they knew everything by heart but they were is they weren s they weren't righteous people because it was a problem with their do it was a problem with their character traits so the unique defining of the people like shin and other other great men was was the care that they had for the Jewish people they cared for the Jewish people and all the T that they learned made them care even more for the Jewish people okay there was a great calist I'm sure he wrote the famous in all heard of so the had a group of people they used to learn T together and one of the conditions to get into this group of people learning Torah is that you had to commit that you make a declaration before Hashem that all the Torah that you learned would go for the benefit of is a person would say I don't want to get any benefit from this tah learning I want this tah learning only to benefit is and that was the condition in order to get into the inter the inner sanum of the ram learning okay so in that V I also want to make the Declaration I also W to stipulate that all the ter that we're learning on this zom I shouldn't come I shouldn't get any personal benefit from it and that it should only go for it should go for the good of the soldiers it should go for the good of the hostage it should increase the health of am it should increase the world of Israel it should make people more pure more loving okay so that's that's my stipulation that's our stipulation the T that we're learning is not to is not to promote an is not to promote a Personal Agenda it's not to get more money it's not more to get more Prestige the only reason why we're learning Torah is for the good of Cl because we say in the beginning of the Tash there says an illusion there on the word that the entire T is really for the sake of the betterment of the Jewish people gave us the tus that should be United so that am should be living in peace that am should love each other that am should be enjoying the radiance and the warmth and the love of the Creator that's really the mat that's really the purpose of the Torah so the person is learning the Torah and he's really wants to do it to promote a Personal Agenda he wants to learn the Torah that should have more Prestige or more money so what happens is that it's the tar is not only not only is the T not not beneficial the t is actually distracted there is even AAR in shabat 88 you can all look at this in fact very important the says that the is which means the people that go with the right hand the right hand is symbolic of positive r as you all know the basic cabalistic L teaches us that the right is symbolic of kindness of Mercy okay the left is d right the left is has a more negative connotation so in a sort of symbolic sense the says that the mind the people who go with the right hand the people are motivated out of love and compassion for the people that really care to bring more goodness into the world and more love into the world and more peace into the world so the T becomes a the tah becomes a drug of Life the T bring the tah will bring peace and the tah will bring all good things into the world at the same time there says the people that use it in in sort of in the in theol of the left which means say for selfishness for arrogance the T becomes a becomes even worse the Tor will make the person even more arrogant as we explain so believe this idea of the gr who compares the Torah to the Rain meaning to say that the rain will make whatever plant you put in the ground grow more meaning to say it will make your good character trait stronger but God forbid it could also make the bad smaller it's already written there explicitly in the to this idea of the T could either be a drug of life for you or the T could be a so therefore it's important to emphasize this because if sometimes people will see somebody who learns lots of Torah and they say how could it be that this person who learns so much Torah how come he's arrogant how come he speaks disrespectful isn't he a isn't he somebody that learned lots of Torah so they might see okay there's something wrong with the Torah not at all there's nothing wrong with the Torah in fact it's the Torah itself the the that we mentioned on the contrary tells us just so this was the I I wasn't able to to give it here in the hotel so I was doing the zoom share in a meeting so in a meeting room and then meeting room was taken so I had to move so my apologies so basically as we were saying previously I'll just mention the story abouton that there was a helicopter that was flying over the Gaza region and the terrorist shot the helicopter down and the helicopter actually had 20 Commandos inside of it so basically I if I understood correctly that the helicopter had to crash land in a fire they had to jump out of the helicopter and they saved the entire yeshu okay so they were saved by the by the mercy of Hashem they're all here they've been here for already two months it's a reminder that many Jews many residents of Israel are still not living in their homes so I live in I'm lucky enough to have my own home I never had to change homes but coming here is a good reminder that we still have lot a lot to pray for uh and to think about all the people that are still not going to their homes people that still have to live in a temporary place so as I said that our intention is that the Tor should be nothing but a conduit to bring hashem's goodness into the world it should be a conduit to bring more peace into the world more Tranquility into the world and hopefully this should also be a that all the all the displaced people in go back to their H very soon so as I said uh the is a drug of life for those people that purify their hearts that's why one of the things that the girl Tau to us the of me taught taught to us was that before a person begins to learn a person should do whatever he can to increase the love for is uh to increase somebody hates so learning that you're upset about somebody that you're in a quarrel with before learning T think about the person think think of some way to be down the which means try to find some way Jud judging that person favorably even if that person did something wrong but see if perhaps you can think of some way to Jud favorably so the the they were great in Torah but the more defining feature uh aside from their greatness in Torah was the love for they had for the Jewish people and it was all the Torah that they learned that became a with they became a tool to increase the love for am a a person is allowed another thing that a person could do for am as I said it's very very important to let go of grudges there was a great story you probably all heard this story once before that ofit that I talked about before so he was inside of a bunker when the bombs were falling I believe in 48 the jordanians were shelling Jerusalem and everybody was praying in the bunker everybody was praying for the Salvation everybody was saving everybody was praying intensely that they should be saved and there was one woman there right a broken woman whose husband very sadly abandoned her husband left her and left her auna okay we all know what auna is auna is a woman that is unable to remarry because her husband has gone missing so she said to the she turn put her eyes upwards to the to the ceiling and she started to speak to Hashem and she said to Hashem she said look my husband left me in auna for many years and you are the only one that could appreciate the degree of suffering that I experienced I'm willing to forgive him wholeheartedly and to bear no more Grudge and just as I am forgiving somebody who had done to me something very terrible you can also forgive your children if they did anything wrong said that he has no doubt in his mind that that woman's statement was more powerful than all the prayers of the Mir Yesa put together okay so you see what the power of being able to forgive the power of being able to forget and that's why another thing that we can do is that if the something did something wrong to us if there something if there's somebody if somebody who really did something they should not have done to us but if we can we might not be able to get to the level of that woman in the bunker who was able to totally forgive a man that had caused her to be in AA for so many years so may not expect us to be at that awesome level however what we are able to do is is say I'm trying to forgive that person that person did something wrong for me I'm I'm going to try to be I'm trying I'm going to try to find some sort of way of giving him or her the benefit of the doubt I making the attempt to forgive somebody that did something wrong to me Hashem I would like you also to please forgive your children I'd also like that you should bring a Salvation to the Jewish people okay so that's something that everybody could do this will actually be a very great Merit for am so getting back to my story that I began with quite a while ago before we lost the connection so basically ofit used to cry every single time he read about the brothers selling Ys that's how emotional he was and that's how much he cared about it that's how much he actually lived and experienced everything that he heard from the Torah everything that he heard from the Torah was a real experience for him was something that he actually lived and something that he felt so there was a story a joke that they say that there was a woman who also used to cry every year when they used to when she used to hear about how the brothers sold uh ysep at sadic into slavery so one year she didn't cry so she came home and H says how come you not crying every single you cry so she said you know something every year ysep goes back to those boys he he should remember what happened last year you should remember what happened two years ago if he didn't remember this time I can't cry for him anymore okay so that's the joke okay but anyways so the idea is that I was talking about the greatness of ysep the greatness of ysep was unbelievable okay so he sold by his brothers he's he's a boy who never did anything wrong in his life okay he did do something wrong because he complained to his fathers was yes was the r that is correct so basically he was the Mira also when the Mir Yesa was in sh what I don't know if he was the but he was definitely an important Rabbi there when the when Thea went to sh so basically getting back to the St of Y Ys kazal the rabbis the sages tell us that he did do something wrong he spoke lashar about the brothers however also teach us that y had really had no bad intention when he spoke lashar to his father when he spoke lashar to his father he had hoped that his father rebuke them he hoped that his father would put them back on a better on a better path but in any case perhaps he could have said the lashar perhaps he could have given the bad report in a different way in any case overall Yik was somebody that was extremely righteous was somebody that overall did not do any AIS he did not do any sins and yet he's been kidnapped by his brothers he being sold into Egypt at the time if somebody became a slave in Egypt he never was redeemed from slavery he Remain the slave forever all right we have lots of competition here okay some music here so anyways if somebody became a slave in Egypt so he had no chance whatsoever right there was zero chance for the person to ever be redeemed from slavery so ysep wasn't the most situation that a human being could ever find in okay so just imagine a brother who was taken by a person who was taken by his brothers and was subjected to the greatest um the worst possible situation that a person could ever find himself in what happens Y is seduced by the wife ofif and after superhuman strength he resists he resists the temptation okay and despite his resistance besides his heroic attempt beside thanks to his heroic efforts as a direct result of his great Mitzvah cast this 12 years in prison now I promise you that if I was in y situation I would become very angry and I would become very bitter with Hashem I said Hashem I never did a sin Hashem what did I do to deserve my brother selling me into Egypt Hashem sh what did I ever do that I should be thrown into prison for 12 years on the contrary after having done one of the most heroic things ever in the history of mankind this is the way you treat me Hashem this is what happens to me hasem I end up being thrown in prison for 12 years and yet y was able to hold on to Z so when a person F finds himself in difficult times when a person cannot understand Hashem how could this be fair how could it be I did a Mitzvah and now things are getting worse a person should remember y y resisted the Temptation that was presented by the wife of piif and for 12 years he sat in prison but eventually y held steadfast y was able to hold on to zun and we know the rest of the S we know that y became the vice of Egypt for 80 years okay so therefore if a person ever finds himself in difficult times if a person feels he did the right thing and bad results happen a person could always strengthen himself by reminding himself what happened to Y and can draw strength and the greatest Hallmark of the was his ability to forgive the brothers that superhuman ability to forgive the brothers that had done the worst possible thing and again it was through the power of ysep samuna that it was hashem's doing he said Hashem sent me down into Egypt so that's another way to draw strength to forgive y had the greatest tun that any person could ever have and Y was able to draw from that power to forgive and forget so therefore if a person had been somebody did something wrong to you somebody wronged you the way to draw strength to forgive the person is to remind yourself what y said ysep had been sold into Egypt and the reaction of Y was it wasn't you it was hasem and it was for the good so anything that anybody ever did wrong to you please remember that it's for your good it'll lead you to somewhere better it will lead you to somewhere more powerful and in fact the calist teaches us this is based on the raan by saying there's a a section of the 130 in teaches us that there's that whenever something bad happens whenever something undesirable happens you should go on the footsteps of RAB AKA Raba always to say whatever does is for the best so this is actually that's cified in the that constantly a person should always be saying theist B on the US that by saying you will expediate the good result of whatever happens so something bad happens to you it's can lead to something good but if you want that good to come sooner if you want to expediate the out come of that good the way to do it is to say say speak it out it's good to think it it's even better to say it whatever Hashem does is for the best if you get into the habit of constantly saying whatever Hashem does is for the best that will cause the good outcome to come sooner and that will also Empower us to forgive others and when we forgive others Hashem will give will forgive our so what we need to do now is we need to draw on the wall Springs of Amun but happened down in Gaza that the soldiers were dying and that the hostages were killed right now it's really the worst thing really now it's terrible and now we really do need to feel the pain of but we have to appreciate that there will come a time in history we will get to a certain place when we will be able to appreciate that all of these terrible things were really for the good when there's when there's the resurrection of the dead and these people that were killed will come back to us when these people will join us again and will be able to Rejoice together we will be able to look back in hindsight and say that the death of those hostages was for the best right the terrible loss of life in Gaza was for the best maybe that's not what we have to feel now now we need to cry now we need to share the pain and the loss that they that the families are experiencing but we're allowed to know we're allowed to know and we're allowed to Envision a day that will come in history when those deceased people will be coming back and that we will appreciate that in the long run of things in the big scheme everything that happened was for the best so again as I said by saying by fulfilling this dictum that's instructed in the whatever does this for the best we have the power to expediate that good outcome we have the power to bring that outcome sooner and we also have the power to forgive and forgiving is what we need to do now because when we forgive others we can come to hem and we can say Hashem we forgave that did something bad to us now please do your part and forgive the Jewish people and bring the G bring the Redemption so basically in summary I'm going to finish up with this a lot of competition here the idea and the takeaway for the she is is number one before we learn T increase the love of before learning tah do what the did the said I a on myself I accept upon myself the do that every time you learn T say I want this T to to go for the good I want this T to be for the Salvation of number one number two okay learn to forgive think of Y think how y was able to believe was able to hold on to the that everything that happens is for the good and he use that to forgive others number three when you forgive others you tellem I forgave somebody that did something wrong to me Hashem I want you to forgive your children so that we can bring the G and we can bring the Redemption so with that we'll finish so I thank everybody that joined us and again I apologize about the noise and the interruptions but as I said this is also for the best okay now if you want as a compensation for all interruptions you can listen to a bit of the music that they're playing for the kids of okay you hear what they're singing they're singing is they singing that the the Jewish people trust in listen okay so all the interruptions and noise was also for the best and with that I wish everybody a very wonderful night and a speedy recovery for the ill and a Salvation for everybody body that needs one and