REALIZE THE BLESSING

by Rabbi Label Lam

 

 

 

Gather and listen, sons of Yaakov, and listen to Israel, your father. Reuven, you are my firstborn, my strength and the first of my might. [You should have been] superior in rank and superior in power. [You have] the restlessness of water; [therefore,] you shall not have superiority, for you ascended upon your father's couch; then you profaned [Him Who] ascended upon my bed. Shimon and Levi are brothers; stolen instruments are their weapons. Let my soul not enter their counsel; my honor, you shall not join their assembly, for in their wrath they killed a man, and with their will they hamstrung a bull. Cursed be their wrath for it is mighty, and their anger because it is harsh. I will separate them throughout Yaakov, and I will scatter them throughout Israel. (Breishis 49: 2-7)

These verses in the Torah are known as “Birkas Yaakov” where Yaakov blessed his children before he left this world. The only problem is that when reading through the blessings, the first three sound more like curses than blessings. How are these harsh words considered as part of “Birkas Yaakov”? That blessing room must have been pretty uncomfortable for those few.

A colleague recently shared with me an incident that happened to him while driving on his way to the school. It’s a long commute for him from Lakewood to Brooklyn and he spends hours on the highway each way. Rabbi G was just beginning his journey in Lakewood. He was driving down a one lane side street that allows for cars to go 45 MPH.

He was driving that fast and suddenly a car catches up and starts honking and flashing its lights, as if to say, “Hurry up buddy!” I was a little surprised to hear but he told me that he decided to slow down. There was no room for the car behind him to pass. The car behind didn’t get his lesson. Just the opposite! They honked more aggressively and the tension between the two cars-drivers carried on like this until he decided to stop completely but the honking and flashing did not. He drove on.

A mile or so later the street opened to two lanes and the car that had been harassing him pulled up next to him and the window rolled down and so he rolled down his window to meet his oppressor face to face. When he saw who it was, he was astonished and mystified. He said that it was a Beis Yaakov girl.

That was not the profile of the serial road rage personality type. It seemed she had something to say now. With a few simple hand gestures and some faint words he got her message before she sped off. “Your tire is very low in the back and might soon be flat. You need to get it fixed!” He honked as an acknowledgment of “thank you” and soon he was at a gas station plugging the hole in his tire.

He was left thinking that had he gotten onto the highway his problems would have been much worse -even dangerous. She came like an angel with a practical message that saved him a boat load of troubles. In the end he was extremely grateful.

Harry Truman, who dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World  War  II,  had  a nickname, “Give’m hell Harry!” He disputed the title. He said, “I never gave anyone hell! I only said the truth, and it felt like hell!” Yaakov’s message could not have been easy to listen to at that moment but in the end, it was a blessing. His loving and fatherly intent was not to hurt them but rather to save them from greater troubles along the long highway of history.

Now it is their task to fix what needs fixing and realize the blessing.

 

 

 

 

JOSEPH'S MESSAGE

by Rabbi Berel Wein

 

 

 

 

The conclusion of the book of Bereshith sets the stage for all of the remaining history of the Jewish people. Jacob and his family have settled in the land of Egypt, and live under the most favorable of circumstances. Their son and brother, Joseph, is the de facto ruler of the country that has provided them with prosperity. However, Joseph himself warns them that the situation is only temporary and that there are troubled days ahead.

He tells them that they will leave the land of Egypt, whether they wish to or not, and that when they leave they should remember him and take his bones with them, to be buried in the land of Israel, the home from which he was so brutally taken when he was about 17 years old.

I would imagine that the family of Jacob, when hearing these predictions of Joseph, were amazed, and probably were unable to fathom how their situation could change so drastically from greatness and wealth to slavery and persecution.

The Jewish people are by nature an optimistic people. We always believe that somehow things will turn out well, no matter how bleak the present circumstances may appear to be. Yet, only by remembering Joseph's words would the eventual redemption from Egyptian bondage be realized. Joseph's warnings would accompany them with his remains through the 40-year sojourn in the desert of Sinai. It would remind them to be aware of the historical dangers they would always have to face.

The conditions under which Jews have lived in exile and in the diaspora for millennia have always varied and fluctuated. But the basic message was that we were we were not really at home. We continually ignored warning signs, and somehow believed that things would get better. Ignoring the warnings of Joseph, many times in our history we doomed ourselves to tragedy and disaster.

If Joseph, the viceroy of Egypt, warned us that Egypt is not our home, then that message could not have been clearer to Jews in the coming millennia. But as the story of Egypt and the Jews unfolds in the book of Shemot, the majority of Jews forgot Joseph's message. And it remained only for Moshe himself to bring Joseph's bones out if Egypt for eventual burial in the Land of Israel.

The Torah will record for us that later Egyptian pharaohs and the Egyptian nation forgot about Joseph and his great accomplishments. The ironic tragedy is that much of the Jewish people as well forgot about Joseph and his message to them. In the annals of Jewish history, this forgetfulness on the part of Jews has often been repeated – and always with dire consequences. The story of Joseph

and of the Jewish settlement in Egypt provides the prototype for all future Jewish history. We always need to ask ourselves what Joseph would have to say about our current Jewish world. This is worthy of contemplation.

Shabbat shalom

 

THE STRENGTH OF TRUTH

by Rabbi Berel Wein

 

 

 

The book of Bereshith is completed in this week's Torah reading. The story of the emergence of first one person and then an entire family as being the spearhead of monotheistic belief in a pagan world is an exciting but difficult one.

At so many turns in the events described in the Torah the idea of monotheism and the few who championed its cause could have died at birth. Yet somehow the idea and the people advancing it survived and grew until, over the ages, it became the defining idea in the major religions of civilization.

Truth somehow survived, unable to be crushed by the great and mighty forces always aligned    against it. Our patriarch Yaakov tells the Pharaoh that "my years are relatively few and very difficult ones." But Yaakov is not only speaking for himself in this statement. He speaks for the Jewish people as a whole in all of its generations and ages. And he also speaks for all those in the world who still value truth over falseness, accuracy over populism, reality over current political correctness and imposed intellectual conformity.

The Midrash taught us that the seal of G-d, so to speak, is truth. The book of Bereshith begins with truth inscribed in its opening words, the last letter of these first three words of the Torah spelling the Hebrew word emet - truth. Falseness requires publicity, media, excuses and greater falsehoods to cover and justify the original untruth.

In Yiddish there is a phrase that says: "The best lie is the truth." Truth needs no follow-up. It stands on its own for all eternity.

Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence stated that truths are self-evident. If we merely contemplate, even on a superficial level, the events as described in the book of Bereshith,   we must stand back in awe to realize the power of truth and the tenacity of individuals who pursue it and live by it.

How easy and understandable it would have been for any of our patriarchs and matriarchs to have become disappointed and disillusioned by the events of their lives. Yet their ultimate faith, that truth will survive and triumph, dominates the entire narrative of this first book of the Torah. Bereshith sets the pattern for everything that will follow.

All of the Torah is a search for and vindication of truth. God's revelation at Sinai was an aid in this

quest for truth, otherwise so many people could not have arrived at that moment of truth all together. But falseness, human nature, greed and apathy continually whittle away at the idea of truth as the centerpiece of human endeavor.

The rabbis taught us that the acts of the patriarchs, which are the main story of the book of Bereshith, guide us for all later generations. This Shabbat we will all rise and say "chazak" - be strong - at the conclusion of the Torah reading. The never-ending pursuit of truth requires strength of   purpose and will. May we really have the strength of purpose and belief to "be strong."

Shabat shalom.

Rabbi Berel Wein Rabbi Berel Wein- Jewish historian, author and international lecturer offers a complete selection of CDs, audio tapes, video tapes, DVDs, and books on Jewish history at www.rabbiwein.com