Vayeishev – Power Without Corruption

Hi, this is David Olowski with the para in five where in five minutes we try to give you a little insight into the para that hopefully add to your shabas. In this week's para we have a very strange story very strange story of Yehuda and Tamar. And this is a story that all of us learned as children because when we were learning the teacher always said skip this chapter and so we all ran home and read it in the English. Right? There's no better way to get somebody to learn something than to say to skip it. I think that's the reason why so many high schools in America don't teach vayikra. You know, they do boratas, schmos, bumidba, and dvarum. They figure, oh, I wonder what's in vira that they're making us skip it, you know, so they go in and say, oo, coronos, this is exciting. Tyrus. [laughter] So, you read the story and it's a very hard story to understand. But I want to deal on one aspect of this story and that is Tamar who is the daughter of Sheame Ben Noah. Yehuda marries him off to his first son [clears throat] who dies because of a sin. And then he does Yam and marries him off to Onain who dies because he did a sin. And his third son is Shayla and he's afraid to marry him off. Maybe she's a catlonus, you know, if you if you if your husbands all die. So then you have to be afraid that there's something about you that's killing your husbands. So it's mas Leo whether you get two shots at it or three shots at it, you know, but he was being midden saying okay you know just hang around. She did not want to hang around because she knew through that somehow Mashiah was going to come out of it. And she dresses up like a Zena and she seduces her father-in-law and becomes pregnant. And when Yehuda sees she became pregnant, he assumes that she committed adultery. And he sends her off to be killed. And she sends his walking stick and his his signate ring and says, "This is the father of the child." And he goes, "Oh my gosh, that was her." and soda many she's greater than me and from here comes uh the two twins one of whom eventually becomes the father of David and then eventually Messiah let me ask you a question if you were writing yes for the Messiah this doesn't sound like a good story you got incest over here on the other side. He comes from Russ from Moav. Moav where Lot slept with his daughter to the point that she named him Moav comes from my father. You know, sometimes they see parents, they they say to a kid, they go, "Oh, you're a little mamza." But you don't actually name your kid moms. You know, Moav and that's where our king comes from. Yeah. incest on two sides. It seems like a bizarre story and the kazal say because you cannot become a leader unless you have a skeleton in your closet because when you become a leader it's uh power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more power you have the more difficult it is not to use that power in nefarious ways. You have to be very careful. You have to be a very honest and controlled person to use power properly. David Malik who also had the story with Bachva. Throw that one in. And uh whenever he'd be giving a sh the Gmorra says someone would interrupt and say, "Oh, excuse me D. Can I ask a question? I know it's not on the topic, but what's the punishment for a person who sleeps with a married woman?" He says, "Death. But he has a place in the world to come. But if you embarrass somebody in public, you don't. And and David had to put up with this his whole life because if you're going to have somebody like the Messiah who's going to be a king who's going to have all this power, then you have to have a few skeletons in the closet to be able to point to and say, "Don't get too carried away with yourself." So yeah, although it seems a little counterintuitive, this is the yeas that you need to be able to bring out somebody as powerful as the Msiah. He should come. Everyone should have a good chabas.