Parashat Vayieshev opens with a new chapter in the life of our ancestors: While Yaakov finally “settles” (the meaning of “vayieshev”, and he settles”) in the land of his fathers, the story of Yosef emerges.
Rachel’s first son, stirring up the jealousy of his brothers, will be sold into slavery, and will soon find himself at the bottom of the pitt, literally and symbolically: in prison in Egypt.
How can we not think, while writing these lines, of those who are there today, so close to Egypt, our brothers and sisters bnei Israel (children of Israel), whom the envy of the peoples definitely does not spare. May the Place protect them.
In his commentary this week, the Sfat Emet, inviting Rashi, describes the father, Yaakov, as the “fire,” and the son, Yosef, as the “flame,” and reminds us;
אש בלא להבה אינו שולט מרחוק
“A fire without a flame does not impact from afar.”
The flame must be able to embody the energy of the fire, and must manifest itself in all places, in order to illuminate.
From there the Hasidic master draws the meaning of Yosef's exile in Egypt. It was necessary for the flame to go and embody the fire elsewhere in the world.
This is no less than the message of Hanukkah: to light a flame from the inside so that it can be seen from the outside.
I am writing these lines from La Rochelle, a small town in the West of France, where I am preparing to spend Shabbat with my mother.
As we cycled around during our grocery shopping tour, we passed an old Protestant temple with a seagull on top of it under the blue sky. I couldn’t help but think, ‘How much efforts do human beings make in order to talk to God!’
And my second thought was: How profound is the influence of Torah, when I think of where Christianity, so widespread in the world, came from! To think of the influence of this little people so hated, generation after generation, but whose light, through their thought, their message of resilience, their commitment to ethics, extends more than any other over the entire earth, although it is often expressed in an invisible, denied or unthought-of way, reminds me why we are here. Why Joseph went down to Egypt. For better or for worse, we have something to give.
If only to help the world today, which really seems in full descent into its own abyss of ideological madness, to help the world wake up back into critical thinking, thinking complexity, true resistance to collective insanity- what the minority has always been there to remind the majority. What Jews stand for.
Even if sometimes that begins with our own descents.
May we find strength in our own lights, and may we remember, like Yossef, that our own dreams can help others.
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