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Vayechi And The Queen Of England
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What does the queen of England have to do with Parshah Vayechi? Listen to find out
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One of the most precious moments of the
week occurs every Friday night at the
Shabbas table when many fathers get up
and give to their sons and they lean
forward and they place their hands on
their son's head and they say
they lovingly tell their sons that
Hashem should make them like a and ever
wonder for a second why we tell our sons
to be specifically like a fry and why
don't we tell them to be like Ruvian and
Shim or Le'Vy and Yehuda or Yahar and
Zulen? Why out of all the illustrious do
we choose to bless our kids to be like
Ephraim and Manasha who by the way we
know absolutely nothing about the answer
generally given is that there's a
fundamental difference between Ephraim
and Manasha and the rest of the Ephraim
and Manasha were not born they became
the other sons grew up in a home
enveloped in holiness and they grew up
with gigantic spiritual figures like
Yakovitzk towering over them where they
grew up in the shadow of their
great-grandfather Avam and the famous
Sha bever and grew up in Manhattan, in
Miami, in Los Angeles. They grew up in
Egypt. They grew up in exile alone. They
grew up as the lonely Jews in a sea of
Egyptian immorality. They grew up in an
environment where you had to choose to
be good because the standard was bad.
And grow up, they did. They fought and
they climbed and they persevered, they
not only made it through alive, they
climbed to be on the level of a So
when we bless our children, we know that
they may not have a father like Jacob or
a grandfather like Yeetsk or Aram, but
we tell them that we know deep inside
they have the ability to be like a Fry
and Manasha. They have that same
fighting spirit deep within them. So
that no matter what the world offers,
they can choose good. They can soar the
same way a Frymanasha sword. And here's
the amazing part that when we start
choosing Hashem more, we are literally
ensuring the survival of the Jewish
people. Some people make the mistake in
thinking that the Jewish people were
just randomly se selected by Hashem to
be the chosen people. And it's only
because he chose and continues to choose
us are we still around long after every
other civilization has disappeared.
People often say the Jewish people were
chosen by Hashem. And all along that's
true. It's also dangerously incomplete
because if you read Tanakh honestly, you
discover something unsettling. Hashem
doesn't choose us unconditionally. He
chooses us when we choose him. That's
not a slogan. That's a pattern of Jewish
history. Wasn't chosen because he was
born holy or genetically special. The
puzz says it explicitly.
Test after test, loneliness after
loneliness, Abraham chose Hashem in a
world that had absolutely no interest in
God. Then and only then did Hashem say,
"This is the man. From him I will build
a nation." And that formula never
changes. Init the Tyra tells us
something shocking. Most Jews didn't
leave. They were comfortable. They were
assimilated. They chose Egypt. Only the
ones who cried out, who actively chose
Hashem were redeemed. Redemption didn't
come because of ancestry. It came
because of a decision. We live Egypt and
we immediately get attacked by a Malik.
So what does the Torah say? That when
Mosha's hands were raised, we won. When
they were dropped, we lost. So asked the
obvious question, Mosha's hands are
fighting the war. What's going on here?
And the answer is chilling. When Jews
look upward and choose Hashem, they
rise. When they stop, they fall. Same
story with the snakes in the desert.
When we were suffering from a plague and
Moshe erects a snake, the snake didn't
heal. What matters was whether Clyra
lifted their eyes and shows us Hashem
again. This isn't coincidence. It's a
system over and over again in safer
shim. We read the same sentence. The
Jewish people continue to do what is
evil in the eyes of Hashem, which most
of the time did not mean violent sin. It
meant drifting and forgetting and
getting comfortable. And what happens
next? Hashem removes his protection from
us. We get subjugated. We cry out. We
return. And only then does salvation
come. 10 entire disappear from history.
Not because of murder, not because of
immorality. The Gumar says it was
because they chased pleasure and comfort
and had no interest in Tyra. They didn't
rebel. They just stopped choosing
Hashem. So he stopped choosing them.
Pim. We almost got annihilated. Why?
Because we bowed to something else. And
the only thing that reversed that decree
was fasting and crying and recommitting
ourselves to Hashem. So if you want to
know Jewish history in one sentence,
it's this. Whenever we choose Hashem, he
chooses us. Whenever we don't, he steps
back. There's no autopilot Judaism.
There's no inherited protection. There's
no spiritual cruise control. All there
is is the constant conscious decision of
Jews around the world of choosing
Hashem. And here's the part that should
make us uncomfortable.
Agra reward is according to the tsar the
difficulty. Most people completely
misunderstand what that means. They
think it's a pain meter like one guy
learns an hour comfortably another guy
learns an hour with a headache. So
Hashem's up there saying ah with a
headache extraar as if Judaism is some
cosmic punch card system where suffering
earns bonus points. That's not what the
pain itself isn't the currency. The
choice is when serving Hashem is easy.
You have a supportive family. You live
in a from neighborhood. You have social
approval. That's beautiful. It's truly
beautiful. But that choice doesn't carry
the same historical weight because the
Jew who chooses Hashem when it's hard,
when it cost him comfort or his
reputation, his relationships, his life
of ease, is doing something much bigger
than enduring pain. He is becoming the
engine that keeps the Jewish people
alive. Jewish survival has always
depended on Jews choosing Hashem in
environments that push the other way.
every generation we exist in is because
people chose Hashem when it was hard. So
when Kazal say that reward is according
to the difficulty, they don't mean
Hashem rewards suffering. They mean
Hashem rewards impact. And since the
success and the continuity of the Jewish
people rests on those difficult choices,
Hashem rewards those people accordingly.
Not because it hurt more, but because
they carried more.
That's why say
not because are better people but
because they had to fight harder
currents to get to proper aem and
winning that fight strengthened all of
a doesn't mean congratulations you
suffered. It means the harder it was to
choose Hashem the more that choice
protected the Jewish people.
And that brings us right back to the
core truth of our history. We don't
survive because Hashem chose us
randomly. We survive because we keep
choosing him. Especially when it's hard.
And every time we do, he chooses us
right back. Now listen to this. There's
a line we say every time we go out to
say that should bother us if we're
paying attention. We say
just like I can dance in front of you
and yet I can't touch you. So to all my
enemies shouldn't be able to touch me.
And we say that line three times. Now
stop for a second. If the point we're
trying to make is simply that Hashem is
untouchable and therefore his people are
untouchable, then just say that. Why are
we talking about dancing? Why is that?
Why not just say just like no one can
touch Hashem so no one can touch us. Why
bring in dancing? What does that have to
do with anything? The answer is that
dancing is everything. Dancing isn't
just decoration. It's the antidote. Our
enemies don't disappear when we hide or
when we freeze, when we go numb. They
don't disappear when Judaism becomes dry
and technical and joyless and
mechanical. They disappear when Jews
choose Hashem with fire. Dancing means
we're not just loyal. We're alive. We're
not just observants. We're passionate.
We're not just surviving, we're
celebrating. And history proves this
again and again. When Judaism turns into
a burden, we weaken. When Judaism
becomes something we dance for, we
become untouchable. So we don't say you
can't touch Hashem. So therefore, you
can't our enemies can't touch us. That
would make survival automatic. We say
dancing because only when we can cling
to Hashem with joy and motion and
passion does he step in and say you're
untouchable. Protection doesn't come
from being connected. It comes from
being connected and alive. That's the
difference between surviving our enemies
and outliving them. Now listen to this
idea. In the history of Jewish
lullabies, there is one that reigns
supreme. There is one that has been sung
since forever. And we can accurately
label it the mother of all Jewish
lullabies. It is the song of Hamalik
Hagalo. It is those soft words Yakov
said to Yoseph's sons Ephra and Manasha
when he blessed them. Now here's what's
odd. The end of the PK is peculiar. It
concludes
which translates to mean you should
multiply like fish within the land. Now
here's one question. Why is Jacob
comparing us to fish? Didn't Hashem
previously tell a we were going to be
like stars in sand? Why now all of a
sudden the blessing is to be like fish?
And secondly, what does it mean that we
should be like fish within the land?
Last time I checked, fish don't live on
land. So she gives an explanation that
doesn't just teach us, it reveals. He
says, "When we bless our children, we
are not giving them comfort. We are
giving them clarity. We are telling them
that the same way a person could stand
at the edge of the ocean and you look
out and you see nothing. Just endless
blue. It's flat. It's still. It's
ordinary. You would never imagine that
just beneath the surface is a whole
world exploding with color. Entire
civilizations of life and movement and
harmony and beauty beyond words. And all
of it is completely invisible to someone
standing by the edge." Cesar Pur, that's
us. That's what we are telling our
children. We are telling them that the
world will look at you and see nothing.
They will see nothing special. They will
see restrictions. They will see old
books. They will see strange clothing
and ancient laws. And they will have
absolutely no idea of the breathtaking
purity hidden beneath the surface. They
will have no idea of the harmony and the
peace and the magic hidden beneath the
surface. When we say we are blessing our
children with this truth that the life
of Tyra is the greatest life, the purest
life, the most dignified, the most
harmonious and holy way a human being
can live on this earth. And history
tested that claim. We were forced into
ghettos. We were loaded into cattle
cars. We were left to rot in DP camps.
But if you could open a crack in the
ghetto wall, just a crack, you know what
you would see? You would see purity. You
would see holiness. You'd see integrity.
You'd see love. You'd see honesty and
kindness. You'd see virtually zero
domestic abuse. You'd see virtually zero
domestic violence or crime. You'd see
the light of a shabas candle. You'd see
the unparalleled holiness of Yum Kipper.
You'd see the happiness of Purim. You'd
see the joy of sukus. You'd see the
sweetest children on the face of the
earth. And you'd see all of that through
a crack in the ghetto wall. Oh,
completely unbeknownst to the outside
world. We are like fish in the sea. We
live, we move, we build lives of depth
and meaning. And the world swims above
us completely, entirely unaware of the
beauty beneath its feet. They don't see
us. They don't understand us. They never
have. And that's okay because fish don't
need applause from the shore. They just
need to know that they belong to the
ocean. And our job is to make sure our
children never forget how deep their
waters really are. We bless our children
that they should not be deterred by
those who live on land and can't see our
world within the oceans's blue. We stand
over our children's crib and we hope and
we cry and we dream and we pray that
they too come to the recognition that a
life of Tyra is the best life and that
anyone who tells them otherwise is
merely living on land. Here's a story.
Margaret Thatcher, commonly known as the
iron lady, was the longest serving prime
minister in Britain's history. She had a
weekly meeting with the queen of England
in which they would discuss various
political happenings from around the
country and around the world. One week,
Margaret walks into the queen's inner
chamber and she freezes. She looked at
the queen, she looked at herself, she
looked at the queen, she looked at
herself, she looked back at the queen,
she looked back at herself and she
realizes
that she had just committed one of the
most egregious sins one could commit in
the British Empire. She was wearing the
same dress as the queen and she's
mortified and she sat down and she
sweated her way through the meeting and
afterwards she quickly ran home and
shook out a pen and paper and she wrote
out a letter to the queen apologizing
profusely for her deep disrespect of the
kingship.
A few days later, she gets a knock on
her door and a messenger of the queen
was holding a letter and she'd opened it
up and it read, "Dear Miss Thatcher, no
need to apologize, no need to feel sorry
for the queen does not notice what the
simpleans are wearing." You hear that? A
queen doesn't take her cues from the
noise around her. She doesn't
recalibrate her identity based on trends
or applause or criticism. She walks the
path that is uniquely hers and could
care less what goes on around her. And
that's our takeaway. We don't live the
way we live because it's easy. We don't
live this way because it's popular. We
live this way because Hashem chose this
path for us and because it is the best
path a human being can take. We live
this way because we are
we are kings and we don't care what you
think about us. Yeah, the world will
make a lot of noise. It will mock us. It
will pressure. It will tell us we're
outdated and extreme and missing out.
But a king doesn't argue with the crowd.
A queen doesn't apologize for wearing
her crown. She knows who she is. She
knows where she's going. And she knows
she doesn't need to be noticed by the
simpletons. Because when you're royalty,
you know who you are. You stop
apologizing for existing. You don't
chase the noise. You rise above it.
You've just experienced another Torah
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