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Friday Night
The “temperature”
drops significantly from the end of last week’s parsha to the
beginning of this one. Last week ended with Yosef appeasing his brothers,
and spending time with his grandchildren. There was such a feeling of
hope because Yosef had promised his brothers that God would eventually
bring them back to Eretz
Yisroel.
Parashas Shemos begins after all of the
brothers have died. There is a “new” king in town who doesn’t even
“remember” Yosef and all that he had done for Egypt. All the peace and
prosperity have melted away and left behind deadly oppression. The Torah
is setting the stage for geulah,
but through a minefield of exile.
Every sefer of the Torah
from Shemos
onward picks up where the previous one left off, more or less. The last
brother to have died was Levi in 2332 (1428 BCE), Yosef having died 23
years earlier in 2309. Since the oppression began the year after the last
brother died, and the Jewish people went down to Egypt in 2238, the gap
between Sefer
Bereishis and Sefer
Shemos is 94 years, almost a century. Why the big skip?
Because those were
the good times, and the Torah is not interested in the good times. If the
Torah was primarily a history book, it would be. But it is not, at least
not first and foremost. First and foremost, it is a book about exile and
redemption, how to avoid the former and leave it when you haven’t,
nationally and
personally.
From our
perspective, it is usually the opposite. We’d rather focus on the good
times and forget about the bad ones. It’s all part of our anti-pain
campaign, which is normal. We are made for pleasure, so it is only
natural to want to avoid anything that interferes with it. We know
expressions like, “No pain, no gain,” but that doesn’t mean that we stop
trying to gain without
pain, some even hoping that “cheaters” can in fact prosper, at least on
some occasions.
They can’t, because
even when they “win,” they lose. God made sure of that. The evilest of
people is built the same way the best of people are, with an inherent
need for validation that comes only from being one’s true self. No one
can be truly
happy if they are not truly happy with themself.
This does not mean
that evil people do not know pleasure. Clearly, they do. It does not mean
that evil people can’t have fun. Again, clearly, they do. But as we all
know, physical pleasure is most enjoyed when accompanied by psychological
contentment, and though you can steal the former you can’t fake the
latter. The soul knows if a person is good or bad, and never stops
telling the person which one they are.
Okay, so that means
that Hitler, ysv”z,
in actuality was a miserable person. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him
from murdering six million plus Jews. If anything, it pushed him to do
it. And though Pharaoh may have never really been able to fully enjoy all
of his luxuries, that may have made it easier for him to be vicious
against his perceived enemy. People who hate themselves find it much
easier to hate others.
Shabbos Day
THAT IS TRUE. But
it is also Hashgochah
Pratis. Evil can exist, rise up, and hurt others only because
of Divine Providence, as Yosef reminded us at the end of last week’s parsha:
But Yosef said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for
am I instead of God? You intended evil against me, [but] God designed it
for good, to bring about what is at present to keep a great populace
alive.” (Bereishis 50:19-20)
If an evil
dictator, leader, boss, or even just another person ever hurts someone,
it is Hashgochah
Pratis. It just looks as if they have independent power to do
it because they seem to be able to carry out their evil plans. But there
are lots of people in the world who want to do evil but are prevented
from succeeding because of Divine Providence. If they succeed, God forbid, God let
them.
A bad guy’s
miserableness is what makes them “eligible” for God’s plan to inflict
someone. As the Gemora
says, “merit happens through the meritorious, and bad through the
unworthy” (Shabbos
32a). So if evil people seem to be on the rise, you have to wonder if God
is up to something that might be bad for others.
When it comes to
personal fulfillment and inner happiness, the basic rule of thumb is that
the more inner happiness a person has—personal
redemption—the less outer happiness a person “needs.” As the Mishnah teaches,
“Who is a happy person? One who is satisfied with their portion” (Pirkei Avos 4:1).
Large or
small, because for an innerly happy person a large portion could just as
well be a small one, and a small one is a large one as far as they are
concerned. As Ya’akov told Eisav, “I always have what I need.”
After thousands of
years, mankind as a whole has come to realize that money does not buy
happiness. It can “buy” pleasures and a whole lot of fun, but it cannot
buy happiness. It can “buy” people and countless distractions, but it
cannot buy happiness. Rich or poor, the only way to “buy” happiness is to
do the work and stick with the program of personal development, of being
a Tzelem Elokim.
The world is so gashmi—materialistic—because
so few people truly know what inner happiness really entails.
That is the real exile. There is
no greater exile than not being yourself. It may sound trivial because,
how can you be anyone but who you are? But the very fact that
psychological depression is a national disease and anti-depressants are
such a lucrative prescription drug today answers that question head-on.
It is exhausting to watch how hard people have to work just to maintain
an image they want to project, but which has little to do with who they
really are.
We can call that,
“Exile of the Personality,” and after many years of living like that it
can become too hard to be redeemed from it. Just like the Jewish people
in Egypt, a kind of “slave” mentality settles in over time, until the
person sees their mistaken persona as the real one. When enough people
act like this then it eventually takes an actual physical exile to bring
people back to themselves. God didn’t make the world, especially one as
elaborate as ours, for a bunch of phonies. Pun intended.
Seudas Shlishis
WE MAKE A big deal
about chinuch,
as we should. Education is what directs the mind, which has to decide how
to use life. But we fail to realize what we need to really impress upon
our children while our children are still so impressionable. We just
assume the most important lesson about life is one that comes naturally
to a child or is taught in school. Society and history show that there is
little farther from the truth.
It’s a chronic
problem. It’s also often the blind leading the blind. As Rav Hutner, zt”l, said, parents
are not so much mechanchim—teachers,
as they are mashpi’im—influencers.
And though it is possible to teach
someone to do something you don’t do, it is basically impossible to influence someone to
do something that you clearly do not do. Parents who aren’t “themselves”
have a tough time influencing children to be themselves.
Today it is harder
than ever before. History has always had its up and downs, conservative
and liberal times. But the world has never been so populated, so
technologically advanced, and so out of touch with higher spiritual
goals. And anywhere the Jewish people stay long enough, the social values
of their host society are going to seep into their culture, even Torah
culture. It is inevitable.
That’s why the
Jewish people only went down to Egypt to sojourn. Ya’akov Avinu knew that if
his descendants stayed too long in Egypt, they would be impacted by its
society and eventually influenced by it. He was right. Those were the 94
years between Parashas
Vayechi and Parashas
Shemos.
The thing is, you
can’t connect to God as anyone other than yourself. God is not interested
in having a relationship with a persona. He only wants a relationship
with the soul He created, as
the soul He created. So many people have a difficult time relating to God
because they are not really working on the relationship as themselves.
This is what yesurim—suffering—brings
to the table. It breaks
a person, or rather, their persona.
The longer the suffering, the more difficult it becomes to be anyone
other than yourself. People say that suffering people tend to become
religious to take solace. The real reason is that the suffering strips
away all of their pretenses and, returning to their essential self, they
become in touch with their inherent need to connect to their Creator.
This is why the
Torah is not concerned about the “missing” 94 years in Egypt. People were
too busy losing themselves to one false idea or another. They were
psychologically oppressed, and it was self-imposed. So Shemos begins with
the physical oppression because it is the signal of the redemption,
personal and
national.
Ain Od Milvado,
Part 34
THE CHOVOS LEVOVOS
says that the “punishment” for trusting in anything other than God is to
be left in the care of that false hope. See how far that gets you. Only
God’s power is unlimited, while everything else has no power at all, and
is certain to fail you at some point, as Pharaoh learned the hard way.
The problem is
obvious. God may be all-powerful, but He is also demanding. He has
expectations, moral
expectations. God is capable of doing anything you want Him to, but more
than likely, He is not going to do it for you if you are spiritually
unworthy. This is why many people prefer to “believe” in false “gods”
instead of the real One.
There is a story of
a boy who was too lazy to invest energy in anything meaningful. But when
he asked his father for money to buy something he really wanted, the
father refused to give him anything until he had read at least ten
classic novels. Very begrudgingly, the boy agreed to his father’s terms,
which also included writing a thorough summary of each book.
It was very slow
going at first, and the boy considered canceling the deal several times.
But when he saw someone else already enjoying what he wanted, he resolved
to carry on and reach his goal. The father, who checked in on his son now
and then, was becoming impressed with his son’s newfound commitment.
A year went by and
the boy finished his tenth book. He dutifully handed in his extensive
report and was praised by his father. But before his father could hand
him the envelope with the money in it, the son had already turned around
to leave.
“Where are you
going?” his father asked, surprised at his son’s lack of interest in his
reward.
“To the library.”
“The library?” his
father asked, curious. “Why the library?”
The son stopped,
turned toward his father, and simply said, “I need more books to read.”
The father sat down
and smiled. He took pleasure from the way his plan had worked even better
than he had thought at first. His son had learned that reading was not
only for his father’s sake, but for his own, and over the course of the
year, it had turned his life around.
Similarly, God may
make demands on us to give us what we want, but that is only to show us
that what He demands is what we ought to demand from ourselves, for our
own good. When a person realizes this, then they work on themselves as
their personal project, achieving personal redemption and making
themselves worthy of special Divine Providence.
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