Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Sale of Yosef and Free Will

my baby [Music] thank you for coming and uh I guess Hanukkah is over but I hope Hanukkah was very enjoyable for everyone and first today's share is dedicated for a refuge Lima for Brea batrava and khaya Marie Ben Rifka may they have a referralimer with Israel in addition Ibanez conducting its annual end of the secular year fundraising campaign they have many new projects that require funding as well as their ongoing activities the new projects include several new husted projects with new olim and the elderly as well as setting up a bait knesset is in the works anyone interested in knowing more about these projects should speak to everybody posting directly and a link to donate is found in the YouTube description box as well as the Bonaire website and an additional aspect here is every donation is matched by a generous contributor until the end of The Campaign which means every dollar you give becomes two dollars or whatever please help us reach our goal in the next few days and finally once again tonight's class is sponsored by an anonymous donor so uh Mr Mrs or Miss Anonymous we thank you very much and may your support of Torah be a success for you and your entire family uh in Paris we kind of come to the culmination of a story that's already been taken up with two partios the story of makiras Yosef which is the longest thematic narrative in homage courageous and uh Yosef the whole story of Yosef is one of the great perplexing stories of the Torah it is so rich in so many ways that people analyze it religiously they analyze it psychologically they analyze it in terms of literary structures there are so many different ways of approaching the immense richness of this topic and you never really get to the bottom of it meaning this is one of those things where you know you talk about it this year and you'll talk about it next year and you'll be pondering and you're not going to come to any final resolution uh but I do want to offer you know one one approach to this and that is one of the well there are a lot of questions first of all people say how could the brother sell Yosef you know I always say you know people always want to know what's the proof that the Torah is written by God and it's not a man-made document so I would say at least half jokingly that if we would be the ones who are writing the Torah there's a whole bunch of stuff we wouldn't put in we wouldn't put in yaakov stealing the blessings from azov by deception we wouldn't put in that the brothers of Yosef sold Joseph into slavery and in fact wanted to kill him that doesn't reflect well upon us to say that we wrote the Torah somehow when we put in all of this negative information would be self-contradictory and therefore only God could have written a book like this what did they say yeah it's not even it's not a believable story only God could have given us all of these details but still let's just give a push it shot in each aspect of the problem problem one how could the brothers who are considered to be righteous and they are the founders of the Jewish Nation how could they sell their brother into slavery I mean that's something that even like the low low lowest of the low in fact it was so interesting just as an aside for some reason I I saw an old this week I just saw an old 60 Minutes interview that goes back around 20 years with the mafia Chieftain who had been a very vicious killer he had killed like at least 50 people and uh you know Ed Bradley was asking him you know does your conscience ever bother you he says no this is a job and I did my job and and even said so stupid he says I didn't know them so why should I feel bad I didn't know them at all but then he started talking about the fact that now he's in prison and he doesn't get to see his wife and children and grandchildren and he starts crying like he's such a great like Family Guy uh meaning the concept would be that even he even this cold-blooded murderer has a feeling for his family so now I swing back to the story of yosef's Brothers look what they did to their brother how could that be so there's a famous comment of the saporno rovato saforna was one of the great commentators on the hummus and he lived in Italy during the Renaissance uh in fact part of his paranasa was he was both a physician and he was a Hebrew tutor to many prominent Cardinals in the Catholic Church that was his pronounce he actually taught Gentiles not so much Torah because that raises but he did teach them Hebrew and the soporo offers the following interpretation the brothers had seen a certain pattern in the relationship of father to child they saw that avraham had a son Ishmael from Hagar and then he had a son yitzrak from Rifka and eventually Ishmael was expelled and the Covenant of avram was transmitted to yitzrak and not to Ishmael and then yaakov has twins yaakov I'm sorry youthwork has twins yaakov and Asaf and the same thing happens eventually whatever the justification is yaakov takes that blessing and yaakov takes that Covenant and ASA moves to mount Sayer which is south of veritas realm there is this notion of good son bad son good son gets the Covenant it's not a matter of material riches this is a matter of spiritual Destiny the spiritual Destiny goes to the good son bad son is excluded so now they see that number one yaakov does have multiple wives but Rahel is his favorite wife and Rocco only has two sons she has Josef who is older and Benjamin and they see that Yosef is bringing Lush and horror about his brothers to the father that they're guilty of various sins various averos it's a whole discussion exactly what our various would they be guilty of but they see this not simply as Yosef being a tattletale but they see it as Yosef trying to put a wedge between themselves and yaakov and the probable impact of that is going to be that they will be labeled so to speak the bad seed and the Covenant of yaakov will pass exclusively to the children of Russia now that is not simply a slight like giving up your inheritance that affects the destiny of the rest of their lives and the lives of their progeny until the end of History they see Yosef as engineering an exclusion from the future of the Jewish people and therefore the soprano quite logically says they looked at Yosef as a rhodave what's a ro Dave if somebody is trying to kill me I'm allowed to kill them somebody who's coming to kill you you kill them if there's no other way to disable them now they saw what Joseph was doing as far more detrimental than the loss of a physical life they saw this as affecting their Destiny in Allah they saw this as affecting the destiny of all of their children till the end of time and khazal already say God alham he who causes me to sin and be separated from God is worse than a person who kills me physically because a person who kills me physically is only killing my goof My Body one who takes me away from my role as a Jew is destroying my nishama therefore they pass against that Yosef is a Rhodes and as they rode they convene the Beast and so to speak this is the saparno as a road AF Joseph is high of Misa is deserving of death but if they could disable him by something less than death such as selling him into slavery that would be preferable and thus they actually felt that alpidin according to the halacha whatever the meant before Mata they were permitted to do what they did now if you find this convincing you may then ask well so why are the brothers punished why are they condemned it's very clear that the Torah regards the sale of Yosef as a major sin but what was the sin they were Justified the answer must be that even if intellectually they came to a certain justification part of what drove them to that conclusion was their jealousy was their Envy they were not in a position to be objective judges over that particular issue and along with the righteous motivation of getting rid of erotic came a certain satisfaction in dumping on a brother that they thought was arrogant and proud and looked down upon them so it could very well be that there was a justification for what they did but their motives were not 100 pure in fact I was a godo from Morocco who came to Eric Israel he's uh he lived he was really contemporary of the film The Gun more or less and he is buried in horizism hearing you shall I am I think his yard said he's right before is this is the 15th of Thomas it's right before Thomas I think maybe the 15th of Thomas and it actually attracts tens of thousands of people to this day go to the oracayim's cover uh on the Mount of Olives uh but the arakim become you see it's a special distinction not too many commentaries are called the Holy One even Rashi we typically don't say Rashi hakadesh but for Reasons I'm not entirely sure the origam gets that appellation as kadosh and there's a fascinating which deals with a very controversial philosophical point if you remember and again I'm going back a little bit uh to parsha's vayations because all of these three partios are dealing with Yosef and we didn't have a chance to talk about it because we were talking about chronica so I often will talk about Yosef when we get to practice after Hanukkah and if you remember ruvane basically told the brothers hey let's not kill Yosef let's throw him into the pit and then the Cabana was that Ruben was planning on coming back later and retrieving yourself but while he was gone unbeknownst to Reuben they sold Yosef into slavery now the gemara has a famous treasure because the terror describes the pit as the pit was empty but it didn't have water so the gemara asks the obvious question if it was empty of course there was no water what's the reason why do you have to State there was no water so the camera has its Russia ah there was no water but there were snakes and scorpions so the question is obvious if the pit is filled with snakes and scorpions and ruvain's intention is not to kill Yosef but to throw him into a pit and retrieve him later then what is ruvain thinking if you throw somebody into a pit or snakes and scorpions that person will be killed in fact the mission that says in yavamas that if Witnesses testify that a man fell into a pit of snakes and scorpions even if they didn't see his dead body his wife is permitted to remarry as a widow because it's a certainty that they killed him so what's Reuben thinking if Reuben wants to save your save why could he how could he possibly throw him into a pit of snakes and scorpions now the simple answer would be he didn't know the tire is telling me this was the case but he didn't know but the arachim says differently the archim says an amazing thing quite an amazing thing he says listen the brothers poskins that real vein is deserved I'm sorry the brother is possum that Yosef deserves to die based on the support of hashbound that Yosef is a road but ruvang brings up the following argument maybe our judgment is right maybe our judgment is wrong after all we have personal bias we have a personal agenda if we kill Yosef that is not proof that God has accepted our judgment because even if God does not accept our judgment and Yosef is innocent since we have free will this is we have the power to harm a person who is undeserving of harm in the eyes of God so the fact that we kill him does not show that he's guilty because we are ballet bakera and murderers can murder innocent people we are people of free will Bud says the animals don't have free will animals can harm someone only if it's God's decree that they be harmed therefore if we want to know if our judgment is correct or incorrect we should not be the ones who kill Yosef we'll throw him in the pit and see if the snakes kill him if the snakes kill him that's a proof our judgment is correct if the snakes don't kill them that's the proof that God has exonerated this by the way an idea similar to this is uh is the source of the Christian notion that some charismatic sex have of playing with snakes I don't know what they call that they they fool around with poison their snakes because they basically say if you believe in God the snake is not going to hurt you all I can tell people is do not try this at home but the oracay in both both parts of the archeim are bikridution which was a safer many hundreds of years before their makes a very famous point that no human being can harm another human being unless it is directly decreed by God I cannot harm you unless God wanted you to be harmed for whatever reason we don't know we know the reason it's impossible for anyone to do anything to anybody unless it's God's decree that's is saying exactly the opposite the arachim is saying because God gave human beings free will because God gave me the ability to decide to either sin or not sin in inevitable Fallout of my power of free will is that some people are going to be hurt you see this raises a fundamental question I mean let's take a very simple example let's say a person goes to a convenience store a person goes to a 7-Eleven in the states three o'clock in the morning in a bad neighborhood not the wisest thing and while he's there a robber comes in with a gun and the robber looks kind of nervous nervous robber is not good it's good to have a comb wrapper because nervous robbers are very trigger happy and the like prison's nervous and let's assume well what a few things can happen either he shoots somebody kills them or or doesn't now here's the problem does the rapper have free will pull the trigger or not pull the trigger meaning does God make him pull the trigger absolutely not it is fundamental in Judaism that the decision to be virtuous or sinful is up to the individual the individual has a choice this is called this is a rejection of predestination that exists under certain Islamic schools of thought and under certain Christian Schools like Calvinism and the like Judaism is free choice so that means the robber could have decided at the last minute to do chuba and throw away the gun and go to Yeshiva whatever it would be but here's the thing according how do you match it nobody dies unless God decrees that they would die so if the rapper shoots the guy dies if the rubber doesn't shoot what's supposed to happen is the guy going to die according to the drivers the Assumption has to be that he's going to get a heart attack anyway I mean meaning to say it's not the murderer that killed him the murderer is accountable not for what he did the murderer is accountable for the evil decision that he made it's very very interesting the murderer didn't kill the victim says Hashem decreed that at that moment that victim should die so what Hashem does is it's like a chess player Hashem uses the choice of the robber to carry out what God's decree is if the robber were to make a different Choice it would be carried out in another way the guy would get a heart attack the building would collapse this gets increasingly difficult when you start looking at Mass calamities like the Holocaust because we'd be saying Hitler didn't kill six million Jews God decreed for whatever reason we don't know why that six million Jews would die Hitler happened to make a choice to do that so Hitler gets enlisted in carrying out God's plan meaning if Hitler would have decided to do true in the middle or at the beginning of the Holocaust but six million people would have died somehow over this period of what 12 years it's hard to figure out but like the urach in a sense it's an easier paradigm although some say it's a less religious paradigm like the arachayam God created a world of free will now why did God create free will because Free Will is the only way that you maximize goodness goodness is good only when it's chosen goodness is not good when it's mechanical and automatic so God had to create free will so that true virtue would be possible problem is once you create free will you've created the capacity to go in the other direction evil is a necessary evil if that's the case the archaim says by God giving Humanity free will he gave Humanity the capacity to commit Holocaust and all sorts of people might die and be victimized that God did not want to die or be victimized this is a major issue in Jewish philosophy can ruvane harm Shimon if it's not God's decree that she might be heart the standard teaching that we teach in yeshivas is Seminary is that everything is decreed by God that's the standard understanding but one has to remember that the arachayam says exactly the opposite and in many many ways therefore that would change the question that people ask about the Holocaust where was God why did God do this according to their question is not about God although you can still ask why didn't God stop it that's another question but really the Holocaust says much more about the depravity of men than it says about God essentially God let free will operate in the world and when Free Will runs amok you get Holocaust now I'm not suggesting this is an answer because again because again there are still questions why doesn't God Reign in these forces when they become excessively destructive I mean those are questions they certainly are questions but what I'm saying is God himself is not the agent of the Holocaust it is the decisions of human beings in which God lets human beings have free reign because in a cosmic sense in a universal sense that goes Way Beyond the period between 1939 and 1945. Free Will is a moral necessity for the attainment of virtue and if Free Will is a moral necessity there are going to be fallouts that are tremendously destructive that's how the hurricane I think would analyze this particular issue but the second part of the archeim is equally amazing and that is an animal won't harm you unless God decreed that you be harmed uh which is pretty amazing as they say one should never assume they're so righteous they can play with snakes and they're not going to hurt them but the archive says the snake is not going to hurt you if you're not deserving of of punishment now the Kumari does have a similar the word does have a story that A snake bit him and the snake died instead of him so there are occasional stories that indicate that the Sadiq is more powerful than the snake but but they're a clown if you're a bit by a snake the consequences might be might be very very serious so that's how the arachim understands the story with Ruben okay what's further amazing is that they didn't listen to romaine's own test Yosef was thrown into a pit of snakes and scorpions Yosef emerged okay and they still saw them what's going on they saw a miracle I think that proves the point that when your objectivity is Tainted with personal animosity even obvious points are not going to be taken into account they should have seen that Yosef was saved by a supernatural miracle which he was and it still didn't make a difference so how accurate is it to say oh we're just carrying out our objective judgment Okay so whether you consider this a partial explanation or not I'll leave it to you you may not be satisfied with it but this is one approach that is offered to the sale of Yosef now as they say it's very very clear that this is regarded as an extremely serious Avera and blemish on the Jewish people and in fact we read in later mid-russia that the death of the ten great Martyrs that we read about on Yom Kippur and Untouchables was an atonement or a punishment for this sale that the ten brothers did in selling Yosef so it remains with us throughout this time in fact according to some sources just like you know every fast over the temple is rooted in an earlier tragedy so for the ninth of of disruption of the temple is rooted in the Sin of the spies the 17th of Thomas when the Romans broke the walls of Jerusalem three weeks before the destruction of the temple is rooted in the Sin of the golden calf when Moshe broke the Lucas but this uh next Tuesday we have the fast of the tent of Taves which is the earliest chronologically of these fasts that is when the king of Babylon began to Siege against Jerusalem so we're already thinking about debate to mikdash but what earlier event is a cerebrate rooted in shivas our batamas is rooted in the ego Tish above is rooted in the miraglim rooted in so I saw a refluoma Fisher the corona libracha suggests that it is rooted in he actually asserts although he doesn't he doesn't bring much of a proof it's interesting he just has a speculation I didn't see any mockers that he brought that maybe a cerebrate base was the date that Joseph was felt and that became a date of tragedy because Yosef so this is the trilogy of primeval sins that caused all of the Godless and the Corbin but he rasio safe which is hatred between people and then we have the Cradle egal which is a form of idolatry and not serving God and then we have the which is and then we have rejecting Eric Israel which is the height of the miraculum which is the root of tishop of right so we have people the people of Israel like peoplehood God and Eric Israel um what's the matter isn't that the matter of I'm trying to remember all right so the three things that Eric Israel Jewish Nation the Torah of Israel which is your relationship to uh to God okay but now let's look at the other side of the equation so we've looked at the brothers but now let's look at yosef's Behavior yosef's behavior in many many ways well it depends on one hand maybe you can understand it because he has the right to be angry he has the right to be upset Yosef was victimized in a tremendous way Yosef was betrayed so from a humanistic standpoint maybe yosef's behavior is not so difficult it's the way many of us would have acted but many are not satisfied with that explanation because after all Yosef 2 is supposed to be righteous at Sadiq how could it be that Yosef would be so cruel number one he hears that he doesn't reveal himself well for number one he's gone for 22 years question number one is why doesn't he ever send a message to his father why doesn't he send a message I'm alive now you may be when he wasn't potifier's house as in heaven he didn't have access to uh email or would be and certainly in prison he didn't have those Services right the prisons in Egypt were not like the federal prisons today of color TV you know and all the cable TV and all that stuff but certainly once he's the mission element once he's in a position of supreme authority couldn't he just notify his father why didn't he notify his father that's one set of questions and then when the brothers come to him and he doesn't identify and they say well we have a younger brother at home and this is the only surviving son they think of his favorite wife Raquel and it would break his heart if he would come down because something might happen to him and Yosef says bring him down without revealing himself knowing knowing what that's going to do to yaakov and then you say frames Benjamin as if to say Benjamin will be either put to death or enslaved what is Yosef doing and it seems to be from the narrative that Joseph would have kept on going had he not broken down at some point when Yehuda comes forward and begs and argues and threatens and congells he uses all the other devices you know he's obsequious he's submissive he's threatening and Yosef just breaks down but the implication is that Joseph would have continued something had he not broken down in that moment so what's going on so there are two basic approaches in the beforesham approach number one is the approach of the ramban Rashi doesn't really give you a thematic approach here but rambandas and ramban says that Yosef feels it is a Divine imperative to carry out the Fulfillment of his dreams when he was 17 years old he had two dreams that was the source of the brother's jealousy he had a dream of ten sheaves of grain bowing down to his Sheaf of great indicating that all of the brothers would acknowledge Him as king or 11 rather eleven Chiefs of great that was dream number one and dream number two the Sun and the Moon and Eleven stars are bowing down to him the son is his father the moon would be his mother but of course Rocco is not alive but Villa is the maidservant of Russell who took over the raising him so Yosef has a dream that he regarded as a Divine prophecy that he would be the king he would be the ruler not only over his 11 Brothers but even over yaakov and Billa this stream has to be fulfilled he looks at it as a Divine mandate so when the ten Brothers come he doesn't reveal his identity they bow down and they beg for food well that's a large fulfillment of the dream but that's not everything I have to get Benjamin down and I can't tell him I'm his brother because look at me as a brother he has to look at me as a king or you know Mission element so therefore step one was bring Benjamin down without revealing my identity so he will acknowledge me as a king but there's still somebody missing yaakov has to come down so what the ramban says is quite amazing yosef's intention in framing binyamin was to get yaakov down and yaakov would beg and Bow Down and plead and that would have been the conclusion of the dreams and Yosef would have revealed himself at that point what happened was that Yosef couldn't carry out his plan Yehuda interrupted it yehuda's speech had such an emotional impact on Yosef that he broke down and therefore yaakov never came down to Egypt to beg for Benjamin's life although we do read that when Jose visited yaakov towards the end of yaakov's life it mentions yaakov down so there was a fulfillment at the end but not at this particular juncture so this is the famous sheet of the ramban that all of yosef's behaviors were to awkward orchestrate the Fulfillment of his theobarbanel the great commentary Victor barbinella was a fight well his lesser important job was he was finance minister of Spain Ferdinand and Isabella at the time of the Spanish expulsion and he left he left all of that to be with the Jews he was given permission to stay he could have stayed and he was even given authorization to be a practicing Jew because they needed his financial Acumen but he refused but he wrote great great commentaries on on the Torah and on the VM and on the Book of Daniel in particular he didn't write on the other consume but the Book of Daniel and the like but the barbinal asks Akasha and the ramban and says isn't there an ends not justifying the means type of problem here I have a dream that I'm supposed to be a king so let's assume that's a prophecy it's not a hallucination but it's up to God to do that I'm allowed to lie and cheat and hurt people because I have this dream I have a dream that I'm supposed to be a king over you therefore I'm going to hurt you put you in prison I have a dream that my father is supposed to bow down to me therefore I am going to give my father the the awesome pain of thinking that Benjamin is going to be taken meaning a dream even if it's prophetic is not a commandment it is simply telling you what is going to be Hashem didn't tell Yosef you are commanded to make yourself a king Hashem is telling Joseph you will be a king okay how and when that's going to happen is up to Hashem you certainly cannot do bad painful hurtful things to fulfill the dream that you regard as a prophecy right so this is the Obama's question on the ramban so because of this the Ravenel understands things in a different light he understands that Yosef wants to be sure that his brothers have done shuva for what they've done the Genesis of Mercury even if at the end of the day they had some type of halachic justification but the Torah says the Genesis of Mercury was hatred that was born of jealousy and the jealousy started because yaakov and the gamar actually criticizes Yakov for this interestingly enough yaakov played favorites not supposed to play favorites with your children yaakov loved or at least behaviorally loved the children of Russia more than Leia because he loved Rocco more than Leia not only that but there may have been an undercurrent of resentment against Leia because Leia was part of a deception that prevented him from marrying Russell right away although they only were married a week apart but still he wanted Rachel to be his first wife so the Genesis of is the jealousy that the Binet Leia and the other tribes have for beneirahu Yosef wants to be sure that they have overcome that jealousy though he wants to bring Benjamin down he once been Yemen to be framed potentially arrested to be to look at to look as if he is in jeopardy and then if the brothers have overcome their jealousy they will fight for me on it if they still have that jealousy they're going to say to their father well sorry Dad what could we do you know Benjamin was taken in other words they're not going to be so unhappy that's been young and who took over the role of favorite son after Yosef was solved would be imprisoned or enslaved or whatever so Yosef is trying to see have the brothers done shuva by overcoming their jealousy and hatred yahudah is the head brother so to speak of Leia's side effect from Yehuda will come will come royalty ache when binyamin is threatened Yehuda basically comes forward Yehuda is willing to give his life so that yaakov will be reunited with Benjamin and when Yosef cease that the Brothers have transcended their hatred their jealousy their animosity now Yosef is ready to reveal himself to his brothers because they have overcome the jealousy that caused the sale and that is why Yosef is willing to forgive his brothers because they have done Shiva this is how the abramel learns but I have a little observation on the apartment now that is could we not ask on the Obama now the same question asked on the ramban and that is it yosef's business to orchestrate shuva in a way that's going to cause so much pain and suffering and agony on the part of his father yaakov that Benjamin has taken him and Yemen is framed and the like once again if somebody somebody did an aveira they have to do truva am I allowed to lie to them to cheat them to hurt them to go them to do Cuba once again that's their responsibility why is it yoseave's responsibility to be sure that his brothers do children and that justifies the lying and the deception and the pain he's causing yaakov so here I think you need to supplement the Obama now with one additional observation Joseph to put it mightily has an extraordinary life 's life wouldn't even be a believable motion picture person who grows up in the house of yaakovino who is sold into slavery by his own Brothers who comes to Egypt and starts off as a slave and then Rises within the household and is then framed by a false claim of adultery is imprisoned for 10 years actually 12 years altogether but because of his ability to interpret dreams Rises to be the most powerful person in Egypt other than pyro and really the most powerful person in the world because the famine was a worldwide at least Middle East or at least a worldwide Middle East phenomenon if not totally worldwide I don't know if there was a famine in America then it was living in America then so Joseph has an extraordinary life but Yosef looks at his life says why why are these things happening to me why did my life turn out the way it turned out I start from the Nader from the rock bottom of what life is to be a slave in Egypt to be a prisoner languishing in the cell to be coming what I am now God must have a mission for me there must be a purpose in this it doesn't make sense now the truth is every one of us has a purpose but it doesn't hit us so much because you know for most of us life is not necessarily so extraordinary but when your life is extraordinary it's hitting you in the face that there got to be some meaning to this and the meaning that Yosef himself came to is God decreed to avram that at some point in time didn't say when exactly his children are going to be enslaved in Egypt and they will be persecuted and they'll be Godless and the truth is all of the Exiles are rooted in the Exile of Egypt that's the prototype for Babylonia for Persia for Greece for Rome free Ishmael it's all rooted in with Triumph so Yosef defines his mission my mission is to be the advanced party to teach my brethren how to survive Galas and remain faithful to Hashem that's why I'm here you know they used to have this expression the canary and the coal mine I wanted to know if there were leakages of gas you put a canary there so Yosef is the canary Joseph is the advanced party now therefore Yosef has to go through all of the experiences of gullus and show us how to navigate them he experiences slavery because we will experience slavery he experiences imprisonment and persecution because we will experience that he experiences wealth and power and affluence which can also take a person away from God even more so we would we experience that Yosef has to go through every experience that we will go through in our gods so we learn from him how to be faithful how to be strong how to be committed not to give up no matter what your circumstance is not to be destroyed by poverty and affliction and persecution and not to be destroyed by affluence and success that can also destroy you maybe even more so Yosef understands that that's his mission his mission is to prepare the Jewish people to survive mitzrayim but to survive all the goliases till the end of time now we know that the Jewish people we're going to see this in the book of shmouse the Jewish people spent 210 years in vitrium they should have been there 400 years God took them out 190 years early why is that so because there is a tradition that after 210 years we had reached the 49th level of impurity and if you hit Level 50 you're irredeemable and God had to take us out if we would have hit the 50th level that's the end that that's the meaning we didn't have time to let our dough rise the few minutes it would have taken for the bread to become age we would have hit the 50th level I don't even know what that means and as it were four-fifths of the Jews died because they did hit the 50th level so when we say they're on the 49th level that's the one-fifth that we're taking them but notwithstanding that the gemara says the Jews had some merits that enabled them to survive his mentions they didn't change their name they kept their Jewish names they didn't change their language they spoke the Hebrew language there are different lists some say they were distinctively Jewish clothing others say they didn't speak Russian horror against each other now here is the thing to consider they kept their Hebrew names they kept their Jewish language they didn't intermarry they wore distinctive Jewish clothing was this because they were from is this because they were religious clearly not because look at what they didn't do they didn't practice brismila except for the tribe of leaving and they worshiped about Azara except for the tribe of lady so they weren't from they worshiped about desire so you might ask the question what's the value of having a Hebrew name it's like you know you meet a guy in Tel Aviv Rafi okay and Rafi wears them again David uh but he doesn't believe in God and he doesn't keep Shabbos and he doesn't keep kosher but he says hey I'm a good Jew because my name is Rafi and I wear them again we might laugh at that the funny thing is apparently it's not such a laughable proposition because the concept is if you identify with Jewish peoplehood that counts for quite a lot even if you're not yet keeping the Torah or keeping the mitzvahs I've mentioned this before forgive me for repeating it when I lived in Chicago years ago there was a restaurant on Devon Avenue I think I think it's still there it's called The Bagel and the bagel was a trafe restaurant it was not Kosher but it was kosher Style kosher style restaurant so I remember walking by this was probably 1977 or 78. and there was a sign on the window on Shabbos that says we give a free glass of wine for every order of chocolate on chat on Saturday so I was thinking to myself I was more cynical in those days oh that's really great some guy remembers having children from his grandmother on Shabbos so he goes into the bagel he orders non-kosher cholans with non-kosher wine and pays money on Shabbos and eats and thinks he's having a Shabbos experience that's gastronomic Judaism you know so to speak it doesn't mean anything worthless superficial it's everything that's wrong about American Jewish identification that's not connected to Torah right okay I mean that's one way of looking at it and it's largely a true way of looking at it but it's not the whole story because you have this guy he sees challenge or he sees an advertisement for challenge wine he remembers that his grandmother grandfather did something on Shabbos and he wants to connect to that no Torah he doesn't know Mitzvahs he doesn't know anything he never learned anything but the fact that he wants to affirm himself as being Jewish that counts for something that is exactly what it means they kept their names they kept their language they kept their clothing these were not from tight things these were what you might call pejoratively ethnic identifications sure you've had this experience sometimes where uh you're in an airport like a Kennedy Airport and if you're wearing a kipa or citizer or a woman's dress cenia so people like come out of the woodwork and they say you know I'm Jewish too and I have to admit that usually irritates me because I'm usually doing something but I feel bad that it shouldn't irritate me somebody is saying you're my people I'm with you I'm with you you know so ethnic identification is not as worthless as we sometimes assume it is it's the beginning of redemption peoplehood is not the end idea of being Jewish the end idea is submission to God and acceptance of his Commandments but it is the foundational beginning so now let's go back to Yosef Yosef understands that when his brothers come to him this is the beginning of the Goddess the Godless is going to begin and Yosef understands that this Carlos and mitzrayim is going to be bitter that this scholarship is going to take us down to the 49th level of tumor and maybe the 50th and we're not going to survive but since it's yosef's mission in life to give us the survival tools Yosef cannot allow the golos to begin until he's sure that we have the foundation that will let us survive and if the foundation is Jewish peoplehood not changing the language not changing the names right which is Jewish peoplehood then he has to be sure that the brothers are one nation that you no longer have hatred you no longer have polarization you no longer have divisiveness he has to be sure that the brothers the juva because the refua The Cure must be there before the Maca before the illness begins so I'm really augmenting the barbinal meaning if this would have been an issue of a private chuba hey somebody hurt me I wouldn't be allowed to put them through the ringer to be sure they do chuva it's really none of my business they have an obligation to do truth it's not my obligation to make sure they do children but this is very different this is not a question of 10 guys did something bad to one guy this is a question of this is going to be the beginning of a Godless that will just that may destroy us have to be sure that the thing that will save us is already here before the goddess begins and that's Israel as we see from not changing your language not changing your name Etc therefore Yosef has to has to determine that there is no jealousy there is no hatred there is no animosity each brother is willing to give his life for the other brother the children of Leia are willing to sacrifice for the children of raqqa and the like now it's interesting that normally participaligash is read right after Hanukkah and typically it's read before the fast of a soribitavis now first of all I mentioned Rush limo Fisher who actually posits the lasora bataves may have been the day of mercury itself but whatever it is we think about the base of mikdash and when we think about the base of mikdash we think about the sins that cost destruction of the base I make this now everyone knows first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians because of the cardinal sins of idolatry and sexual immorality and murder right that we know but the second base I make touch was destroyed because of sinatrina the irrational groundless hatred that exists between Jews and the gemara and Yuma says hey come and see how bad sinatrina is the first temple that was destroyed for the worst of arrows how long did that Exile last only 70 years 70 years the second temple was built 70 years after the destruction of the first temple foreign was written more than a thousand years ago and even then the government had been so long and then we would just add 1300 more years to that that and you know unfortunately was very much prevalent among the Jewish people today not just religious secular but within all sorts of religious gradations and when we fast on the 10th of tables all of us have to think about what can we do what can I do to enable a rebuilding of the basement which is really symbolic of hashem's divine presence in the world and the best thing we could possibly do would be each person in his own way in his own level tries to take away some of the Sinatra that exists in call Israel so sashem hopefully the festivals may still be canceled because the basement may come before that we do have to fast may it be the last fast that we have to have so that's it thank you [Music] teach me yes [Music]