The End of Days Isn’t Later. It’s a Way of Living [Vayechi]

Okay, the story begins. Paras Vi, this is the end of Yakov's life. He's finally reunited with all of his sons, uh, both Ysef as well as Benyamin and even Shim who are held captive because Yseph revealed his true identity. And now family is all good. All the brothers and the tribes of Israel are living in the town of Gan in Egypt. And Yakov gives parting blessings at the end of his life to each of his children. And I will read the verse and then I'll translate it in in English. Yakov calls to his children. And he says, "Hey guys, gather here and I will convey to you or tell to you that which will happen to you. that which will happen to you at the end of days. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. He goes on to relay prophecies about and blessings about each of the tribes. The sages of the Talmud and Rashi mentions this as well say [snorts] that what was Yakov's initial intent in calling the brothers over or all the sons over? He wanted to reveal to them the end of days. He wanted to reveal to them about the messianic era, about this time where there's going to be a a deep and vivid and real experience of God in this world. The kingdom of God is going to be revealed in this world. But it wasn't time and divine presence was removed from him. He was unable to convey that information. Why did YaKob want to convey this information to his children? Why was he unable to convey this information to his children? Okay. So, if you look at the simple meaning of the text, um I I I'm actually very excited to share this insight because I've always read this idea one way and I just came across a whole new way of looking at it which I think is not just intellectually compelling but actually life clarifying and you'll soon see what I mean. The simple way of reading this is Yakov wanted to reveal when the end end of days will occur, when the messianic era will occur. And God had other plans. God removed his divine presence from him and said, "Nope, don't share that." Um, why he wanted to share that? Because motivation. It's coming. Why God didn't want him to share that? It's coming in a long time. That's depressing. It's been how many thousands of years since the Messianic era has not yet come, has yet to come. And that's depressing. Why crush them? Why break them? Or another way to look at it? Why tell them the Messianic era is coming or when it's coming? Um, even if that's going to be motivating, motivation should be intrinsic, not exttrinsic. They have to kind of get their own inspiration, right? God Yakob wanted to inspire them and God says, "Nope, let them be inspired on their own. That's going to be a lot more valuable. That's going to be a lot more meaningful. Why was it important for God, sorry, for Jacob to to even attempt this in the first place? Why was it important for YaKob to attempt to convey when the messianic era is going to take place? Why did God want to take it away? So, there's actually a deeper explanation here. If you look at the text of the Talmud and or just look at how it's quoted in Rash and I'm going to read it and I'll translate it. Yakoval requested to reveal to his children Kate's the end of days which means the messianic but the divine presence was removed. So the way I always had translated this in my mind and I think this is the simple interpretation but ironically not the literal interpretation is he wants to reveal to his children when the messiac era will take place but it doesn't say that. If you look at the text it never says when doesn't say he wanted to reveal to his children when the messianic messianic era will be when the end of days will be. It literally just says he wanted to reveal to his children the end of days, the messianic era. He wasn't trying to tell them this is when it's going to happen. He wanted to actually reveal that experience to them. He literally wanted to convey to his children, not a a a calendar date, hey, this is when Msiah's coming. He wanted to convey to them or to deliver to them or to reveal to them the actual experience, the experience of what it's going to be like when Messiah comes. Because when Msiah comes, there's going to be peace. There's going to be connection. There's going to be oneness. There's going to be The reason is because there's going to be God. And with God, with a genuine, deep, meaningful connection to God comes oneness, comes peace, comes truth, comes uh meaning. Yeshu writes in his prophecies Isaiah that the whole world would be filled with God as with the knowledge of God as the earth is covered as the sea, sorry, is covered with water. And he wanted his sons, at least on a personal level, to have that deep intimate relationship with God where there's just total tranquility. Th this is literally the whole purpose of existence. And what he was saying is, let's not wait for Msiah to come. Let's live it now. right now here in Egypt, here in Gan out of all places, we're still connected. We're still studying Torah. Yehuda set up Torahmies before they even had arrived. [sighs] And for whatever reason, the brothers weren't ready. The brothers couldn't handle it. YaKob told the brothers, the sons, I keep saying brothers because I'm thinking of them in reference to Yseph. But Yov Yakov told his sons, "Hey, gather together and I'll convey to you what will happen at the end of days." He means gather together. He's assuming that they're finally united. There was some riff among the brothers. There was debate. Who's going to be the ultimate kingdom of Judaism? Is it going to be Yehud? Is it going to be Ysef? And that led them to very dark places. But they finally figured it out. You guys are finally gathered. You're finally united. I can now reveal to you the end of days. Not just when the end of days will recur, but the actual end of days. In the Torah, it says gather the and I will tell to you that which will happen, which again our sages say is a reference to revealing to them the end of days. But what is the word of I will tell to you? Agida. Agida. It's an interesting word. There's three terms used for speech in biblical lingo. There's dore, that's speech. There's a like omare vom to say. And then there's a oragada which is to convey like from the word hagada or from the word. And the term agada, the term used here to convey the end of days to the children is a term that stands out completely because when it comes to debour, when it comes to just generic speech or amir speaking. It usually conotes a little bit more of a superficial way of speaking. You're not necessarily conveying truth or you're not necessarily conveying your truth. You could say something that is totally inongru with what you believe. This is what the Zohar says that the term aada that usage of speech convey uh um it's incredible depth. In fact, the secrets of the Torah embedded in the Talmud are referred to as a because it's that revelation of incredible depth. Because what YaKob was trying to reveal wasn't just when this depth will occur. He was trying to convey the depth itself so that they could experience it, even in Egypt. And the brothers just weren't ready. They weren't ready for it. [snorts] How do we know that they weren't ready for it? because the divine presence left Yakov and he wasn't able to tell it to he wasn't able to to deliver it to them to reveal it to them. In fact, the Talmud says that Yakov kind of had this little panic and the brothers said this is kind of an interesting thing. They saidma is listen because his name is also Israel. God is our Lord. God is one. Don't worry, we still believe in God. Yes, we're not ready for this ultimate experience of truth. We have to work toward it. But we still believe in our heart of hearts. To which Jacob responded, "Blessed is is the ultimate king and his glory forever and ever." Like, thank God. Thank God that so the the Talmud actually frames the shanim as a dialogue between Yakov's sons and him where they were saying listen we still believe and he's saying thank God now I I think there's a couple of before I get to my main point here there's there's a couple of important points here which is number one the brothers were in no way ready for this revelation but YaKob thought they which I think is a beautiful thing because he believed that they were ready for something that they clearly weren't ready for. And as we'll soon see, that wasn't a misment. It's actually something beautiful. Yakov believed perhaps in people more than people even believed in themselves. But that's what sadikim do. That's what a Reb does. And that's certainly what the patriarchs do. They see a side of us that we aren't even yet aware of or yet conscious of. Uh this is a very big deal. Yakov even saw this within Asov, right? He wanted to meet Asov. He was terrified to meet Asov, but he felt like he had to. Why? Because he was going home and As was on the way. Why didn't he just take a different route? We know there's different routes. There's different ways, right? When the Jews finally returned to to Israel after the Egyptian slavery. We took a long route. We didn't go straight to Israel. You could take different ways. There's different ways to go. Why didn't you just take a different route and totally avoid Asf? He felt like he had to meet Asov. He felt like Asov might be ready for a certain divine experience. And if we could just connect, we can we can reveal something great in this world. Maybe I could show As a part of himself that he's not aware of. Maybe I could show Asa that he's not just a wild beast, that he has incredible energy that just needs to be channeled. And [snorts] it actually worked. By the way, he was terrified to meet Asov and everything was fine. At least for those couple of moments they embraced because he saw a part of Asov that Asov himself wasn't even ready to see. And the story again repeats itself. Yakov sees a part of his sons that they themselves aren't even ready to see [snorts] because he's not just trying to reveal to them when Msiah is coming. He's trying to reveal to them what it's like to live when Msiah comes even now. And it doesn't even take and he's still persistent. didn't he know his kids? And especially after everybody coming together and hearing what happened with Yseph, in hindsight, he sees he understands the full story that his brothers slaughtered uh uh sold Yseph and slaughtered animal li. He understands that his kids aren't perfect. He knows, but there's something he sees in his children that they don't even see because they weren't ready. What did he see? A capacity for deep relationships, deep experiences with God. Now, here's the thing. It didn't take. They weren't ready. But there's there's two very important rules in the Torah. Number one, if something's in the Torah, it's relevant. Like I'm sure there was a lot of dialogues with Yakov and his children that we don't know about. The Torah doesn't tell us every single The Torah is not a history book, right? It doesn't tell us every conversation that had taken place. It tells us what we need to know. For some reason, we need to know this. We need to know that he potentially tried to convey to his children what a messianic experience is like, what a divine experience is like, and it didn't work. That's number one. Number two, Yakob is a sadik and a sadik here's the rule sadikim don't fail God has to listen to them I or at least they don't completely fail right [snorts] Moshe says God erase me from your Torah if you're if you're not going to forgive my people and and God has to listen and in one para para Mosha's name is not mentioned every other para from his birth from the book of exodus is Mosha's name is mentioned. God has to listen to Sadik. So Yakov intended on something. God has to listen. Which means Yakov must have created some sort of capacity for us to have this divine messianic experience to live with Msiah despite not even being ready. We might not feel ready for Messiah and we could still live with the presence of Messiah. We might not be ready for perfection and we could still live with perfection. What does it mean to live with the end of days? To live with Msiah like practically. So here here's the thing. we've been taught all our lives, and I'm not saying this isn't true, but it's not the full truth. And when we share this as the full truth, we do people an incredible disservice because we're training people to we're training people not to really uh to to short sell themselves. We were taught that you have to fight the and that's not the full truth especially if you learn and if you learnus properly fighting the sahara is really not what you're supposed to be engaged with that's something sometimes you got to get in the weeds but that's like that's not the goal the goal is not to fight the sahara the goal is to reposition ourselves So that theahara automatically feels threatened. I'll give you an example. [snorts] The Gomorrah says, the Talmud says, "A person should anger the writes in one of his teachings in Torah or that doesn't mean you should get angry at the means fuel the so it gets angry at the fuel your divine soul." So it does the dirty work with your animal soul. But you just need to stand and watch, right? Hold my beer. Right? You just you just need to stand and watch and let the messiness happen. Our job is not to fight the Yates. Our job is to strengthen ourselves which threatens the Yates. Fighting the Yates is a byproduct of shining our own light. In in other words, our job is not necessarily to solve problems, but to put ourselves in this space where the problems are less relevant or at least the problems are threatened, where the challenges are threatened. Uh I I'll give you a a relationship example because I was I was working with a couple uh one time and I I see this all the time. You could help people solve problems. Try this, try that. Or you could bring them to this space where they realize how insignificant their problem is despite how painful it is or how difficult it is. I was once working with a couple and and I asked them. I mean, this is the privileged version of what happened, but it was much a longer situation, but I said like, "Why are you guys hopeful?" And I had reason to assume they were hopeful. First of all, they showed up to a session. They paid for that session. And we had a long conversation that led to to me asking them, "Why are you hopeful despite everything going on?" He says, "Well, all these issues that we experience are just like bumps in the road. It doesn't define the relationship." >> Oh, what does define the relationship? And now that the conversation shifted from what are our problems to what defines the relationship? He was able to see because he's hopeful, the issues are literally just bumps in the road. It's not about fighting the issues. It's about connecting to something much deeper, connecting to something much higher. This is what Yakob wanted to reveal to his children. You don't have to fight the you have to lift yourself up so that the Zahara becomes less significant. The atahara will get threatened by that and push harder. Great. Lift yourself even higher. what it means to live with Msiach. What it means is not just finding our challenges and trying to push harder, but there's actually a part of our lives where the atahar is not relevant to a sadic, a complete saddic or even an incomplete saddic. The itahara has very little relevance, maybe no relevance at all. The hat isn't trying to stop a sadic from trying from from doing good things from doing what he should be doing for us regular folk >> the bayon or the aspiring bayon which might be PC for Russia [laughter] um where I'm kidding where where we have the animal soul to to deal with where we have a yates to deal with where we have internal adversity and even external adversity to deal with There is a part of our life where the atar is not relevant. There is a part of us where the atar leaves us alone. We have areas where we're challenged. Where we know what we should be doing and we are just upright lazy, distracted, embarrassed, ashamed, whatever it might be. Whatever the atahara feeds to us, there are certain areas there the has no grip on because we are just so confident like like we are at sadic in that area >> and for everybody it's something else. >> For some people their drags them down in all sorts of spaces but putting on fillin is just second nature. It's not like something they would ever not do >> or kosher or or whatever it is. Everybody has their area where the heart is totally irrelevant where the heart just doesn't want to h just doesn't mix in because it's like I have no fighting chance against that. That's a messianic way of living. That means we're living completely with God. So much so that the forces of evil have been totally wiped away in that area. even though know it's not complete. That's a replica of what it's going to be like when Msiah comes. That's a small scale of what it's going to be like when Msiah comes. And if we embrace that, we've allowed Yakov to reveal within us the end of days to allow ourselves to live with Msiah. This is true in our relationship with God. This is true in our relationship with people. Even in our relationship with people, even on a spiritual level, there's always a connection point that is un where we are unseparable, which is the soul, which is the nama. >> When we serve Hashem with freedom, when we serve Hashem free from the in a way that's free from what people think, >> not because we have the answers, >> we literally just don't care what they think. I care what God thinks. There's a certain confidence that we have. We're literally we're here with Msiah. You know, I'm thinking about this couple. They had like a messianic marriage cuz it it wasn't perfect. It clearly wasn't perfect. They they were trying to get help, >> but they didn't allow those imperfections to define the relationship. They didn't allow those perfections to have a defining voice. I I'll share just one last thought because I' i've been reflecting on this a little bit. The introduction to the Tanya, the author writes what the purpose of this book is and he says anybody who reads this book will get two things. You will find an interesting term which you don't see too often. You'll find margoa lenavo. You'll find rest for your soul and then you'll find answers to questions in the service of God. It's an interesting term. You're going to find rest for your soul. The Reb points out that there's another time where that term is used. Rest for the soul. In the Rambam's description of what it's going to be like when Msiah comes, there will be margoyal and ash, there'll be rest for the soul, suggesting that learning the learning how to connect to the soul, learning how to make the soul more relevant. learning how to make the eternal part of ourselves more relevant than our challenges and our problems so that our necessity where we are most connected Those are the Msiah moments we can learn to embrace and do more of. So that ultimately becomes the the bigger part of of our existence. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.