Insights on the Geula (Redemption)

TALES FOR THE SHABBOS TABLE

The Torah is a book of living, positive lessons in life. Every idea, indeed every word is filled with purpose and optimism. In fact it is possible to live with the reading of each day (each section is divided into seven portions).

But this week's portion doesn't seem to contain even one happy message only tragedies.

It begins with Josef the holy son of Jacob being unjustly sentenced to death by his own brothers then sold by them into foreign bondage and finally sentenced to life imprisonment in a festering Egyptian prison on false charges.

Unusual for the Torah, the portion even ends on a pessimistic note. "The king's toastmaster (imprisoned Josef's last hope for freedom) did not remember Josef and totally forgot him" (40:23).

What positive lesson can we learn from all this?

To understand here is a story:

Once upon a time there was a fabulously rich man named Mr. Farbes. But he was miserable.

He tried everything he could to sooth his misery; he went to doctors but they said he was completely healthy. He took up music, sports, hobbies, dancing went traveling even tried meditation but nothing seemed to help, he was bored and depressed.

With no other choice he went to a wise man for advice.

"Your problem" the wise man said "is that you never give charity. You live totally for yourself that's why you are miserable. If you want to be happy begin to help others."

Here was an idea he hadn't thought of! He would give charity and finally he would be free of melancholy! He left the wise man with a new hope.

But he discovered that it wasn't so simple. Giving away money was an entirely new world to him and he didn't know where to begin.

Most of the people that looked poor gave him the feeling that they really weren't. On the other hand he was certain that there must be many people that really needed money but didn't look it.

He couldn't just give to everyone; if he gave to undeserving people he would not have given charity at all. But on the other hand he had to give or he would go crazy. There must be some why to find out who is REALLY needy.

Suddenly he hit on an idea: He would give only to people that had lost all hope. THAT, he concluded, was real poverty.

So he put on his coat and began going around to places that unfortunates were found; hospitals, orphanages, jails, barrooms, slums but he had no success at all.

Everyone he spoke to had some hope in life. He met people with problems, diseases, debts, enemies, he met homeless, penniless, jobless, helpless but no hopeless.

He was getting desperate. He had to figure out a way to give money, and soon!

Then, one day as he was walking down some side street he heard moaning coming from the direction of the junk yard and he excitedly walked in that direction.

There sitting on a dung heap was a man covered with boils in ragged clothes moaning like Job.

"What happened to you?" Farbes asked in wide eyed anticipation... (This could be exactly what he was looking for!)

"Ayyyi, don't ask" the man replied rocking back and forth and holding his head in his hands. "I lost everything, everything!! Ooy! My money, my job, my house, friends, family; everything!! And now I got these boils!! Ayyyi!!"

"Tell me;" asked the rich man excitedly, "do you still have hope?"

"Hope?" he replied. "What do you mean hope?"

"You know", said the rich man, "hope that things will get better."

"Of course I have hope!" the poor man looked at him wide eyed and replied, "As long as I'm on the ground and the ground isn't on me I have hope. In the graveyard there's no hope! Go to the graveyard!"

Now Farbes was really desperate. Would he be doomed to a life of misery? Was there no way he could give money?

Suddenly it occurred to him... He would take the man's advice! He would go to the graveyard and put his money there!

He knew it was a long shot, and it wasn't exactly giving charity either. But at least it was giving! And for sure the money wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. And if it didn't work he could always dig it back up again and try somewhere else.

So that very night at midnight he took a sack of dollars and a shovel, stealthily snuck into the local cemetery, picked a grave at random, dug a hole, threw the money in, covered it up and left as secretively as he entered.

As soon as he got home he felt better. It was as though a stone had been lifted from his heart. It didn't make any sense but what did he care; finally he was happy! It worked!!

A year or two passed and Farbes almost forgot the graveyard incident but then as fate would have it, his wheel of fortune took a spin for the worse. Business just wasn't the same as it used to be. He made some bad decisions and small losses brought bigger ones. He was plagued with setback after setback until five years later he was actually approaching bankruptcy and desperately needed some available cash.

Suddenly he remembered the buried money.

It was his last hope. That night he once again furtively crept into the same graveyard carrying the same shovel and sack, found the grave where he had buried the money and began digging as quietly and quickly as possible in the eerie dim moonlight. A cold wind shook his bones as it whistled through the trees, he would really be glad to get out of here. Here, in another minute he would be...

"HANDS UP!" boomed the voice behind him. "Put 'em up an' keep 'em up! Police!"

Farbes' knees began shaking and he almost fell over from fright. " Now turn around slowly." The voice boomed again.

He turned to see a huge gun pointed at him with a policeman behind it. "Robbing the dead ehhh? How low can you get! pheh!" said the policeman as he handcuffed poor Farbes.

He tried answer but he was trembling so uncontrollably all he could say was "No... BBBut.. I just." In minutes he was on his way to jail.

A week later he was standing before the judge, a broken man. What once was a wealthy businessman was now a penniless, dingy criminal fresh from a fetid prison cell. The only comfort he had were the words of that man on the dung heap years ago "As long as I'm on the ground and the ground isn't on me I have hope."

The officer was testifying.

"Your honor, I caught him red handed. He was digging with a shovel, digging in the graveyard trying to steal from the dead. He even brought that bag to put the gold teeth and things he found into."

What do you have to say for yourself Mr. Farbes? The Judge turned to him.

"Your honor, it's not so. You see, years ago I buried some money there because I was looking for someone that had no hope. That is, I had to give charity because a Rabbi told me to and I was looking for someone.."
Farbes looked at the Judge to see if he what he was saying was making sense.

"Yes, continue" Said the Judge. "Or are you finished?"

"No! No!" Farbes continued. "Well, a man covered with boils told me to go to the graveyard. So I went there and buried the money and now I need it back again."

"Do you believe that?!" exclaimed the policeman in amazement and continued "Excuse me your honor, but. why that is the most crazy, confused lie I ever heard!"

"Yes, I believe him" Said the Judge emphatically "Release him, he's innocent!"

"What, your honor?!" said the policeman not believing his ears.

"I said release him. Release him immediately, please. "

As the bewildered policeman began opening the locks, the Judge turned to Farbes and asked. "Do you recognize me?"

Farbes tried but he couldn't figure out what the Judge was talking about. He stared and squinted, tilted his head here and there but with no luck.

"I'm the man you saw in the dump five years ago" he announced with a smile. I was the one who told you to go to the graveyard. That is how I know you're telling the truth! See, I told you to never give up hope!"

The story seems a bit far fetched. Or is it? In fact it's less fantastic than that of Josef. And they both teach the same message: The only way to really change the world for the good is by having trust in the Creator; and the deeper the trust, the greater the change.

In fact that is the purpose of Creation.

G-d purposely created the world in a way that it seems that He is far away. This week's story of Josef teaches us that even when it SEEMS that G-d is distant (or non-existent) it is only to arouse our trust ("Bitachon") in Him. And this Bitachon is a very valuable thing, perhaps the most valuable thing in the world.

There are two types of trust; first trust that even what seems bad is really somehow good (like a person trusts a doctor doing an operation).

But an even deeper trust is that G-d will make things even better than before. Not because we deserve it, (in fact even if we don't deserve it) but rather because the trust ITSELF will draw down G-d's blessing.

In other words the unusual tribulations that Josef had to bear were in order to arouse his unusual and infinite trust in G-d. And that very trust was what brought his miraculous release, rise to power, and eventual saving of the entire world from famine (as we will see in next week's section).

This is of utmost importance to us today. The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that Moshiach has arrived, all we have to do is open our eyes, it all depends on us, the only thing remaining it to welcome him, and every moment of our lives should be devoted only to this.

Yet when we look around we see the opposite. Jews in the Holy land are being murdered every day (May HaShem have mercy), anti-Semitism, assimilation and intermarriage are insanely on the rise. Moshiach seems infinitely far away.

But this week's Torah chapter teaches us that is precisely our trust and faith that will change the situation. And before we know it we will see...
Moshiach NOW!!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad Israel

Torah Online Site: http://www.ohrtmimim.org/torah

TALES FOR THE SHABBOS TABLE

This week we read in the Torah about the imprisonment of Yosef. We celebrate the Chassidic Holiday of the 19th of Kislev, (when Rebbe Shneur Zalman, the author of the Tanya and founder of Chabad was released from Czarist prison). And we prepare for the holiday of Chanukah.

Why was hardship and imprisonment necessary in these three instances? Why couldn't G-d have just made Yosef into a king, the Rebbe into a great chassidic leader, and the Jews into a joyous, light-producing people, without the troubles?

I'd like to answer this with a story:

A worried Chassid once came to the great Tzadik the Shpola Zeidi (Grandfather from Shpola) with a desperate request. He had been falsely accused of cheating the government, and stood a good chance of spending the rest of his life in jail. He begged the Rebbe to save him.

"Nu!" answered the holy tzadik "A month or so in prison isn't such a long time."

"Rebbe!" he cried "I'm innocent! I never stole anything in my life!" His eyes were wide in fear and he was wringing his hands in despair. "Rebbe, you don't know what prison is. I've heard stories! Even one day there will be the end of me!Please, please Rebbe. Can't you free me completely?" And he burst out in bitter tears.

"I want to tell you a story" The Rebbe replied when he was sure the Chassid had calmed down. "I know exactly what prison is. In fact, sometimes prison can be very good if you trust in HaShem. Just calm down and listen.

Many years ago I was in the middle of a journey and stopped for the night in an inn.

I got settled in my room and was learning some Talmud before going to bed, when I heard knock on my door. I opened it and it was the owner of the inn, with a religious Jew standing next to him. He asked if I minded sharing the room with this guest for the night.

It was already after midnight and I wanted to get back to my learning, and the fellow looked perfectly fine. Long white beard and everything. So without thinking much about it I agreed.

The Jew thanked me profusely, came in, put down his bags, prayed the evening prayer, and then, saying he was very tired, got into bed and went to sleep while I continued learning. After a while I went to sleep myself.

When I awoke in the morning his bed was already empty. He must have left before daybreak.

I began packing my bags when suddenly the door burst open and there stood the owner of the inn. But this time with two huge policemen and some other man with him. He was pointing at me and screaming "There! There he is officer!"

The police burst in like mad dogs. One pushed me back to the wall, the other opened my suitcase and turned it upside down on the bed while the man was furiously looking in every potential hiding place and corner."

I was astounded to say the least. "What are you looking for? What's going on here?" I asked innocently. "Just then, one of the policemen lifted the mattress of the other bed and yelled, "Hey! I think I found something here!""

"AHA! It's MINE! MY SPOON!" Shrieked the stranger that was with them.

"The police grabbed me, tied my hands, and began slapping and punching me while the man screamed and jumped around in the background.

"The robber! I knew it! I knew it! You can't trust those Jews! WHERE ARE THE REST OF MY THINGS?"

"It seems that the "nice" man that spent the night in my room had stolen this man's silverware the day before, and planted the spoon in my room hoping they would grab me and stop chasing him.

All I could do was pray to HaShem for help, and hope that somehow it was all for the best.

They bound me up like a calf, threw me in their wagon, and took me to prison. As soon as we arrived they made me a ten-minute trial. I was sentenced to five years imprisonment on the condition that I would tell them where the rest of the loot was hidden. I was shown to my cell; a large dismal stone room filled with other prisoners.

It didn't take long for me to find out what prison means. As soon as the guards left, ten criminals, more animal than human, approached me. They were huge and fearsome looking and who knows what hellish thoughts were running through their minds."

"Listen Jew. If you want to be one of us it will cost you. Fifty rubles and you are in, but you have to do what we say. If not, you'll regret it."

"I told him that I had no money, wasn't interested in being one of them, and in any case I trust in G-d, the creator of the heavens and earth, to do with me what He wants.

Before I could say another word they threw me to the floor, one held down my head, others my arms and legs, and another pulled out a long metal bar from under his shirt.

The one holding my head covered my mouth with a rag so I couldn't scream, and the executioner raised his arm, a strange smile on his lips.

Suddenly his face contorted in pain. His eyes bolted out in horror staring at the upraised bar in his hand and he let out a piercing scream"

"AAAAAhg....it's burning! AAAhh AAAaii help me, help!"

"The pipe had suddenly become red hot and he couldn't release it. His arm was paralyzed in mid air."

"HELLLLLLP! AAAAAAH!"

"The guards heard the noise and came running, but they couldn't figure out what to do, nor could his friends. They were all afraid to touch the blazing metal.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry" he pleaded, looking at me with beseeching eyes. "Make it stop burning! I'll leave you alone!AAAAAAAHH!!!"

"As soon as he said that, the pipe unexplainably fell from his hand and he fell unconscious to the ground. The guards took him to the hospital and I never saw him again.

As you can imagine, after that everyone left me alone. I spent the days and nights in prayer and repeating the Torah I knew by heart.

But I noticed that one of the prisoners kept staring at me. He was a young fellow. I thought he was a gypsy at first, but I eventually asked him and he told me he was a Jew.

He became an orphan at a young age and wandered around for a few years until he fell in with a group of gypsies. He was agile and clever, and it wasn't long before they revealed his potential as a horse thief.

They taught him to sneak into farms and steal, and he was very successful. In fact, he had a rosy future awaiting him, until one day he got caught by the police in the middle of a "job", and was tried and
sentenced to twenty years in prison.

He had no idea what it meant to be a Jew, and he never cared, until the episode with the pipe aroused his curiosity. We spoke for several days and eventually he agreed to put on Tefillin, and in a few weeks I taught him how to read Hebrew, and he even started reading from the siddur.

Then one night I had a very vivid dream. Elisha the Prophet appeared to me and said: "I'm returning tomorrow night to take you and the boy out. Just tell him to hold onto your belt and follow."

The next day I told the young man about my dream, and sure enough that night we were following Elisha out. It was miraculous; every door that he touched just swung open, and all the guards were sound asleep. We just walked out of the jail to freedom.

That young gypsy boy sat and learned Torah for several years and eventually became the rabbi of a large community."

"So it's not so bad if you go to jail for a month" concluded the Tzadik. "I see that you have what to do there."

This is the lesson of our section; sometimes the greatest spiritual treasures are buried in prison and in exile.

Just as diamonds and pearls are hidden in the ground and the sea, and can only be acquired by effort and self-sacrifice, so Yosef had to suffer years of imprisonment in order to reveal his true greatness, and eventually save the entire world from famine.

Similarly, just as an olive must be squeezed to release the oil hidden within it, so the Jews had to be oppressed by the Greeks in order to reveal the light of Chanukah hidden in each of them. (Which is the reason that lighting Chanukah candles is so widely observed, even today thousands of years later, even by the most "non-observant" and all of them in the MOST religious way. [The minimum requirement of the law is to light only one candle for each household. The religious (mehadrin) light one for each male in the household. And the MOST religious ("mehadrin min ha mehadrin") increase the number each night, and that is what everyone today does!]

Similarly the Baal Ha Tanya, in order to reveal the light of Moshiach contained in the teachings of Chassidut Chabad he had to suffer in prison.

In fact, the entire issue of Moshiach is one of breaking all barriers.
(As hinted at in the seemingly out-of-place story in this week's section, of Yehuda cohabiting with his daughter-in-law, and giving birth to "Peretz". This is brought for no other reason than Peretz - which means to break through - is the progenitor of King Dovid and eventually of Moshiach.)

The Lubavitch Rebbe says with certainty that we have finished the imprisonment. Two thousand years of exile has been more than enough.

Just like it was with Yosef, the Jews in the first Chanuka and the Baal Ha Tanya; that they were miraculously released with great miracles so should we all be with...
Moshiach NOW!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad Israel

Torah Online Site: http://www.ohrtmimim.org/torah

TALES FOR THE SHABBOS TABLE

This week’s Torah Section relates .the strange and tragic story of ten brothers, the righteous sons of our patriarch Yisroel, whose hatred wa*s so intense that it drove them to attempt the cold-blooded murder of their own seventeen-year-old brother.

What could have been the motivation for such a heinous crime? What would drive ten intelligent, G-d fearing, Jewish men to want to slaughter their innocent younger brother? The Torah does not try to hide the bewildering and ugly truth: “Yosef spoke badly of his brothers to their father (and nevertheless), Yisroel (their father) loved Yosef more than his brothers…and he made him a beautiful coat. And when the brothers saw that his father loved him more, they hated him.”

So they hated him for these three embarrassingly weak reasons: 1) He told his father bad things about them (which in this case happened to be a mitzvah!) 2) His father loved him more 3) His father gave him a nice coat!!

The first question we can ask is; why did Yisroel, his father, favor him when he knew it would cause him trouble?
[From this is even derived a law in the Talmud (Shabbos pg 10) (and a lesson in child psychology) that it is forbidden to favor one sibling over the other!]

Second; why didn’t Yisroel try to stop the hatred? Why didn’t he attempt to calm the storm? The Torah even tells us “His (Yosef’s) brothers hated him, and his father just watched and waited”!

Third; can it be that all of the ten holy sons of Jacob lost control? That
not even one would be a bit more calm and logical and try to assuage the hatred of the others?
(Although later on, Reuven did object to the death penalty but then it was too late)

But fourth and even more amazing is; why does the Torah tell us all this embarrassing information, and in such embarrassing detail?

Let us go straight to the answer, and then try to understand it:

The reason that Yosef’s brothers hated him to the point of murder was…because he was DIFFERENT.

In Hebrew it’s called Sinat Chinum, literally ‘hatred with no reason at all’

In fact, this was to be the root for all the unwarranted hatred within the Jewish people that would later cause the destruction of our Holy Temple and plague the Jewish people until this very day.

Now this is really a very deep thing: How can there be hatred for ‘no reason ’? Doesn’t everyone that hates someone else have some reason for doing so (unless, of course, he is completely insane)?. Perhaps it may be a wrong or a childish reason, but it is not ‘no reason at all’? What does it mean ‘no reason at all’?
The answer is, that Sinat Chinum means that you hate the person because he is different from you; because you don’t like the way that G-d made him.
That’s how it begins, with just a feeling of hatred even though the other fellow is no threat to you.

In other words, you have no real reason at all, you just hate him because he
exists and he is not you, and afterwards you find a reason. (I even know of one Rabbi that preached hatred against a certain group of Chassidic Jews for over twenty years until he found what he thought to be a good reason!)

But how can this apply in our case? The brothers of Yosef were all ‘Tzadikim ’ holy men?
Strangly enough that was exactly their problem; they couldn’t understand that Yosef was even more G-dly than they themselves.

The word Tzadik means more than just a holy, spiritual man, it implies a G-dly man, a person who is connected to the Creator Himself, and who is
concerned only with fulfilling the purpose of creation. Therefore the tzadik
is called ‘Yesod Olom’ “The foundation of the world”, because his work unifies and reveals G-d’s purpose in His world. This was hinted at in the dream of Yosef when he saw the ten brothers gathering stalks of grain in the field into bundles and their bundles bowed down to his. The separate stalks represent the disorganization and meaningless confusion of this world, and the bundles the brothers made represent the unity and meaning brought into the world by the tzadikim.
But Yosef was different and it angered his brothers. They knew that they were tzadikim and that the world depended on them. They reasoned that if Yosef is trying to make them bow and become negated to him, he must be a threat to the welfare of the world, and so they couldn’t bear the sight of him.

What they didn’t know was that Yosef was the first of a new level of Jew; Yosef was not just a Tzadik, he was a Rebbe, a King, and the forerunner to the Moshiach. He would be the first Jew to provide spiritually and physically for ALL the Jewish people (and for all the non-Jews of world as well) as he did later in Egypt.

His job was to unify all the work of all the tzadkim, and unify not just parts of creation -in the world- as they did, but the entire creation –the entire world. This is the meaning of the end of that same dream when all the ten bundles made by the brothers bowed down to Yosef’s bundle.

This is also alluded to in the first meeting between Yosef and his brothers thirteen years later after he had been saved from death and prison, and was now a King in Egypt. The Torah relates, apparently superfluously, that:
“Yosef recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him”.
It is no wonder that they didn’t recognize him; he had become a King, and a full-bearded, middle-aged man. But the Torah is telling us here an additional thing; that they could not recognize or even relate to the spiritual level that he was on, they couldn’t imagine that a person could be as devoted to G-d as Yosef obviously was, and still be so involved in the world as the ruler of Egypt had to be. The brothers as well as the forefathers in order to concentrate on serving The Creator and maintain their level of devotion, had to be shepherds, separated from the disturbances of the world.
In fact not only Yosef , but almost all the prophets and leaders of the Jewish people after him suffered from the same problem; although they looked and acted more or less like every other holy person, but really they were something different altogether, and because they were different the people hated them.
That was Korach’s argument against Moshe “Everyone is holy, why do you act superior”. So it was with Abshalom and Dovid’s other enemies; they could not accept that Dovid was G-d’s appointed. In fact Dovid even wrote a book dealing with the problem, the name of the book is “T’hillim” ‘Psalms’. In other words King Dovid is telling us that there is no cure for ‘Sinat Chinom ’ other than to pray to G-d for mercy and divine intervention, because such
hatred lies at the essence of human nature.

This, then, is why Yaakov didn’t try to dissuade his sons from their hatred; he knew that it couldn’t help. In fact he himself did not fully understand the highness of Yosef.
But he did understand enough to give him the mantle of rulership, the ‘beautiful coat’.

This, then, is the reason that their hatred was sparked by Yosef’s new coat; the coat accentuated his uniqueness and made him even more different than he already was.

A story, which I think illustrates this, is told about the successor of the Baal-Shem- Tov; the Magid (Rabbi Dov Ber) of Mezeritch:
When the Baal Shem departed this world his son took over the leadership of the Chassidim. After a year his father came to him in a dream and requested that he give the leadership to the Magid. But when the Magid himself heard of this he refused the position, saying that all the Chassidim of the Baal Shem were tzadikim and he was certainly no different. The Chassidim then produced the coat of the Baal Shem and told him to wear it. The story goes that the moment he put it on he became totally elevated and transformed into another person, something higher than a tzadik, he was now in the place ofself.

Just as Yosef was the first Jew to meet the problem of causeless hatred, the Moshiach will be the last and one of his most difficult tasks will be to eradicate it.

(That is one of the reasons that the books of Chassidus Chabad are called ‘Torat Ha Moshiach’, because they educate toward loving every Jew, the opposite of and the cure for Sinat Chinum)

In fact this problem is so severe that although religious Jews pray for the Moshiach scores of times every day nevertheless it will be nothing short of a miracle if they want him when he comes, because he will be too different.
As the first Rebbe of Chabad, after being imprisoned and nearly executed for the same reasons as Yosef, said to one of his disappointed enemies (a very religious Jew, as were all his opposition) “The Moshiach that you want will never come, and the Moshiach that will come, you won’t want.”

Therefore, (get ready for this one), the Moshiach might have to actually come from the ‘dead’! (Also see Rashi’s commentary near the very end of the Book of Daniel 12: 12)
This unusual idea is explained in one of the volumes of the encyclopedic work ‘Sdai Chemed’. There the author, Rabbi Chiam Midini, explains the passage in the Gemora “Sanhedren” which discusses the apparently
contradicting prophetic statements one stating that the Moshiach will come riding on a donkey (zacharia ch. 9) and the other (Daniel ch.7) that he will be floating on the clouds. He explains something like this:
If the generation is not meritorious then the Moshiach will come on a donkey i.e. from the living, (‘donkey’ –chamor- is the same word for ‘physical’) and people won’t accept him because they won’t recognize his true miraculous
nature, therefore they are called ‘not meritorious’.
But if the generation is lucky, the Moshiach will come on ‘clouds’ i.e. he will come from the ‘dead’, and then everyone will have no choice but to follow him.

This also explains another wondrous thing about Yosef; he didn’t do any miracles! You would think that as a Biblical character and a representative of G-d he should have thrown in a few miracles to impress his Egyptian captors, like showing the power of the L-rd and making the prison disappear or miraculously feeding the hungry masses in the years of famine.
But no, he only explained dreams. First his own, then those of his fellow prisoners and finally those of Pharaoh.
The reason for this is that miracles don’t really cause people to change themselves; they still look at the world like human beings i.e. interested mainly in themselves. We see, for instance, that after Moshe did all the ten plagues and the miracles in the desert; the manna etc., the people didn’ t really change much, if at all.
What Yosef, as the forerunner of Moshiach, wanted to do was something really different, to make people change themselves, to look at the world from the Creator’s point of view.

The work of the Moshiach is to explain dreams. The entire period of ‘exile’ is like a dream; confused reality. In a dream one can be in two places, or two people, or alive and dead simultaneously. The Moshiach will come to wake everyone up to their true identities and their true abilities. He will teach (‘force’, if you will) mankind to look at themselves not from their own confused standpoint but from the viewpoint of their Creator, just as Yosef clarified the dreams of Pharaoh in order to utilize the potential in Egypt and save the entire world.

This is what the Zohar means when it says that the Moshiach will make the Tzadikim do ‘Tshuva’ (repent); namely that even the most righteous of Jews will realize that he has to completely change his consciousness and attitude in order to grasp what a Jew really is. That is why Yosef did not taket angry with his brothers for acting naturally; he realized that his was the beginning of the work of Moshiach, to broaden and renew the entire consciousness of the Jewish people, and through them that of all mankind, in order to make the entire world into heaven on earth with
the arrival of the Moshiach NOW.

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad Israel

back to top