Vayigash - Shlishi - #3 - Rabbi Mordechai Schiffman - Cognitive Reframing Before Reconciliation

For the third aliyah of paras, I would like to share with you an insight from Rabbi Jonathan Saxs. The verse tells us that Yoseph kissed all of his brothers and wept with them. And after that, his brothers spoke to him. Beforehand, they weren't able to speak. He cries with them and then all of a sudden they're able to talk. What changed in between? Rabbi Saxs wrote 10 books on para. Covenant and Conversation has one volume to each para as well as themed essays, lessons in leadership, essays on ethics, studies and spirituality, I believe, and Judaism's life-changing ideas. Rabbi Saxs was writing a running commentary on Kumish when he passed away in 2020. The goal of the Kumsh was for him to write excerpts on different ideas within the Kumsh. Since he passed away, Corin, who just released the Ksh had to excerpt and edit ideas from those essay from those para books to try to encapsulate or by Sax's ideas. One of my favorite essays Rabbi Sax writes is on paras where he talks about Yoseph as the first psychotherapist. And Corin while editing this new volume put this insight of paras on Yoseph as the first psychotherapist within our draamas of an afterwards. And I would like to read to you what Rabbi Sax writes here. He writes that Yoseph has reframed his entire past. He no longer sees himself as a man wronged by his brothers. He has come to see himself as a man charged with a life-saving mission by God. Everything that has happened to him was necessary so that he could achieve his purpose in life to save an entire region from starvation during a famine and to provide a safe haven for his family. This single act of reframing allows Yoseph to live without a burning sense of anger and injustice. It transforms the negative energies of feelings about the past into focused attention on the future. It enables him to be reconciled with his brothers. Yseph without knowing it has become the precursor of one of the greatest movements in psychotherapy in the modern world. He has shown the power of reframing. We cannot change the past, but by changing the way we think about the past, we can change the future. It was through Yoseph's ability to refrain that allowed him to be honest and vulnerable with his brothers and show his authentic emotions to them, gaining their trust. And only after that were the brothers able to see Yoseph's ability to refrain were they ready to speak and continue the conversations. Yoseph's Yoseph's emotional maturity disarmed the brother's shame and embarrassment and enabled dialogue and repair.