Showing posts with the label parshas vayieshev
Show all

Posts

Image

Parshas Vayeshev - Repentance and Exile

Parshas Vayeshev seems to start out following a very familiar narrative. The good brother and the bad ones. A father who doesn't quite seem to know what's going and sibling rivalry that escalates into a conflict between good and evil and will serve to define a nation. And yet, unlike Yishmael and Esav, all of the brothers remain as the founders of the Jewish Nation. Why is that? Once the brothers have kidnapped and sold Yosef into slavery, shouldn't they have been cast out as a lost cause the way that Esav and Yishmael were? How is that reconciliation proved possible here and not in the past? To start with, it helps to look at what's missing. G-d. None of the brothers mention G-d in Parshas Vayeshev at all. Nor does Yosef mention G-d until he refuses the demand of Potiphar's wife and at the very end where he is given the opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh's servants. After Yehuda has masterminded the sale of Yosef, both brothers go into exi...
Read more

Parshas Vayeishev - A Light in the Darkness

The conjunction of Parshas Vayeishev and Chanukah features two sets of brothers, the sons of Leah and the Macabees. And both also feature something that was thought to be hopelessly lost, being found again. Parshas Vayeishev begins with Vayeishev Yaakov Baaretz Megurei Aviv וַיֵּשֶׁב יַעֲקֹב, בְּאֶרֶץ מְגוּרֵי אָבִיו--בְּאֶרֶץ, כְּנָעַן., Yaakov wanted to dwell in the land where his fathers had sojourned. While his fathers had only sojourned there, Yaakov wanted to dwell there, which implies permanence. The famous Rashi mentions that Tzaddikim wish to dwell in peace, but G-d asks rhetorically why they are not satisfied with the rest of their afterlife, to want it here and now in this world. There are two elements at work here. First Yaakov wanted to live permanently in the land, yet the second half half of the sentence informs us, Ba'aretz Caanan, that it was still the land of Caanan, not the land of Israel. It was not yet a place where Israel could live permanently, only sojourn. ...
Read more