Shnayim Yomi - Miketz - Sh'vi'i - #7 - Rabbi Mordechai Kalatzsky - Forward from Struggle

Before this happened Joseph hurried. He started crying. I want to share with you something. Joseph is a personality that cries the most in the Torah. He cries most probably in 10 different instances. It's true his mother cried all the time but that's one time. He's crying and crying and crying and crying. Why is he crying so much? And he also says many times. It wasn't you he told the brothers. It was Hashem. The first time you find forgiveness in the Torah. Is through Joseph and his brothers. And the Torah is telling you there are two key factors to forgiveness. Number one is empathy. Now of course you have to validate your feelings and do it in a healthy way. But it's empathy to realize the other person. Maybe he's broken. Maybe he's struggling. To have compassion. To cry. He cried for Reuben and Shimon and Levi and all the brothers are going through. When they said why is Hashem doing this to us? To cry for what Benjamin must have went through. To have a heart. That's there for everyone else. If you really know that the other person is also in pain or is going through something it will be easier to forgive them. And number two is that even though I went through all this positive reframing. I know you wanted it to be the route. But Hashem wanted it to be the top. It's a much longer discussion. You're welcome to reach out to me. At [email protected]. But every person's trauma and struggle when they were younger Okay, I can't say blanket. I'm not a professional in that way. But whatever struggle you went through in your life is what gave you your awesomeness today. People who are bullied can actually now be sensitive. Can see the good in others. Can realize how to take in criticism and become better. Potentially. Again, I'm not every person is unique. Whatever your struggle was that usually can be drawn out to your greatest strength today right now as an adult were developed because of the struggle when I was younger. And it doesn't mean you wanted it and doesn't mean you enjoyed it. But it does mean that no for some reason I needed to go through this. If a person has empathy and positive reframing you could achieve forgiveness cuz forgiveness allows that albatross on my shoulders to be taken off. Because holding on to resentment and being sad and being angry it weighs so much on me. The other person might not even know about it. It's really just me holding on to it and it and it limits my life. I don't know about you but it does it for me. And if I could free myself from that heaviness and that weight of the resentment and the frustrations and the anger and the sadness and the pain and the suffering I live a new existence. Hashem should give us that power. To be able to be free. To forgive. To see the positive reframing in a way that validates us and allows us to move forward lighter, happier, with empathy, with connection and with closeness. To internalize all the lessons of these of this parsha. Amen.