Rabbi Breitowitz "Living With The Parsha" Parshat Vayechi

I'm sorry I'm a little a little late hope your week is going well uh this week of course uh we are finishing the first of the five kashim we are finishing the book of braus and really the single largest story in the book of braas is of course the story of Yosef and his brothers it takes up uh three whole partiot and part of a fourth so it's worthwhile to reflect a little bit on the ultimate meaning of this story you know there are certain questions when you learn you know you ask the question in fifth grade and you ask the question when you're 50 and 60 70 80 meaning certain questions frankly just never get resolved we Ponder them our entire lives and we don't come to a final resolution but of course that's part of the the idea of learning Torah as the T-shirt saying says uh it's not the uh destination is the journey and uh very very often uh part of being a Jew means you never really come to final answers everybody asks how could yosef's Brothers sell yoseph and I'll give you an answer but you'll still say you know next year you'll ask the same question I'll ask the same question and how could yoseph behave that way too his brothers so in spite of knowing ahead of time that almost anything we say is going to leave it as kind of a te a question how could it happen but we'll Endeavor to talk a little bit about uh the perspective but first I want to deal with an unrelated very beautiful thought thatal was a great Roa who combined uh what we call L learning andic warmth an unusual combination a little bit offered you know there's a A pasuk in the prophet Amos that talks about the Messianic era and it says behold days are coming that the plower will meet up with the Harvester meaning the simple meaning of the verse is the Harvest will be so abundant that they will still be harvesting last Summer's crop by the time the rainy season comes and they're going to have to plow but there's a medish that says the following symbolic language KES is a reference to yehud who is called a plower ker is a reference to yoseph who is called a harvester and note the word this is actually from last week par not vanash they will come near that's the same word Vash a love yehudah and therefore is alluding to the famous pivotal meeting between yose and Yehuda now number one if he's referring to the Messianic era why is he connecting it to the meeting of Yos and Yehuda and number two why would Yehuda get the appalation of Kes the plower and Yosef gets the designation of the Harvester so rala brings in the name of the AER the AER was the Sak who died at the beginning of the 20th century he was the son of law of the cut the very enigmatic kutari uh which is how that deserves a whole Shear uh by itself but the Sak rebi also was a great great posek and he wrote an exceptionally uh accepted book on the laws of chabas the Ed tow so one could imagine that his mindset is he's very attune remember K are two of the 39as of chabas so he wants to use the definition of those M to explain why Yehuda is thees and Y is the the definition of plowing in terms of shabas is not only using a plow but it's softening up the land to make it able to receive a seed l is the language of the gar softening up the land the definition of ker is M you uproot something from its source of growth now symbolically mud dirt ground refers toi physicality materialism attachment to lust yoseph is called a coair because when Yosef is subjected to Temptation sexual Temptation he simply just says like NY Reagan used to say just says no he's M he uproots himself from from Tava and the like when Yehuda is subject to being tempted by a prostitute or a woman he thought was a prostitute it happened to be his daughter-in-law but he didn't know that Tamar Yehuda succumbs Yehuda fails Yehuda is but Yehuda teaches us how to do CH Yehuda teaches us how to accept responsibility when Tamar was not going to reveal with whom she was pregnant because as the gamar says it is better to go to a fiery death then to humiliate someone publicly and all she said was by indirection the the man that gave me this money belt and this staff and Yehuda said she is more righteous than I so the AIA then goes on and makes a very fundamental observation it's interesting that the permanent Mal of Israel was given to sh jhuda David H and mashia the mashiah will come from David H now now quite logically one might have thought yosf was very qu qualified for the role number one yoseph had the executive experience in Mah and number two yoseph had the spiritual experience of really being subject to Temptations at all extremes yoseph really represents all of the Polar extreme experiences a Jew can have in the exile he was a lowly slave he was a prisoner who languished in jail and at the same time he had the Nissan of wealth and honor and Prestige and c and Yosef remained faithful to Hashem in all of those circumstances so why was Yosef not chosen to be the ultimate king and the answer is because a king is a role model A King is a a person we look to for how to live our own lives in an ideal sense granted there were plenty of bad kings in the tanak we're talking about the ideal of a m and sometimes the person who is so perfect that he does not succumb to temptation is not necessarily the person from whom I can learn but I learn from people who make mistakes people who fail people who are tempted people who go through the same issues that I go through and therefore I can grow from them so as a result therefore the Mal was given to yud and not to okay that that's a general point of thees and the but now let's get back to try to just see a basic just a basic explanation of the trib's behavior and and yose's Behavior now the basic explanation let's first start with the brothers how could the brothers number one they wanted to kill Yos first of all they wanted to kill him that got modified okay we're not going to kill him we will just sell him into slavery how could that be I mean you know I I always say that you know people in arac one of the issues that are is always discussed in the philosophy classes is what types of proofs do you have that the Torah is a Divine document of Revelation maybe it was written by human beings so I'm not I'm not going to get into Phil those philosophical arguments I just want to give you a Layman's proof if we would be writing our own history we would not put in any of these stories there we would not put in because the truth of the matter is we would whitewash our history we wouldn't talk about Yakov taking the bless from ASF we wouldn't talk about the brother sing Yos what would we WR about well it would be much much more boring story so to speak uh but to me one of the biggest proofs that comes from God is because we would never write our history that particular way so there is a thought that is offered by the sorno Raj Soro was one of the great we shown him he lived in the Italian Renaissance and the suppor not makes the following argument the brothers saw a certain pattern that was being developed here when there was Abraham there was the son and the ish son the ishma son was banished and the Covenant was made with y y had a Yakov and an ASV and Yakov gets the blessings and ASV also gets banished to mount SE goes to mount SE and the Divine Covenant is carried through with Yakov now they see a PO potential repetition of that pattern because on one hand yov loves Rael more than Leia whatever that means to be sure and on the and in addition to that the the yose is bringing wasan Hara about various sins that the brothers may be doing so the brothers see that ysf is creating a wedge this is the sorno that will be Marik them from Yakov now keep in mind this is not simply a matter of 10 Brothers being alienated from their father this affects their whole future their whole Destiny their whole purpose in the world to create a holy nation that will accept eventually hashem's Torah that will be a beacon of godliness in the world and therefore they considered yoseph worse than someone that is threatening their physical life they considered yoseph a rode someone that is destroying their whole spiritual existence and K actually say he who causes me to sin he who alienates me from God is even worse than one who kills me physically and therefore they came to the Judgment that Yosef was a Roda who could even be killed but then obviously if we could disable him by less than killing him such as selling him into slavery we have to do that course again the law of R is back in the news as you know I mean that was the um the conviction of the for manslaughter for shooting the uh the terrorist and uh Hally of course it's obvious that you can kill a terrorist who is in the middle of committing terrorist acts because he is AEV the question becomes you know once the terrorist is immobilized uh now again the's version of the story and I I have no idea is that he thought the person had there was a weapon Within Reach and therefore he was still a clear and present danger if that would be the case the law of rodef would continue to apply if on the other hand the person uh was no longer capable of a terrorist action then at that point he could only be punished for his past actions and that would require the decision of a bit dinner or Court an individual cannot go around punishing even murderers for the crimes that they committed this go lot down but again that that actually wouldn't apply so much uh today so it is a very difficult question meaning to say under if indeed the terrorist was immobilized he would no longer have a shame of a of what do you do on the other hand uh guess I guess for on the one hand this does have an impact on combat morale and uh there may a little bit of a feeling that uh the country or the court system is not supporting The Bravery of theim so may be a way out although it's it's an illogical way out but it might be a defao way out is uh convict the guy as was done and then get him a pardon uh which might be done as well and that way we've we've expressed what the proper legal and even halakic standard is but then we understand under the stress of the moment individuals cannot always be fully responsible for the decisions that they make in other words there's a difference between condemning the act and condemning the actor who you know we really can't put ourselves in the shoes of of the stress of the moment and and and and the like but okay be it as it may though uh going back to this the sorno actually said says that the brothers considered ysf to be a now this is a very very uh problematical assertion because even though it's true that kazal say he who causes me to sin is worse than the person who kills me as far as I know if somebody is trying to entice me away from Torah I'm not allowed to take out my gun and kill him I mean we don't we don't treat that person as a r formally and of course it's also very clear is it not that in spite of all of this justification the sale of Yosef is a very very Grievous sin that kind of left an indelible mark on the Jewish people you know both on yum kipor and on Tisha we read a PE we read a poem about the 10 Martyrs who were killed during the second temple period including RAB AA actually you know either during the temple or after the temple and by the way contrary to what you might think the 10 Martyrs were not killed at the same time because just looking at their names it spans around 150 years some of the martyrs were during the BET mikdash and some like RAB AKA was after the Bara Revolt is a number of years later but poetically it was woven as if they were all killed at the same time but if you remember the narrative the the Tish above one is different than the Y Kipper one actually some different names it's not the same story but at least the Kipper version which is a bit more detailed uh it is recorded that the 10 Martyrs were put to death as a Heavenly atonement for the 10 tribes who sold yoseph as the Torah says if you kidnap a person and you sell him you are of and the 10ug Mal are connected did the 10 as it were so obviously was a but Theo is telling us a very interesting subtlety which is something that we have to be aware of in the mind of the brothers at least initially it was not an a because they gave themselves they convinced themselves that Hally whatever the meant in those days Hally there was a rifa and they can do what they're doing so they go to sleep at night and they say well too bad we had to do it but we had to do it but in reality what the Torah is saying is that the reason they perceived the to be that way was because of jealousy and envy it wasn't a conscious thing I don't like this guy so I'm going to I'm going to sell him into slavery but rather the jealousy and envy changes your perception of reality so that you literally convince yourself this is the right thing to do when in point of fact it is an expression of Vengeance and hate meaning the sporno was telling us the brothers were better than simply acting consciously out of jealousy and hate they acted because they had a logical process that compelled them to this result but the logic was dictated by the emotion the emotion causes you to see things a certain way which may or may not correspond to the truth and this really is a fundamental muser that we have to think about in in our own lives that often we convince ourselves of the rectitude of our decisions when in fact the reason we see things a certain way RAB has a very cute thought experiment that he Sometimes using says you know especially people you know this is the time of year where we have visiting college students who come for a week or two weeks because it's uh still the intercession in the United States so uh they challenge lot they they say oh you know I don't know if I if I if I only knew the Torah is from God I would I would accept it but you know I really don't know so riller said okay what if we had 613 Commandments that would say you can do what you want you can eat what you want it's a mitzvah to have a good time he says somehow he feels you wouldn't be so bothered with the inadequacies of the philosophical proof meaning to say it's not the objective problem that is bothering you rather you're you're kind of inventing or thinking about these objective problems because the Torah is making certain demands that are not as pleasant to you as the alternative would be uh if if the Torah would have enshrined the Playboy ethic we'd have far fewer questions on and the like but okay this is the and again it's an interesting food for thought I think the primary lesson of this is that it really goes back and reflects on how we make decisions and how often we convince ourselves that we're seeing things objectively when in point of fact there may be a fundamental bias in how we view things but now let's look at look let's look at it from yosef's perspective now yose y uh behaves in a way perhaps you could understand it you know after all yoseph is just defia very resentful or might be to his brothers and he wants to you know show them what it's like to be in danger what it's like to be imprisoned he recognizes them right away but he doesn't reveal himself he is the tough leader who accuses them of being a spy and after hearing that there's one son left at home which of course he knew anyway he says bring him to me or you get no more food and when they tell him that's going to kill our father the actual nightmare that Yakov was afraid of comes to pass bamin is framed with the gobl of Ys and bamin is going to lose his freedom so what's going on here even if ysph is angry at his brothers is he angry at his father is he angry at Benjamin at B certainly certainly not and yet look at look at who's being who's suffering here it's also Yakov aino it's also B so there are three explanations I'm going to share with you relatively quickly explanation number one is the ramban which is actually the most famous explanation but it's going to have a lot of problems the ramban understands that yoseph has a Divine mandate so he perceives to ensure that his dreams are fulfilled Yosef as a 17-year-old had two dreams that indicated that his brothers and his father and mother would bow down and acknowledge him as a king he had the dream of the sheaves bowing down the 11 sheep and he has a dream of the 11 stars and the Sun and the Moon the son is the father Yakov the Moon is the mother and although in a literal sense it couldn't be yosef's actual mother because Rael had already died but nevertheless after Rael died bilha that was rael's concubine was the substitute mother I was going to say surrogate mother but now you can't use that term because that was coopted by is so we can't just like gay used to mean happy remember that no longer Okay so we've lost that word uh so uh billah is the substitute mother the surrogate mother the stepmother whatever it would be uh now yoseph sees this as a Divine mandate if yoseph were to reveal himself to his brothers at the outset there would be a reunion they would hug they would kiss they would be friends but they have not yet acknowledged him as a king therefore he cannot reveal himself so they prostrate themselves but there's only 10 of them he has to have bamin as well because theot were 11 so he brings B he demands that they bring Benyamin that's act two right act one is making the brothers be subordinate to him act two is getting Benyamin to be subordinate to him but then there's an act three but the play didn't get complete the idea of framing Benyamin and taking Benyamin as a prisoner was designed to get Yakov down to MIT not yet knowing that yoseph is his son and yoseph was hoping that Yakov would beg for binyamin's life and that would have been the ramban says the final fulfillment of yose dreams and at that point yose would have revealed himself because the play would be over what happened was the ran says yoseph did not complete his own self-defined mission because by virtue of yehuda's m nees to take yamin's place yose broke down and therefore the final fulfillment of his dream did not quite happen but it is pointed out that when Yakov summons Yosef this week to tell him don't bury me in Nan bury me in in ER Israel it does say that Yakov bowed down to Yosef in gratitude so that was the final step now this is what the ramban says that the whole behavior of yoseph was to orchestrate the Fulfillment of his halot the abarbanel barel again is again a very very famous biblical commentator uh many of you probably know the barel was also the finance minister of Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and this was during the Spanish Inquisition and uh although every Jew had to either convert to Catholicism or leave the aranel because he was the money man uh Ferdinand was willing to give him a one-man exception AB barbanel was permitted to remain in Spain and even keep be a Torah observant Jew but the rabinal did not accept the offer he went uh in 1492 he went uh with everybody else then he went to Portugal then he went to Italy Etc uh it's interesting that the Rael was the Elder was the was the leader of the Jews in Spain and among the thousands of people who left Spain on the 9th of a 1492 was a four-year-old boy with his mother and that four-year-old boy was roseo the one who eventually wrote the went first to Turkey and then to svat so it's interesting thear now is at the head of the procession in his 70s and of Yosef K which is recorded was at towards the tail end of the procession as a four-year-old boy but the barbanel and by fact barbanel was the one who financed who who ranged the financing for Columbus's expedition to what turned out to be the new world although they thought they were going to India uh kind of a shortcut to India but be it as it may as uh gifted a fin aner as the Reel was his true claim to fame are his commentaries on the Kish and on and some as well and the abarbanel questions the ramban's thesis very strongly even if we assume that yoseph had the right to make a determination that these dreams are a form of Prophecy which perhaps we couldn't do but let's say let's say yosea has the credentials to determine this as a prophecy a prophecy is not a command per se God did not say thou shalt Endeavor to be a king God is simply showing him what the future will hold now the ends don't justify the means if you feel that God has given you a prophecy to be a king does that give you the right to lie cheat hurt your parents hurt your innocent brother even take revenge against the brothers who H you there barbanel says there's a real ends versus means type of problem here meaning if God wants you to be king you will be king one way or the other now granted you shouldn't do anything to frustrate that role but where is your header it's like a Mitzvah where is your header to do sinful actions that are immoral and unethical because you have a dream so because of this the rinel does not accept ramban's premise and again there's also something particularly humiliating I think about the concept that yose he had to bring Yakov down to beg yose to free benam that that that in particular leaves a bit of a bad taste in our mouth that that was part of yosef's original plan that even Yakov needed to be humiliated before I reveal myself to him theel does not like ramban's thesis barbanel offers an alternative explanation and he focuses on a passage of the Rambis in Hil cha right there a very famous passage myis talks about you know person does Chua I regret my past I resolve to be better in the future but how does a person know how do you know when your Chua is complete or not complete what is the test of Chu so the rambam says you really never know unless and until you are confronted with the identical situation that caused you to fail and you have the same atar the same strength so not you know so if you're 95 years old and you couldn't do this in any way that's not the same but you have the strength and you have the opportunity and you turn turn yourself down you you turn it down now what's uh the bad news about that is you're actually not allowed to test that preposition meaning let's imagine that every time a person went to a certain neighborhood he always did something wrong he took drugs he saw a prostitute right he just couldn't help it the neighborhood attracted him now he does chuva he never really knows as if his chuva is complete until he goes back to that same neighborhood and doesn't succumb but Hally he's not allowed to go back to that same neighborhood because what gives him the right to make the assumption that he is so strong and alcoholic we can talk about an alcoholic an alcoholic does CH whether through a 12ep program or whatever it is now ideally if the Chua was totally complete he should be able to go into a bar watch other people drink and just say no again Nancy Reagan and in fact if there's the highest level of chuva he should even be able to take a drink and then stop after one then he's really changed but as every alcoholic will tell you that is the most dangerous thing to do in the world don't do it don't go into the bar certainly don't take a drink so in a sense we are faded to go through life never really knowing if our truth is complete unless you know we just fell into a situation then we might know but you're not allowed to seek out that that's called putting yourself in a Nan and there p have it's good to have self-esteem it's good to have self-confidence but don't have total trust in yourself until the very very last moment but this is so says the now Ys is not interested in orchestrating his dreams but he is interested in ensuring that his brothers have done Chua for what they did now what was the sin of the brothers the sin of the brothers was jealousy and hate because of the favoritism that Yakov showed rael's child over Leia's children and the other children and this was a favoritism that graded at them probably I would venture to say it was also connected to the idea that they felt their mother was being rejected as it wasn't just that they weren't treated as good but I'm I'm sure there was a certain element of feeling for their mother who in many ways Leia's sense of rejection is pretty strong pretty palpable all the children she names are connect at least the first four children are connected to that sense oh God has seen my suffering and now my husband will love me God has heard my pain now my husband will be with me you get this recurring sense that although I cannot believe even though the Torah says and yov you know hated like I cannot believe that this was hate in the way we understand it just maybe in a relative sense but there is no question that Leia felt a very very strong sense of this P so the brothers have a tremendous jealousy for the favoritism that Yakov showed Ben Ben Rael over B but now they must do chuva and the chuva would be have they overcome that hatred are they willing not only to love the child of Rael but are they willing to sacrifice their own life so that Yakov will have the child of Rael that he loves the most that's bamin so ysf indeed intended he actually wanted in other words instead of looking at yehuda's speech as interfering with yose's plan right the ran says that cut it short because yose wanted Jakob to come it's the other way around this is exactly what Joseph wanted to see will the leader of Leia's children stand up and say I will give my life I will give my freedom so that this child will go back to his father and therefore ysph revealed himself see according to barbanel ysep did not reveal himself prematurely exactly what needed to be accomplished was accomplished and that is the barbanel views yose's Behavior as a facilitation of the CH that the brothers must undergo but even on the abarbanel there is a question in fact one might ask and the barbanel the very same question the barbanel asked and the ran is this really y's business the brothers committed an awful sin a sin of jealousy a sin of sin they must do chuva to be sure and indeed they must ask yosef's forgiveness at some point but does that give Yosef the dispensation I kind of say you're going to do chuva even if I have to kill you I mean you can't you can't as it were uh say I'm going to do immoral unethical cruel behaviors to make you do Chua including hurting my father and including hurting my innocent brother but I'm going to get you guys to do chuva once again you're back to this fundamental problem is it yosef's business to force a Chua on to his brothers if that involves all of this negative behavior again so here we need to expand inel a little bit that is what is going on here is not simply 10 people did something bad to one person if it would simply be a matter of you 10 people grievously hurt me and therefore I'm going to manipulate you to see if you did chuba we would indeed raise a legitimate question what gives Yosef the right to do that but there's a much more Cosmic process that's going on here Yosef is contemplating the fundamental improbability of his life Ys yosef's life trajectory makes no sense rationally the very fact that he was sold into slavery by his Brethren really makes no sense I mean that's not how is that going to happen anyway the fact that he's taken to Egypt he starts off as a slave he rises to be the head of a household he languishes in prison for 12 years he becomes through the talent of dream interpretation the most powerful person maybe short of parro in m and in some ways he was more powerful than power he was actually kind of uh like you know like Mike Pence is going to be ready the United States government much more than than Donald Trump Pro probably and the like which you know might be a good thing but anyway uh so and and of course yoseph is not only a the PowerHouse of Egypt he's really the PowerHouse of the whole region because you see that there's a famine in aricel as well other countries it doesn't make sense if if if you would pitch this as a Hollywood script as Ira's richest story The Producer would say not realistic enough but it happened and if it happened there has to and then of course Joseph also connects it to his dreams so there must be a purpose here there must be a mission there must be a reason why God put me on yoseph tells his brothers that he says you intended to hurt and harm me but everything you intended turned into a vehicle of good which by the way raises intriguing intriguing theological questions about the interaction between Free Will and a so-called divine plan because one thing is for sure the brothers had free will to exercise a decision to soos or not that is a moral decision and in that we say everything is in the hands of Heaven accept the decision to obey God in a good way or a bad way and yet and yet and yet along with the free will to sell y or not sell Ys God had a plan that Joseph would rise to malus what would have happened had they not decided so what how would God in other words that wouldn't have changed the end result it would just have to be achieved another way this is a fascinating minuette meaning Hashem has a predetermined plan but how that plan gets carried out depends on billions trillions of decisions of individual autonomous actors and R soduk of Lublin develops the very controversial theme in fact it's so controversial that there are passages in RB sok's Forum that were edited out because they were thought to be too explosive uh for the Orthodox Jewish world was a a great GTO in which SED even says by sins you're not supposed to do sins but if L you did it must have been God's will on some level because nothing would have happened had it not been God's Will and therefore there is something that comes out of it again one needs to think about what that means but yoseph is looking I have a purpose there's a reason why I'm here now the truth of the matter is each of us should look at our life to try to identify why we're here but with in yose's case it was so obvious that there was something unusual about his life life that there was a Divine reason why why why he's placed here and this is how Yosef defined his purpose yose understands that the galut that was prophesied to abah now in that prophecy Egypt was not mentioned Egypt was not mentioned it could have been anywhere but yoseph now understands this is where it starts this is a GTH and yoseph understands that this galut is going to be bitter oppressive destructive and it is yosef's divine mandate to prepare the future nation of Israel with all that it needs to be able to withstand the destructive features of of the galut now you see this in many aspects of yosef's Life first of all in galut there are two types of dangers that we Face we Face the dangers of persecution Affliction poverty oppression yosea was a slave he was a prisoner we also face another Nissan in countries of affluence in Western civilizations we face what is perhaps even a greater Nissan of affluence power Prestige when there is power power corrupts as Lord Acton said right power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely power empowers and enables assimilation so yoseph encapsulates in his life the extremes of poverty and deprivation with the Other Extreme of power and and wealth and even in the middle of the most decadent culture in the world mitan he preserves his moral compass that is an eternal lesson for us a role model so to speak surviving G no matter which n we have the N of persecution bar used to say uh it was easier to be from in Siberia than Suburbia and of course he had lived well actually he never lived in Suburbia but okay but he lived in Siberia and uh the not uh I guess I guess Crown height is not Suburbia but whatever it is but but the general point he made is that sometimes it is easier to serve Hashem under persecution conditions than it is under affluence and that's what the Torah itself says the Torah itself warns us by you will come to ER Israel you'll be successful and you will reject God you will kick out of so yosef's life shows us those extremes but here's a further point we know that the Jewish people remained enslaved in mitam for 210 years actually actually the actual enslavement was was less than 100 years but from the time Yakov came to M until we left m is 210 years we know that during that time our sages teach us there was actually tremendous assimilation in some ways most of the Jews except for the tribe of Ley were Idol worshippers most most of the Jews except for the tribe of Ley did not practice Brit mea four fifths of the Jews died in the Mak of and even the one fifth that survived we are told this is from the Aral it's a well-known teaching but it's not in the gar it's this is a teaching of the that everybody has heard we were on the 49th level of impurity there is only 50 levels once you hit Level 50 you're gone you're irredeemable we were at level 49 and the Aral says when the Torah says we didn't have time to let our dough rise it isn't S that's why we have to bake matah and not have bread and it only takes 18 minutes for the D to rise up to be the says it wasn't parro only that was kicking us out it was Hashem basically saying get out now if you wait another five minutes you're going to hit Level 50 now I don't even know what that means exactly but if they would have stayed another minute longer it's level 50 get out so we were and that's the one that's the one fifth that survived the four fifth that didn't survive they had hit Level 50 already so we weren't not we were not in a great shape we were not in good spiritual condition the gumar says in s and the medish give slightly different list that in spite of the fact that we were so lowly we had certain to him certain merits that enabled our Redemption we didn't change our names we didn't change our language we spoke hes according to one version of the med we didn't intermar we remained with Jewish women we didn't speak against each other which actually means we didn't turn informers to the Egyptians to get advantage that know even R even in the Holocaust there were occasional cases of Jews informing on other Jews again they thought they would save their lives unfortunately usually it didn't help them either but that was not done in m and that was the basis for Redemption now let's think about it for a moment obviously the Jews in mitan were not from in any meaningful sense if they were worshiping Idols they were worshiping other gods they were not practicing the religion of Abra isak and yob so what's the big deal that he has a Hebrew name and speaks Hebrew I mean you have some guy in a bar in Tel Aviv who uh you know doesn't keep anything can't doesn't even say shay Isel and he wears a a gold chain with the m David and his name Rafi so that's somebody worthy of redemption the answer is yeah as a matter of fact certainly it is not the end all and it's not the purpose it c m was clearly in order that we should receive hashem's Torah and submit to the will of God that's why I remember during the 1970s when there used to be the demonstrations on behalf of the Soviet Jews the Jews in the former Soviet Union so all the federations had a big sign in front of every show let my people go now first of all that's not even an accurate translation shal says send my people okay whatever it is but the point is they always left out the end of the says send forth my people so they will serve me right they left out that part so certainly the purpose of is to serve Hashem but that Redemption could not take place unless there was a sense of of what are these indicators we kept our Jewish names we kept we spoke lashes we didn't intermar we didn't speak lashan these were not from K it's not that they learned daily and they didn't speak these are what you might pejoratively call ethnic identification I looked at my fellow Jew and I said these are my people these are my family I rejoice in their Joys I suffer in their sufferings I don't know Torah I don't know mitzvot I worship idols even but I identify myself as this is my nation that is the beginning not the end but that is the beginning of redemption Redemption comes or Redemption is made possible only when there is an in which you identify with the fate of the Jewish people you don't try to escape it you become part of it that's why in many many ways with all of the religious and philosophical questions one could raise about the political Zionist Enterprise going back to Theodor and we can you know talk about that and you know controversies arise to this very day but the one thing which it does have very very definitely is a sense of identification with the Jewish Nation it may not have had the Yuni so it may not have been the end result of what God wanted but it did represent the root from which Redemption would come with without that without that we would have hit the 50th level we would have been irredeemable now the a Isel didn't bring us to a very high level it just get kept us at 49 and a half in Sinking but that is what kept us above the quicks without that there would have been nothing so now let's go back to yoseph if yos sa understands that it is only and a sense of Jewish peoplehood that will enable us to survive the Egyptian Exile and if Yosef understands that it's his god-given job task in life to give us the tools to survive that Exile then quite literally yoseph cannot allow the exile to begin the Exile begins when yakob comes that's the beginning the galot cannot begin until Yosef has ensured that the Rua is there before the Maka and therefore going back to thean now if the issue of the 10 Brothers was simply an issue of 10 people did something bad to one person it may not have been yose's business to do all this but y cannot allow a gut to begin if there's still a vestage of the because that would mean we're tainted from the beginning and then it might become a cancer that God forbid would lead us to the shun the 50th J and therefore Ys has to determine ahead of time that the has been eradicated by the selflessness of Yehuda and at that point Yosef says okay now I can reveal myself now Yakov can come down now the gut can begin because we now have the mechanism by which we will be able to survive this go and not descend into Shon right so this is really an elaboration of the barbanel but looking at it in terms of a global Cosmic process instead of U the specific grievances that one person has against against 10 people now the truth of the matter is that the Von is an interesting con the V go and said you know you know we talk about four Goot four Exiles they are Babylonian exile which is lasted 70 years and they destroyed the first betam mikdash then we have the Persian Exile which according to our chronology is very short that's the story of porm then we have the period of Greek rule onas then we have the long much longer than all of the GLI together of Rome gut Rome is considered to be descendant from asov and although the Roman Empire is long gone but number one the Roman Empire is said to have been taken over by Christianity and western civilization and we are still in the galut ad and other midashim speak about a fifth galut the G of the and you have to reconcile that with notion of the four Goot it's been suggested that galut Isel is not a distinct galut because after all most of us are not ruled by Ismael but rather it refers to the interaction of and which is the clash between Islam and Western Civilization so it's not a separate galut it is the final component of the last galut so in the p in the in the right so I'm sure all of you know and notice that each stanza is devoted to a different galut we have the galut B and the galut and the gut Yan and the last stanza he's asking Hashem to redeem us from the gut of uh but there's also a stanza besides the first general stanza Mur there's a stanza about right that's the now is not described as a go is a preal because we were not yet living in erel as a nation but the Von says MIT is the Prototype of all G meaning to say what happened in MIT in different aspects reflects what will happen later in a much more intense and prolonged way and therefore if indeed the way we emerged from it and we didn't hit Level 50 is only because we overcame and we had Isel so too The Liberation from the last gut will require that same thing and this is obvious because say the second bet mikdash was destroyed because of and as Rook used to say it will only be rebuilt when we have that's a very very interesting point you know U Josephus who of course was a Jew ysep m not the Y was a Jewish man who was a Jewish leader of a military Brigade who surrendered to the Romans for various reasons and is he Benedict Arnold is he not the jury is still out exactly about Josephus but Josephus was an eyewitness from the Roman side to the destruction of the temple and the whole War the whole war against Rome and he wrote about it and he's not 100% reliable with this because obviously he you know he's writing it under the guidance under the uh under the uh support and tutelage of Titus the emperor himself so he couldn't be too better so Titus is painted in a little bit more positive light than the rabbi sources portray him but there's one interesting thing that he quotes Titus as saying and I suspect it may have the ring of Truth and that is at some point he says Titus was musing whether he should destroy the temple so you know it's a beautiful building maybe I maybe I shouldn't destroy it and then Titus is quoted as saying you know if I just wait around long enough maybe I don't have to do anything because the Jews will just destroy it themselves with all of their infighting and Josephus actually describes that the Rival factions in y the zealots versus other groups they were shooting arrows against each other in the BET mikdash and the kohanim were crawling under the arrows to bring the Corb imagine this in the BET M itself we imagine there would be gunshot from two sides of Jews that are fighting so some of what we see today is uh you know not new unfortunately on the other hand it's also not not old meaning we still have it and I think the lesson of Y and the lesson of the 49th level of impurity teaches us only with in a sense of being identified with is we have go with one one little anecdote you know I myself I lived in Chicago years ago and uh there used to be well there is there is in Chicago Devon Avenue if you know Chicago now Devon Avenue used to be a totally Jewish street now it's mainly Indian uh the Jewish neighborhood moved a little a little North but in those days everything on D was a Jewish store so I remember uh on Dan Avenue there was a kosher style delicatess kosher style meaning it was tra it was was not Kosher called the bagel and I remember once walking after a show walking past the bagel which was open on shabas and there was a sign that said uh for you know Saturday we will give you know cholent and a glass of wine for every order so as a Shiva student and I walked by and I kind of you know in my heart I mocked it I laughed at it I said oh that's a wonderful thing trafe wine number one right non poer wine probably because TR CH somebody comes in on shabas does business handles money eats tray but they're going to have wine where they could are they going to say Kish but it reminds them of kidish in the show or Kish at buban 80s and schol his gastronomic Judaism it reminds them of uh whatever it is something they had at their onset you know 50 years ago so my reaction was instinctively no stupid foolish trivial the typical preoccupation with superficial symbols of Jewish experience that have no transcendental meaning but you know as I get older I see more and more some meaning to those types of things because what does the person the person doesn't keep kosher doesn't keep Sabbath probably doesn't go to show except maybe three days a year maybe two days a year maybe one day a year part of yum Kipper but he wants to connect somehow there's an inco yearning in his heart to be connected to Jewish history to be connected to Jewish food I mean that means something too and that is the type of stirring that enabled our forefathers to be redeemed in M the sense of wanting to be connected to a Jewish people is it enough surely not is it the purpose of the Jewish people of course not but is it a beginning it is a beginning and if it is a beginning it has some value it has some meaning it has some purpose and I cannot look as scance at a Jew that wants to connect that way because there's something in there in a sh that says I want to publicly somebody wears a mug div all sorts of things I want to you know I mean it irritates me a lot of times walking I so everybody's Jewish it's not a problem but let's say you know you're in a place doesn't have a lot of Jews so people walk by you and say hey I'm a Jew too you know and you know I always find it kind of irritating you why are you bothering me you know but uh okay but that's that's me that's that's a problem I mean in reality the fact that the person wants to connect on whatever level actually says something and that is how we got out of the train and that is how we will get out of the bitter goas that we're still in so you'll have a good week and a good show