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This week's parsha, we see the whole story of Yosef HaTzaddik and his brothers being sold down to Mitzrayim. Rashi tells us a very strange thing Very unexpected, in describing Yosef HaTzaddik. Says that Yosef HaTzaddik Ve'ayove Yosef es tibosam ra al avinim. That Yosef HaTzaddik would He would bring bad reports about his brothers to Yaakov Avinu. Rashi says Kol ra shahayaroya be'echav. Any time. He saw any evil in his brothers Meaning bnei Lea The children of Lea. Hayomaget la'aviv He would tell Yaakov Avinu. For example Shahayu oichl in aver minachay. They would eat the limb from a live animal. Which is of course not allowed. Mizazelim bnei Ashvachos And the.
Sons of Leah would be mezazel; they would belittle, make fun of the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. Lekreis an Avadeh The bnei Leah would call those kids. They would turn to their brothers and call them servants, like 'You're my servant' because you're the son of a shulchan. V'chashudim ala arayos And he would say that they were involved in immoral relationships. Inappropriate relationships. Who is shloished on laka? And because Yosef HaTzaddik reported these three things to his fathers So he was dafka hit in these three areas. Al eber menachai because Yosef HaTzaddik told Yaakov Avinu that they ate from an eber menachai. V'yishche tu sir izim b'mechirasa So they slaughtered a young goat. And they dipped the ksinas pasim into the young goat Into the blood of the young goat, to make it appear that Yosef HaTzaddik had been killed. V'lo yachluchai But they didn't eat it alive.
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V'al diba shasipar alein And because of the reports that he said about them. He said that they called the brothers avodim. Leevet nim chayosif, Yosef was sold as a slave. And finally, v'hal arayo shasipar aleihem, because he said about his brothers that they were involved in inappropriate relationships. Vatisa eshas adona vegomer. Ultimately, Yosef haTzadik had the whole maysa. With Asher's Potifar. What a strange Rashi! First of all This doesn't sound like Yosef Hatzadik. Yosef Hatzadik finds every opportunity to say bad things about his brothers. It doesn't sound like the person we grew up with. Yosef Hatzadik to us is who? He's the hero. He's the one who goes down into Mitzrayim. Who's a dreamer. He has great dreams of bringing Hakadosh Baruch Hu into the lowest places in the world. He's the victim in the house of Aishes Potifar, ultimately having the strength to see his own true self in the window, the person that he's destined to be.
He's the person that, in jail. The tiniest little thing that he didn't give, he didn't have total, total, total emuna in Hashem, so he had to stay in jail for a little bit longer. But ultimately, Yosef Itzadik is the person that has more emuna than anybody. And when Paro comes and says, 'Interpret my dreams,' his response is, 'Me? I don't do anything. Everything is Hakadosh Baruch Hu.' As the viceroy of Mitzrayim, he leads them through a period of famine. He saves all of Mitzrayim. This personality of Yosef HaTzaddik seems so far into us to run around telling his father about his brothers' misdeeds doesn't sound like a tzadik at all. And the next Rashi says, "I didn't read it to you" But the very next Rashi tells us that he did it at every single opportunity. That any time there was an opportunity to say anything bad about his brothers, he jumped at it. Rashi says, 'What does it mean, dibasam?' Any time he was able to say anything bad about them, he would say it.
Divas from a lashon of he makes the lips of those who slumber speak. He was constantly in a state of speaking badly about his brothers. What in the world was going on over here? This is Yosef Atzatik. No wonder his brothers hated him. I would also hate somebody like that. Imagine if there was a we call them what do they say? Snitches get stitches. That girl That girl in the dorms, she's so frum that she has to let everybody know At every opportunity she's running to the hanhala. You should know. You know what this girl did? Nobody likes that girl. So what does Yosef HaTzaddik want? Comes to his brothers and he says, I want to share with you my amazing dreams. You're all bowing down to me in the dream. Maybe if you wouldn't have disparaged them to Yaakov Avinu so much, maybe they would have heard it differently. Obviously, Yosef HaTzaddik meant that l'shem Shamayim.
But somehow Yosef HaTzaddik—he's running every opportunity to say a bad thing. Sorry, it's a little something in this water. And not only that But now Yosef HaTzaddik comes to meet his brothers in Shchem. The pasuk says, "As achai anaychi mevakish." Yosef HaTzaddik meets somebody along the road. He's trying to find his brothers. And he says, 'I'm searching for my brothers.' You can almost hear the pain in Yosef Atzadik's voice, no? He's not relating to us something that's not important. The Torah is relating to us something that's fundamental. The fact that Yosef HaTzaddik asked for directions is not fundamental. If the Torah tells us that Yosef HaTzaddik was looking for his brothers, it doesn't just mean where they go. He's asking an existential question: Where are my brothers? Where did they go? How come I don't feel like I have brothers? Yosef, of course you don't feel like you have brothers.
How could you feel like you have brothers if you don't treat them like brothers? What does a brother do? A brother does. I feel bad. A brother doesn't tell parents. A brother, like whatever happens between the brothers, whatever happens between the sisters That stays private. You don't run to your parents and say You know what he just did unless you really hate your brother. But if you really love your brother, if you want to have a brother, don't speak that way about your brothers. Don't run for every opportunity. The things he was saying were not small things. Aver and Achai are causing pirud in the family. They're calling the other kids avodim. They're involved in inappropriate relationships. He's saying really bad things about them. I get it. I get why they didn't want to have anything to do with them. And the Torah tells us that they couldn't speak to him in a nice way.
So what did Yosef HaTzaddik? What was he thinking? If the Torah tells us that Yosef HaTzaddik was behaving in this way, it's meant to be a lesson. I want to share with you something. I think it's relevant to everybody in this room. Including myself. Hurt people. Kids are not bullies because they're bad. Kids are bullies because they're hurt. They have no idea what to do with their pain. And very often in life When we feel like we've got nobody What we do Sort of ironically Is we push other people away. People do this all the time in relationships. They really, in their heart of hearts, want deeply to connect to another person. Really, that's what they want. But they don't know how to do that because there's so much pain inside of them. They don't know how to relate to another person. So they push them away.
With this crazy thought that maybe if I push them away, maybe if I could just be here Then they'll love me. Like if I could If I could bring a silly marshal. You know that kid that he acts like he's better than it Than he's, than he act. Not that he, he's a good kid. You know what I'm saying? He's a good kid, but he acts better than he is. You know what I mean? He has like a need to be the best. He has a need to be the top. He has a need to be seen in a certain type of way And everybody hates him. But somehow, in this kid's mind, he thinks, "But if I'm the best, people will like me." That's the thing that's chasing everybody else away. So it's a funny thing. Little kids do this all the time. All the time, you'll see this with little kids.
There's always that in Eretz Yisrael. They call them Malkat Hakita, the Queen of the Class. You know that girl? She's like a suck up to the teacher, A teacher's pet. And this girl, somehow in her mind, she thinks everybody's gonna like me because I'm so close to the teacher. Does anybody like that girl? No. Nobody likes that girl. Nobody wants to be friends with that girl. So why is she doing it? It's pushing everybody away. And still she does it. The more people get pushed away, the more she does it. Why does that happen? I don't think we can understand the pain of Yosef Hazadik. Yosef Hazadik is a child that doesn't have a mother. That's no small thing. To grow up without a mother doesn't just mean that there's nobody home. It doesn't just mean that. You have to let yourself into the house at 4:30 in the morning because dad doesn't get home till work and mom's not there. It's much more profound than that.
There's something special that a mother can do for her children that nobody else can do. A mother, more than anybody in the world, much more even than a father A mother has the capacity to communicate to a child. You are enough. You are enough. You don't need to be any more than you are. You're exactly as you are. A child comes home to his father. And he might say something like Had a hard day in school. The teacher yelled at me. What's the father's response? What did you do? What's a mother's response? Hopefully Tell me about it. There's a fundamental difference between what you did. And tell me about it. What did you do? Obviously, if the teacher yelled at you, something was done. Let's get this solved. If you don't want your teacher to yell at you, show up. When you say somebody, when they come home and they had a really hard day, and you say tell me about it.
What you're saying is I'm interested in your story. There's no judgment. There's no problem solving. All there is the reality that something has occurred, and I'd like to hear from you. There's a sense of connection that's created. In the absence of that connection People judge other people. If you're not enough for yourself, you're not told that you are enough. Then the lens through which you see the entire world is nobody's enough. So there are people, and it's a fascinating thing. There are people that will walk into a place and they'll see exactly the same set of facts. But the experience will be totally different. A girl comes to check out seminary. Do they do that here? Girls come from America. The boys are doing it en masse. Every single boy is coming to check out yeshiva every single day. New kids. It says a lot. Not about the seminary.
But about the visitor Based on the narrative they have of the seminary. Some people will come into a seminary and they'll see Almost seven o'clock at night The room is packed. Say, wow Girls are taking notes. For the most part, girls are not on their phones. For those that are, this was my way of letting you know that I saw you. Good. Just made eye contact with all the people that needed to make eye contact with. Stay there. I wasn't judging you. I didn't look. Did we make eye contact? We didn't make eye contact. No more. Not everybody was taking notes. Somebody was taking a picture of me just a minute ago. He sees everything. It's crazy. All the way to the back. It's amazing. It's not that far, girls. Some girls are taking notes. People seem engaged. That could be a story. Another girl could walk in and go I don't know. I feel like there's not enough room here in Talmud Torah. They have all these girls packed into a class. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of space. The facts are exactly the same.
The narrative belongs to the person. There are people who, when they come somewhere, look around and all they see is the negative. That's all they see. This one's doing this avera. And yet, when you talk to the rebbe The rebbe has a completely different narrative. He says, "This person inachnami, they're doing that avera, but you should know they were just talking to their mechanechet about it. They were just talking to the rebbe about it. They've actually slowed down a lot from doing it. They're baderech. They're doing something. What's the difference?" The difference is the mentality of "I'm enough for myself." And therefore other people are also enough for themselves, versus I'm not enough for myself. Therefore, I have to talk about what everybody else is doing. Shilo just came up in yeshiva. I got a phone call about a boy in yeshiva that was doing something that was not the best.
Maybe it was considered very bad. And I got a phone call Do you know what's happening in your yeshiva? Do you know that you have a boy who's doing this and this? I didn't respond. I called the boy in. Happens to be a very close talmid. Say, I want you to know that you were seen. He goes, really? I can't even imagine when I was seen. I said, you were seen. Said, how's it going with this? So he said, I'm down to much less than I was. Said, "Is it working for you?" All of a sudden, his eyes welled up with tears. So I learned this line from my wife. I said, "The tears that you're holding back, if they could speak, what would they say?" And then, it's a harsh line. It's a hard. The tears that you're holding, you can write it on your phone. Don't worry, I know you're taking notes. The tears that you're holding back, if they could speak, what would they say?
And you know what starts to happen. All of a sudden, you start to talk and you choke up. The tears start to come a little bit. I want to go and call that person in America, and I want to tell them You see his action. You don't know what happened in his life. You don't know what led him to this moment. You don't know that he's doing it significantly less than he was. And you don't know that when I even talk to him about the pain that's driving this particular behavior. He's dying inside. He's not proud of himself. He's not. He doesn't. He doesn't not care. I want to go back and tell this person. Did you know that he's in therapy? Did you know that he's killing himself to get to the therapist? That he has to take two different buses in the height of rush hour to get to this therapist because he's the best therapist in this particular area? I want to go back and I want to say it to that person.
It bothered Yosef HaTzaddik. The avodim really got to him. You're calling them avodim. You're calling them slaves because they're the daughters of the shvachos. So he runs back to his father and he goes, "It's not nice what they're saying." He was a little boy, Yosef HaTzaddik. He was a very little boy. And yes, he would ultimately become Yosef HaTzaddik. But it gives us an insight into the pain that all of us feel. Yosef HaTzaddik is all of us. It gives us an insight because when the brothers would say, and on whatever level it meant, who knows what they were even really saying. But when they said, 'You guys are avodim because you're the children of Shvachos,' could you imagine what it was like? Piercing dagger into the heart of Yosef HaTzaddik because he also felt like he was one of them because he also didn't have a mother and who raised Yosef HaTzaddik? It was Bilha that raised Yosef HaTzaddik. And as wonderful a job as Bilhah did, making Yosef HaTzaddik feel like he was a part of the family, at the end of the day, he didn't have a mom.
And that's just different. It's just different at the end of the day if you go home and you have a mom versus if you go home and you don't. They're not so frum, Abba. They're eating avir manachai. They're ripping the leg off of an animal. Who knows exactly what that means? Who knows exactly what the brothers are doing? There's a lot of conversation that maybe it wasn't really aver minachai because maybe the animals that the brothers were eating from weren't actually animals. Maybe they were created animals according to certain soides haTorah that the brothers were able to do without getting into the details. He's saying, "Abba, connect to me. I'm like you. I'm so frum." You know why a person does that in life? Because they don't feel connected. Because they feel terribly lonely. They're involved in inappropriate relationships. It's like I'm not doing that. I'm good. Tell me I'm good.
You ever see little kids do that? Like little kids do this all the time, especially when my kids were younger. They would go and say, 'Abba, I would never do that.' I said, 'No, because you're great, right?' Like, what are they really saying when a little kid comes and tattles on another kid? Attention. It's a cry for help. You know who you tell your dreams to? Not to people that will believe them. You tell your dreams to people that you love because you want to share them with them. This is what I think could be in the world. Joseph the Tzaddik didn't go to his brothers because it was a practical thing. I need you to know that all the sheaves bowed down to me, that everyone was bowing down to me in Shamayim. He was coming. He was saying, 'Isn't this great? I have these dreams. I want to share with you.'
And what are the brothers saying? We're not the people that you share dreams with because you've been pushing us away for so long. And when Yosef HaTzaddik goes and he's looking for his brothers and he meets that guy and he says, 'Do you know where my brothers went?' He's not asking a question only for directions. The Torah didn't need to tell us that. It's giving us a fundamental insight into Yosef HaTzaddik. It's saying, "Do you know how I could find my brothers?" Yaakov Avinu sent him down to his brothers in Shechem. He sent them. In the hopes. Try to connect to your brothers. Try to repair what's been done. Come to your brothers and share with them who you are and be a person there. The brothers see him coming from afar. They see him merachok. You know what they do? They stand in judgment.
They stand in judgment of him. And originally They paskin him lemisah and they say, "we're going to murder you." We're going to put you into a pit with snakes and scorpions. Then Yehuda comes along and he goes, 'Don't kill him.' We'll just get rid of him. What should the brothers have done differently? The brothers were certainly justified. Gemara says that Hashem sat on their bezdin. Gemara says that they looked into the future. Medrash says that they looked into the future and saw all of the idolatry that was going to come out of Yosef HaTzaddik. So they said, 'We have to cut it off at its source.' What do they do wrong? The brothers ought to have seen Yosef HaTzaddik for what he really was. He wasn't coming to tell them he was better than them. He was coming to say I just want to be a part of your lives.
That those people that are hurting other people, if we can give them the space, if we can tell them, "I want you to know, I want to connect to you. You don't need to do that." I'm here and I'm listening and I'm paying attention. That's a gift that we can give for other people. That when you see a girl in the dorms. And she's not behaving the way she should. And maybe she's not following the rules of the seminary. And you're right, it's wrong. But do you know that girl's pain? Do you see her attempt to connect? Have you really gotten to know her, or are you just standing in judgment? Are you saying her lamisa? Are you saying no, you're no good? I know what comes out of this. You're no good. Are you looking into the future and saying I know what you're going to be? You told her already who she is. You've passed her up.
This girl, girls like that, they end up. You've told her who she's going to be Or worse You've sent her away. You've sent her into Mitzrayim. You know we can do that. We can send people into Mitzrayim. People do it all the time. All you have to do is say You're not one of us. When there's a conversation, she's the one that's excluded. No I think I told you this year. There's a boy in yeshiva this year who told me he was a ghost in high school. For years, he was a ghost. Boys literally just walked by him. He was so hurt by that. And there's a part of me that wants to say to him, "What do you care? These guys are jerks. What do you care? So you were a ghost to them. You had your friends. Why do you care? You know what the answer is?"
Because every one of us wants to be connected. None of us want to walk down the hall and have people just walk by without even recognizing them. When you say good morning to a person, you're giving them a gift. You give someone a gift. Rav Shalom Frayfeld, the founding Rosh Hashanah He said that there was a minig that Yidden in Europe and even in America, if you wish someone a gut morgen in Yiddish, they would wish you back a gut yar. If you wish somebody a good morning, they would respond by saying you should have a good year. It seems incongruous. I wish you a good morning. I get back an entire good year. R. Freifeld said, "The minig was based on when you see someone in the morning and you say 'Gut morgen' to them, you're telling them you are worthy of being a part of my life. I just want to wish you a great day." It's a beautiful thing. I just want to wish you a great day. I just want to tell you, I hope things go well for you today.
My Rosh Yeshiva, R. Brown Spiegel Should be zecher R. Fu Shalema. Unfortunately, he has Alzheimer's. He used to yell at us all the time. Say good morning to each other, and you'll say, 'Rabbi, I'm just going to say good morning to a million people,' and he would say, 'I have a piece of advice for you.' Mean it. Do you know what it would be like if you could see another person and say 'Good morning,' I see you, and actually mean it. And the reason we have trouble doing that is not because that person doesn't deserve a good morning. It's because. I don't think I'm worthy of a good morning, so it becomes the way that we see the entire world. It's my love growing up outside of the tri-state area. If you grow up in a small town, when you see another Jew on Shabbos, you know what you do?
You say good Shabbos. And when you're walking through the streets of fill in the blank, and you all know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying it out loud. But only because I knew you were waiting for it. It could have been any place. I'm not going to say good Shabbos. Otherwise, it's going to be like this every time you see somebody. Good Shabbos. Because there's just so many Jews walking by each other. That's wonderful. But we all know that many of us walk through the streets and it's like okay. But you ever do the Jew nod in the airport? In the airport, you ever do the Jew nod? Yeah. I do because I travel all over. I have perfected the Jew nod. Do you want to see what the Jew nod looks like? If I see another person who's in the airport and they're getting off the plane and they're wearing a yarmulke and I'm in that waiting area waiting to get on the plane and they come off and we notice each other, we do this.
Just want to let you know Same tribe. But if I was in the Five Towns walking by that guy on Shabbos, I wouldn't give him the Junod. Wait Wait! I have to do this. I'm sorry. Where are you from? I want to hear. Where are you from? Minneapolis. Of course. Because there's 40 of you. I bet you know all of them. You know the Donets. The Donets. Doneth? You know the family Doneth from Minneapolis, Minnesota? Can you just say yes to prove my point? Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Are there really towns that don't? Yes. Like in Muncie, everyone does, right? Five times no one does. I'm sure, girls. No one does. I want to apologize publicly. Oh, they don't. A Toma Devora moment. I want to apologize publicly for being motzi las on Klal Yisro. I'm sure that everybody everywhere says good Shabbos all the time.
But RBS never says good Shabbos. I'm literally trying to get you girls to stop doing what I just did. It's a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. Wow, that was an intense Talmud Torah moment. I really stirred the coals here. I wonder what it was psychologically that bothered you all just now. I got to think about that one. Why is it that sometimes we're walking down the street and we won't acknowledge another person? It's just an opportunity to see people in a positive light. There's a bird. There's a bird in the Torah called the ra' The ra'is a not kosher bird. The Gemara says about the ra'that it can see all the way from Iraq. If it's flying over Iraq, it could see all the way into Eretz Yisrael and it could see the carcasses on the mountains of Eretz Yisrael. And it's not kosher.
Why isn't it kosher? Has such amazing eyesight? Wouldn't that be a great kosher bird? I saw a beautiful shot. If you have such amazing eyesight and all you could see is the carcasses of Eretz Yisrael, that's not a kosher bird. There are people who know how to see other people. They know how to see them in their pain. The brothers. It's understandable. Who wants to be close with somebody that's constantly cheppering them? But the brothers should have been sophisticated enough to say, he was just trying to figure out how to be close to us. He was just trying to figure out how to be close to a father. He was trying to share his dreams with us. We don't send people like that down to Mitzrayim. Which gives us a phenomenal insight into the house of Potiphar. Now here's Yosef Estranged from his brothers, older, wiser, more experienced.
And Ayesha Potifar is doing everything she can to seduce him. And if you look at the Gemara talks about how every single day, all the time, Ayesha Potifar is constantly coming after Yosef Hatzadik. And you know what? Eventually, he fell for it. People think about this. In the end, he the very, very, very last minute He walked away or ran away. But up until that moment, he really, if you look at the Gemara, if you look at Chazal, we don't need to get into it now. He was in the midst of the Avera. At the very last minute, he ran away, but he was in the midst of it. Your whole life, we grew up and we heard the story that it was a moral issue, but maybe it wasn't a moral issue. Maybe Yosef HaTzaddik was holding on to his virtue But maybe the reason that eventually he fell was because how nice it is to feel like somebody wants you Especially when you're a slave?
Especially when your whole family is gone How nice is it to feel connected? Isn't that an amazing feeling? So eventually, even though he knew it was wrong, Yosef HaTzaddik said How long can a person go without feeling any sense of connection? The life of a slave is a loss of complete dignity. How long am I supposed to go like this? And when do we see that Yosef HaTzaddik holds on to his virtue and he runs away? When he sees the image of his father in the window, and there's all these different pshatim, beautiful pshatim that he saw the face of Yaakovinu, and Yaakovinu's face looked like other marishon, and in some way this reminded him of his mission. Maybe it's much simpler than that. Maybe it's just I still feel connected So I didn't do the avera because I still feel connected to my dad.
Even though I'm so far away Because I know my father loves me. And maybe that was the message that Yaakov Avinu sent with the Eglarufa. We know that the last sugya that Yaakov Avinu with Yosef they learned the Eglarufa together. What's the story of the Eglarufa? The story of the Eglarufa is that a man leaves a town And he's murdered outside of the town. And it's in between two cities. So we measure which city it was closest to. And then there's a whole process where the leaders of the town come out and say we didn't kill him. Now of course you didn't kill him. The leaders of the town are going to be guilty of murder. If he had left our town, and we were responsible for his leaving, we would have walked him out. We would have given him se'ida l'aderech. We would have given him a little bit to eat on the way. You know why he died in the field?
He died in the field because his life wasn't worth fighting for. When you come up against somebody and somebody attacks you, people run. You get into that fight or flight mode. And you'll win. You'll do anything you can to save your life. You know why people lose? Not because they're weaker. Because maybe my life isn't worth fighting for to begin with. The sugya of Eglah Arufa says every single Jew is responsible for every single other Jew. And when there's a Jew walking around, Toma Devora, it's our responsibility. She's your sister. Every single Jew is responsible for every single other Jew. That was the sugya that Yaakov Venu taught Yosef Fatzadik. He said, 'You're about to leave.' Beruach Kadosh. He understood this was the message that he needed to have. Every single Jew is responsible for every single other Jew. So all those years later, he still felt connected.
And now he's in jail. And now he discovers another level of connection. Where there's a man in jail, you're mashing alone. An Egyptian jail is like Siberia, the worst thing in the world. You're surrounded by the lowest members of society. You learn what you learn when you're surrounded by nobody else. Interconnection. That no matter where you go, nobody can make you disconnected from yourself. Nobody can make you disconnected from Hashem above. That's the whole story with Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl, we know, was a great psychologist before the outbreak of World War II, before the Holocaust. And eventually was in Auschwitz. And they took away everything from him. They took away his clothing, but he brought his doctoral dissertation with him into the concentration camps. And he asked the Nazi guard, "Please let me hold on to this." And the Nazi guard said no, and he took it away from him and gave him prison garb.
And he was wearing somebody else's clothing because after they would cremate the bodies They would give you the clothing next. So now he's wearing somebody else's clothing. He sticks his hand in the pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. On the piece of paper it says Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokei No, Hashem Echad. And it was the beginning for Victor Frankel. He says that was the beginning of creating something called logotherapy. Where he realized that those who survived in the concentration camps didn't survive because they were physically stronger, but because they had something to live for. When I get out, I'm going to reunite with my family. I'm going to reunite with my wife. I'm going to see my brother again. Those people who held on to hope, because the Nazis can't take that away from you. They could beat your body mercilessly, but they can't take away your spirit. Viktor Frankl said those people, they were free even in the concentration camps.
As Yosef HaTzaddik goes deeper and deeper into his journey, in the beginning he was a kid and he had no idea how to create connection. But as he gets older, he realizes connection doesn't come from outside of yourself. Connection comes from within. And when people are sitting there and complaining and they say, "But I don't have any friends. Everybody's so mean." No. If you would be yourself, if you would be authentic, if you would be deeply connected to yourself, you would be a magnet. You would be a nuclear reactor of love and connection. So that finally, when Paro calls him up and Paro says, "Interpret my dreams," he goes, "I don't do nothing." It's all Hashem. And Paro is impressed by that And he elevates him, and he's the viceroy of Mitzrayim. And now he gets married. Now he has a wife. Now he's a deeply connected person.
And then his brothers come And an amazing thing happens. He's not angry at them. He's not upset at them. All he wants them to do is experience what he went through. So there's a whole storyline, a whole plot of how Yosef Hatzadik is going to show them what it was like to be him. He wants his brothers to know his pain. At the end of the day, that's still what he wants. And he can't hold back any longer. And at the very end of the story, he says, "Ani Yosef, I would have vichai" But he doesn't blame them. He says, "Hashem, this was Hashem's plan." He doesn't blame his brothers. I don't understand what happened to the Yosef Hatzadik. As a kid, Yosef HaTzaddik is telling Yaakov Vino every single thing that the brothers did wrong, and now his brothers come and he's like, "It's okay" Hashem did this. It wasn't you. It's okay, Hashem did this. Now all of a sudden, he's capable of seeing them in a different way. You know why? Because he discovered true connection, and that only comes from within.
That's the gift that we can give each other. That's the gift that we can give our children as parents. If I can. Especially in these times where the world is pushing us more and more to be with each other Anti-Semitism rises. Chalal Yisrael bands together. If I can, gently encourage you As we're now in the darkness of Chanukah Which is a time where people do have a certain sense of chalishus, like there's a darkness. Been doing this for so long, a sense of depression, perhaps. I don't mean like real depression. I mean like the American depression. Like just don't feel so good. Can we reach out to each other? Can we recognize that there are girls here who are crying out? As acha ani mavakish I'm looking to have a friend. Can you sit with a different group in the chadar ochal? And maybe not sit with your people? Because there's nothing wrong with these other people. Can you be authentically curious about what other people's journeys are like and just sit here and say, "Wow, that's interesting" Without having to sit in judgment of them?
And especially those of you that are looking at the others and going, "I would never be friends with her." Can you discover her humanity? Because in discovering her humanity, you're going to discover yours. If you can treat yourself gently, then you can treat her gently. If you can treat her gently, maybe you could treat yourself gently. Bez Hashem. If we're zeicher to treating each other with kindness, the Rebbeinu Shlom should be kind to us.
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