Vayeishev - Making Meaningful and Lasting Change

2:13 I'm talking about. I'm just a little jealous with you. In the words of George Costanza, these are the remnants of a once great nation of hair. They have like that move now where the boys have like the yarmulke like this, and then the giant hair in the front. I'm talking about. Before they go out to the hotel, obviously, before they go out, there's like a little tikkun, a little messing around. They wanna look good. The first thing we're told about Yosef HaTzaddik is he's a nar. He's playing with his hair. What else do we know about him? And he's bringing not nice reports to his father. He's saying not nice things about his brothers. Again, we're not going to get into all the details of what it means. What exactly were they doing? But he's not speaking in a nice way about his brothers. That's for sure. So in chapter one of the story, what do we see? Joseph HaTzaddik is a nar. He's playing with his hair.

3:11 And he's not acting in a way that invites people to like him. Next, again, we're still in chapter one. What does Yosef Hatzadik receive from his father? Akesonas pas. He receives a coat of many colors. So what do we know so far about Yosef? He plays with his hair. He reports nasty things about his brothers. His father gives him a chosh of a coat, and he is somehow elevated above his brothers. The next thing that we learn is that Yosef HaTzaddik has dreams. Again, we're not going to get into the details of the dreams for a second. We're not going to get into the details of the dreams, but one thing we know about the dreams, something that really upsets his brothers, is he's at the center of the dreams. And everybody is bowing down to him. He's at the center of the dreams. Everybody is bowing down to him. That's the next thing we learn about Yosef HaTzaddik. The brothers are so upset that what do they do? They leave. They run away. They want nothing to do with Yosef HaTzaddik. And what happens immediately after that?

4:23 Now Yaakov Avinu sends Yosef to go to his brothers. So far, if you're following the story, if you're following the symmetry of the story Please. If you're following the symmetry of the story, I don't like to call people out, but please. If we're following the symmetry of the story, step one is Yosef Hatzadik plays with his hair, speaks not nicely about his brothers, gets a special coat, makes him feel elevated above his brothers, has a dream, and he's at the center of the dream. Because of all of this, his brothers leave. Now Yaakov sends him to find his brothers. What happens next? He can't find them. Instead, who does he find? We know that he finds a malach, and what does he say? He says, "What are you looking for?" He says, "As acha yanochim avakish." He's looking for his brothers. Eventually, he gets pointed in the right directions. His brothers see him from afar. What do they do? Strip him of his k'sonas pasim Throw him into a pit, sell him down as a slave.

5:25 That is chapter one. If we're taking a bird's eye view of the story, that's chapter one of the story. It's a thrilling story. Then there's a break. We're not going to get into the break. That's the story of Yehuda and Tamar. The truth is, the story of Yehuda and Tamar is not a break at all. It informs the story very much, but just for tonight, we're going to skip it because it's going to take us too far afield. Let's go now to what we'll call Chapter Two, even though it's really Chapter Three. Let's go to Chapter Two of the story. Where does Yosef Hasadik find himself? In the house of Potiphar. And in the house of Potiphar, he's being pursued by Ayesha's Potiphar, and the Gemara describes in great detail exactly what's happening. She would dress in different clothing in the morning and different clothing at night, and she would threaten him: "If you're not with me, then I'm going to send you down to an Egyptian jail, and I'm going to blind your eyes." And in the end, by the way, she comes through on the threat. So Yosef Hatzadik is really living under the threat of persecution. This is no small thing that Yosef Hatzadik is going through. And in a crazy moment

6:29 Where he came home, lassos malachto. What does lassos malachto mean? Lassos malachto either means that he came home to do his work; everybody else was out of the house, or lassos malachto means that he's finally ready to give in to the temptation, and he's standing in that crazy moment. We all know what happens. Yosef Hazadik flees from the house. Eishas Potifar is left holding his coat. He runs undressed. Into the streets of Mitzrayim, and what's the accusation? The accusation is that Yosef HaTzaddik violated Eshas Potifar, and indeed he was sent down into an Egyptian jail. Now let's just take a moment to appreciate what an Egyptian jail probably looked like. I don't think that we think jail, we think country club. As Jews, who goes to jail? You go to jail for white collar crime. You go to jail because you didn't pay your taxes. You have tennis courts. You have time. You have dafyomi. You have mignonim every day. Even if you think of hardened criminals in jail, you should know that those jails are nothing compared to an Egyptian jail. An Egyptian jail is like the worst place in the world.

7:39 If Mitzrayim is called Erev Asaaretz. If Mitzrayim is called like a despicable place of immorality, you can imagine the type of barbaric lifestyle that people had in jail in Mitzrayim. It was probably one of the most horrific places that you could possibly be, and that's where Yotzei Fatahik ends up. Until what? In chapter two, what happens now? Now he's been in Asher's Potiphar's house. He ran out, undressed, left his coat behind, ended up in an Egyptian jail, and he met what? The Sara Mashkim and the Sara Ophim. And they come to him to interpret their dreams. But what does Yosef HaTzaddik say to them? Interpretation of dreams is up to Hashem. He interprets the dreams correctly. He's punished a little bit because he does. And again, we're not getting into this detail right now. A little bit too much shtadlus for Yosef HaTzaddik. He needs to develop more emuna, so he has to wait a couple more years in jail until what happens. Finally, Paro has dreams.

8:43 The Sare is there, right in that place, to say, 'You should know, there's a guy in jail. He interprets dreams.' And let's look at exactly what happens. Now we're all the way in Parashat Miketz. Paro sends for Yosef. And he rushes him out of where? What does bar mean? Where was Yosef? Very interesting, no? Very interesting. Lashon of the pasuk here. He rushes him out of the pit. Ve'ygalach. What does ve'ygalach mean? He gets a haircut. Ve'yachalev sim losav. Relax. It's going to be okay. Ve'yachalev sim losav. And he gets new clothing. Ve yavo el paro. And he's brought to paro. Very interesting. Because now we're going to start to see. You already recognized it. If you're paying attention, you start to see a symmetry to the story. What's the symmetry in chapter one? If you go back to chapter one, what happens? Yosef HaTzaddik puts himself at the center of the world. He's playing with his hair. He's saying nasty things about his brothers. He gets a fancy coat when he has a dream. Who's at the center of the dream?

10:01 He's at the center of the dream. His father sends him away. He's searching for his brothers. When he finally finds his brothers, what do they do? They strip him of his coat and put him down into a bar. Now we start to see almost like the Torah is giving us a wink. It's like it's being walked back in the other direction. Now instead of being sent away by the authority figure, that would be Yaakov Avinu sending him away. Now what happens? All of a sudden, he's being summoned by the authority figure. And when he's summoned from the authority figure, he's summoned from where? Not from jail, from the pit. It's like Yosef HaTzaddik was in the pit, and now it's like he's being taken out of the pit. Before Yosef HaTzaddik was playing with his hair, and now all of a sudden he's being given a haircut. Before Yosef HaTzaddik He's like, "Look at me, I've got this amazing coat," and he's taken that. He has that coat taken from him by his brothers. But in chapter two of the story, he's willing to let go of his coat.

10:59 Not to be with Esau's Potiphar, running undressed in the streets of Mitzrayim, and ultimately, what does Paro give him? New clothing. You start to see how things are exactly symmetrical. We continue a little later into the story, and now Yosef Hatsadik is the viceroy of all of Mitzrayim. There's a famine in the land. Because there's a famine, what happens? Yaakov Avinu sends down the shvatim to go look for Yosef. To go get food. But really, what does Rashi tell us? Torah doesn't tell us that Ben Yacob went down. It says Ache Yosef. The Shvatim aren't referred to. Rashi points out the Shvatim when they're sent down to Mitsrayim in Parshas Miketz. They're not sent down as the sons of Yaakov. They're sent down as the brothers of Yosef. Which one would we have thought they would be referred to? The sons of Yaakov. Why? Because after all.

11:57 That's what they're going for. They're going to get food for Yaakov. So the fact that it refers to them as Achay Yosef, Rashi jumps on that, and Rashi says what? They're not going down just to get food. They have a secret agenda, and Rashi tells us this amazing thing about the secret agenda: they regret the sale of their brother. They regret the sale of their brother. Not only do they regret the sale of their brother, they said they're going to find him. By the way, that's why they went through all those different gates. They didn't just go as a group. They went through all those different great gates, which is why Yosef Hazadik was able to say, 'You guys are acting like spies.' Because if you go as a family, generally, how do you travel? You travel together. Imagine that somebody shows up at a Pesach program, let's say you have a family of ten, and the father says, 'Okay' When we walk into the hotel, I want everybody to walk in through a different entrance. That Pesach program is under attack. By the way, they should have all these Christmas movies where

13:00 It's like they're attacking something. They're attacking all these different things by the Christmas movies. We should totally have a Pesach version of that. We should totally have a Die Hard for Pesach. Be the most amazing thing. And what would they do? All the terrorists would get out of their van and they'd come into the Fountain Blue in Florida from all the different directions. This totally has to be a perm spiel. These are the things I think of after I get off a plane. They come in from different gates. Why are they coming through different entrances in Mitsrayim? Because they're looking for Yosef. They're looking for Yosef. And Rashi tells us they're willing to pay any price to ransom him. It's an unbelievable thing. The same brothers who in chapter one of the story couldn't stand the kid, and they were willing to sell him down to Mitsrayim, obviously. They were tzaddikim. I don't mean they couldn't stand him like in a very human way, like we can't stand our little brother. They thought he had the din of a rodef. They thought they were doing halakhically the right thing. But now all of a sudden they have charata

14:05 And they regret what they did. And what are they going to do? Exactly the opposite. We're going to pay any price that needs to be paid in order to get him out. But an amazing thing happens. They come face to face with him, and they don't recognize him. What does Rashi tell us? Because he has a beard. Did he get a haircut? I don't know. Sounds geshmack. Our luck. Beside me. So now they don't recognize Yosef. Not because he has a beard. Girls, does that make sense to us at first glance? It doesn't make so much sense because obviously Yosef HaTzaddik has been away for a long time. He's not going to look like a seventeen year old kid anymore. So one would imagine that they would be looking for an adult. He's right in front of them. They can't see him until the climax of the story where he says, "I'm Yosef." They bring Yaakov Avinu down to Mitzrayim.

14:57 Hustle, see their kill. Hustle, see their Pesach kill. Hustle. We finish the story. That's the story of Yosef HaTzaddik. But girls, if you've been paying attention, you see that everything that happens in chapter one gets exactly reversed in chapter two. Yosef Hatzadik puts himself at the center of the universe. He speaks negatively. He's not a person of connection, so his brothers run away from him. Yaakov Avinu sends him away, and now what happens when Yaakov Avinu sends him away? He can't find his brothers. He's searching for them. Now what happens in chapter two? His brothers are searching for him. Yosef Chazalik is no longer at the center of the universe, and now all of a sudden something changes, and instead of being everyone running away from him All of a sudden everyone is running towards him.

15:45 But it takes time for them to what? It's not obvious. It doesn't just work automatically. It's not like oh, we regretted what we did and now we're going to get Yosef Hatzadik. No. It takes them time to discover Yosef Hatzadik. And in the end, why do they figure out that it's Yosef, even though he's literally putting it in front of their face and he's doing everything he can to pay it? Hey, pay attention. It's me, Yosef. In the end, they're too blind to it. And he says, 'Ani Yosef Ha'oravichai.' And in the very, very end of the story, Yaakov Avinu, who sent him away to go get his brothers, is brought back by his brothers. There is an absolute perfect symmetry to this story. The question is, what does it mean? It's a very cool thing when you learn Chumash. This book is incredible. Highly recommended reading. If you haven't done it, it's a tremendous read. Really, a tremendous read. And if you do it with Rashi, it's an awesome, awesome safer to learn. Really, highly recommended.

16:40 I know the girls have the I'm learning Riff Pinkus Chomish comes first. Chomish is very important. So it's a cool thing. You saw the symmetry in the story. I once heard that in the world of Chabad That no Rebbe would ever give over a Dvar Torah unless there was something actionable. Torah can't just be a cool symmetry. It has to have an action. The question is, what is the message that we're being told right now? What's the message of the symmetry of this? Of this shtickle that we just said So I want to share with you something, and I think it's a very important thing. You know A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to spend a summer with Rabbi Finkel and Rabbi Rosenstein. We spent an entire summer together. And thank you for that. It was beautiful. I don't know who did it, but that's not what it was like.

17:37 And we were really trying over the course of that summer to crystallize what exactly is the mission of Tumra Devora. Because girls I've been here for a long time. It used to be weird. It used to be different. And it's grown tremendously. It's grown tremendously. And from what I hear, even though again I'm not on the inside, but from what I hear, the applications to Tumra Devora this year were through the roof. And I think there's a reason for it. I think there's something very special that goes on here. I think there's something special that goes on in every seminary, with you. But I think there's something special that goes on here. There's something very authentic about the way that we try to educate you in Torah Devora. It's not just about coming and using this word, which means nothing. Growth. I want to grow.

18:31 When I do the interviews for Mivasayit in February, I want to shoot myself in the head. What are you coming to Eretz Yisrael for? I'm coming to grow. What does that mean? You want to end up looking like an overweight person with a beard? That's not a grow. That's not like you don't have to do that with your life. What does it mean? Grow. What does that word mean? And it's not easy. It's not easy to parse out exactly what that word means. We spent an entire summer working on it. What does it look like? And the answer for Toma Devora is authenticity. This is a place that we ask you not just to change your life, not just change direction like I was going in this direction, now I'm going in this direction. It requires a more profound process of really looking at yourself and taking actionable steps every single day, every single week, every single month to walk back the changes that we need to make in our life. And I'll explain to you what I mean by this.

19:32 I'm going to use yeshivas as an example in contrast to what we do here. I want you to know that it's very easy in yeshivas. It's very easy to pretend like you've actually made a significant change in your life. It's a very easy thing. All a guy has to do is put on a certain costume. And he has to start behaving. And all of a sudden he's changed. And look what happens in the world of shaduchim. You know what they say? All of a sudden, the guy who was like a masochist and a psychopath kid in high school comes to Eretz Yisrael. He puts on the costume and spends more time in the Beit Midrash. They go. This is the way they say. He was lebedik in high school. It's true? Always on the side. How they tell the story? He was lebedik. They use certain code words. If you hear these words, lebedik means he was a psychopath. Lebedik means that he was hanging out in the back of Dave's on a Saturday night, and he hasn't had a Motzei Shabbos in years.

20:23 But he comes to Eretz Yisrael. He puts on the costume, and they go. He's very serious now. He's very growth oriented. You have no idea if he actually did the work. You have no idea if he did the work because it looks so good from the outside that you look at it and you go, "Hey, it looks pretty good, right?" He didn't do the work. The work means every single day, every single week, every single month, saying, 'How did I arrive at this point?' I'll give you an example of this, and I mean this in a very practical way. Let's say you have a kid. His eyes will get. He's 16 years old and he's acting out. And he's doing mishugana things. You should know that he's playing charades. He's playing charades. Every kid is playing charades. Every kid is acting out the pain that they have no idea how to verbalize. That's why they're behaving the way they're behaving. They're not bad kids. Something is going on inside of them.

21:23 If a guy or a girl is making a real change, it means they need to go through a process of really understanding what was going on inside of them at that moment. Why was I behaving that way? I give you an example of this. I was expelled from elementary school in fifth grade. Fifth grade. Every time I go back to my elementary school, because it's an elementary school, middle school, and a high school. For those of you that don't know, I went for a minute, full fifth grade. I went to a school called Hafter in the Five Towns. I was expelled from Haftorah in fifth grade. You should know I have no taynas on them. I totally understand why they expelled me. I was a meshuganah kid. I was disrupting the classroom. They could not run a class with me in the room. I have no taynas on them. I have only one, not even a tayna, just a hara. Today I would have had like therapy up the wazoo for the way that I was behaving. I would have seen physical therapists, occupational therapists, hydrotherapists, play therapists, art therapists, any type of social workers.

22:25 The PA would have been like walking me around the school. It would have been unbelievable. But back then, in the 80s, we didn't know the things that we know today. So back then, they said He's misbehaving in class. And we don't want to deal with it anymore. " Now The reason why we have all these And I'm making fun of it, but the reason why we have all these good things in place is because there's a reason children will be having that are behaving that way. The only thing, if I could go back in time and whisper in my principal's ear right before he expelled me, the only thing I would want to whisper is just ask me why I'm behaving this way. Just be a little bit curious, what's going on Because the truth is I could have told you. I'll tell you now. I'm not embarrassed of it. The emissaries. My father ended up becoming a very successful businessman, Baruch Hashem. But it wasn't until I was a teenager.

23:17 The truth is that when I was growing up, my mother hates when I say this, but it's true. We were poor. When I say we were poor, I mean we had no money in the bank. And my parents refused to take a tuition break because they're very upstanding people and they said, "Why should we take vacations before the yeshiva gets paid?" So we paid full tuition. That meant we didn't have a lot left over. The truth is, I grew up wearing hand me downs. I never had new clothing. I didn't have new clothing. And I had this friend in elementary school who was super wealthy, and his mother realized that we didn't have money, and all of a sudden she started buying me clothing, and it was so nice of her. She would be like, 'I bought this for Jeff, but it's not his size, so you should take it.' I'm like, 'Jeff and I are the same size. I might be in third grade, but I'm not a moron.' And I remember even knowing why she thought that. There was this store on Central Avenue called Mazon.

24:14 You remember Mazon chicken? Mazon southern fried chicken was delicious. And as a third grader, I came to her house for Shabbos, and I think I polished off a chicken. And she was like, "Oh, this poor kid is starving." I wasn't. I just liked Mazon southern fried chicken. Right after that, I started getting designer clothing from Central Avenue. It was awesome. If you're the poor kid in a wealthy school. And you're not getting attention one level, you're going to figure out how to get attention another level. And it's not obvious. Again, even though it's true that I was acting out and disrupting the class, it's not obvious that today by today's standards they would have said, "Oh, he's just struggling. Let's help the kid out." Rabbi Bender in Darche. Rabbi Bender's a tzaddik. I don't think anybody here needs me to say that. But Rabbi Bender, when I was growing up, Darche was the only place that would take me after I got expelled from Haftor. Actually, it's not true. Rabbi Herzberg, Olam V'Shalom from South Shore, was also willing to take me, but I didn't have any friends in South Shore, so I went to Darche. Rabbi Bender had a pocket.

25:16 Not all shirts have pockets. Rabbi Bender always had a shirt with a pocket. And this pocket he called it the pocket fund. And every kid from Darche knew that if you had a dollar, or you had a five-dollar bill, or a ten-dollar bill, you could just stick it in Rabbi Bender's pocket. It was called the pocket fund. And that money was only used to help other kids in Darche who didn't have enough money to buy a glove or to buy a baseball bat or to buy whatever they needed. And Rabbi Bender was training us at a young age: take care of each other, take care of the kids that don't have. It was an amazing way of seeing the world. Rabbi Bender was doing this before it was popular. Today it's obvious. The kids misbehaving. It's probably something going on at home. Let's figure it out. It took years to understand. What's going on inside of myself? Why was I behaving that way? For a long time, I blamed myself for getting expelled from school. I was like, I should be ashamed. I'm a bad kid. Who gets thrown out of elementary school? If you get thrown out of high school, okay, but say there, it's like

26:16 It's awesome. You're gonna go. You're like, Rabbi Kalish is gonna be your guy now. You're gonna like, it's gonna be the best thing that ever happened to you. If you get thrown out of elementary school, you're a moron. You want to make real changes in your life. You have to be willing to do the hard work. You have to be willing to go back into the places that you don't want to look at. And if you walked ten blocks in the wrong direction, you can't just decide one day. Now I'm back. Now I'm stuck. Now I'm all of a sudden from. It's not that easy. Let's say Chassar Shalom. I'm sure it doesn't happen here in Talmud Torah. But let's say there's a girl who at night goes to the place where they say that well they sell vegetables in the morning. Let's say a person happens to be at night. There's vegetables there in the morning. She thought there were vegetables there at night. She ended up in the vegetable store at night. Let's say. I'm sure it would never happen in a million years. Now all of a sudden the girl gets dark and she said, I don't go to the vegetable place at night anymore. I don't know. You and I we're not vegetable people. I don't understand.

27:12 Girls, sometimes when I come here, the girls say, "Rabbi, do you want dinner?" So I say, "Sure." What do they have? They say, "This protein, this that." But if it's vegetables, they say, "Can I get you a salad, Rabbi?" I don't eat the food that my food eats. You understand? I don't go to the vegetable place in the morning or at night. It's not enough. It's a good term of the Torah. It's not enough to just say I'm not going to that place anymore. I'm not behaving in that way anymore. That's not real. That's not authentic. A person has to be willing to ask themselves, 'How did I end up there to begin with?' And then they have to walk that block back. It's good not to do the thing anymore, but you have to walk that block back. How did I arrive at that moment? And then I have to rebuild.

28:05 The story of Yosef HaTzaddik is an amazing story. It starts off with Yosef HaTzaddik being described as a nar, obviously whatever I'm about to say is only da'as tik. This was a tremendous tzaddik. We cannot even possibly understand the level that Yosef HaTzaddik was on. But for us, on our level, Yosef HaTzaddik starts off as a nar. What does that mean? He starts off as a nar. It means there's a certain. Again, I hesitate to say this because I don't want anyone to misunderstand me. I'm not saying that Yosef HaTzaddik wasn't a tremendous tzaddik. I'm just saying for us, in our level. He was a nar. He was playing with his hair. He was not in a state of self that he was connecting deeply to others. Other Abba, When it came to connecting with others, he saw the negative in them. When he got a coat from his father Look at me, I'm the spitz, I'm above other people. In his dreams, he's at the center of the universe, not other people.

28:59 Mameila, what happens? He ends up being sent away by his father. Disconnected from his brothers, deeply yearning for them, but disconnected, as acha anochim avakish He ends up in a state where his brothers strip him of his coat and put him in a bar. How does the rebuilding work? He has to walk back every one of those steps, and the Torah lines it up perfectly. He ends up in the house of Eshtus Potifar, where he's being pursued. Question number one, Yosef HaTzaddik, how did you get down here? You got down here because you were not acting with dignity. Will you be willing When nobody else will ever know that you are going to do that, avera, nobody would have found out? Will you be willing to run undressed into the streets of Mitzrayim and to leave that coat that you made yourself feel so good about? Will you be willing to leave it behind if you have to pay the ultimate price? If you're going to end up in an Egyptian jail, are you willing to do it? What does Yosef Hadadik say in that moment? Yes.

30:03 I'm a man of dignity. I saw my father's face in the window. The Gemara tells us that Yaakov Avinu, Bemarav Nevuah, said to him All the shvatim are going to end up as stones on the begadim of the kohen gadol. Are you going to be there too, or are you going to forfeit your position? Yosef Hadadik says, 'No, I'm changing this story. It's not enough that he says I'm not doing it. He looks himself in the mirror and he says, "I'm going to be willing to go." Here it is, girls, ready? Into the dark places inside of myself that I don't want to go. I'm going to be willing to look at my childhood wounds. I'm going to be willing to look at my pain. Every one of us has a Pandora's box that we carry inside of us. And that Pandora's box is the place where you live from. Just because you have a box that you won't open, that you put inside of you, and that you've buried real deeply, does not mean for one second that box is not nourishing your life. How many of us? The answer is everybody. How many of us are acting out pain that we do not understand because we're not willing to go into the depths of our being to really see who we are?

31:08 You see, an alcoholic after they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, after they go to therapy, after they really work on themselves, the reason they're so dramatically different is because they were willing to go down into an Egyptian jail. They were willing to go into the darkest place to find themselves. Now Yosef Hatzadik says it's all Hashem. You want me to interpret your dreams? I'm not at the center of the world anymore. It's Hakadosh Baruch Hu interpreting your dreams, and that's why Yosef HaTzaddik is punished. Even though you'll say, 'What did he do wrong? He just did a little bit of shtadlus.' There's nothing wrong with doing shtadlus, but for Yosef HaTzaddik, it was still coming from a little bit of a place of reaching beyond, not from a place of self, but drawing his power from others, and that's why he had to stay in jail until what? Until he was completely a balbitachon, and then an amazing thing happens. You're a balbitachon, you're in self, you've achieved that level.

31:58 You're taken out of the bar. Yaakovinu, the authority figure, sends him out. Paro summons him. You were playing with your hair. Now you get a haircut. You're not a kid anymore. Now you're regal. Now you're regal. A regal person being brought in front of the king. It's not about playing with your hair. You have hair in order to be dignified. You have clothing in order to be dignified, and Yosef HaTzaddik says even toparo, it's all Hashem, and that's why Yosef HaTzaddik is able to teach the entire world. There's a famine, no problem. When there's a famine, if you're in self, then you know there's enough for everybody. You have an abundance mentality, not an impoverished mentality. You know they tell stories in the Holocaust that the Nazis Yimachshamam bezichrom would give one blanket to seven people, and they'd have to share that blanket. And they tell stories that they had no problem sharing the blanket. If you've ever been to Poland, if you've ever been to Auschwitz or to any of the concentration camps, they slept on boards, and they were tiny. Seven people slept on a board together, and they had one blanket that barely covered all of them. But they said it covered all of us. Why? Because each one wanted to make sure that everybody else had enough blanket.

33:07 When you have an abundance mentality, you know everyone can get what they need. So Yosef HaTzaddik, in self with that abundance mentality, says chevra. If we all pool our resources. If everyone brings their stuff down to Mitzrayim No problem. We'll have enough for everybody. An unbelievable thing happens. It was metaphysical. The Shvatim are all the way in Eretz Canaan, and there's a famine. But they start having charata. They start having regret. Where did the regret come from? I don't understand. They made the decision L'shem Shamayim that Yosef Etzadik was a rodef and that he had to be killed, and they made the decision to sell him down to Mitzrayim. Where did the charata come from? This is an amazing idea. When you're in self People, without even understanding why, will change the way they relate to you. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to do anything. Just by being in self, just by being your true self, just by being really present with yourself, all of a sudden that person who up until now dispelled other people—they run away from him. Now they're like, we regret what we did to him.

34:08 We're gonna get him at any cost. It doesn't matter what the cost is. We're gonna find him, and whatever they charge us, we're gonna make it work. We're gonna figure it out. Why? Who changed the Shvatim or Yosef HaTzaddik? It was Yosef. It was Yosef who changed. Memela, they changed, but was their change complete? The change wasn't complete, and Yosef HaTzaddik knew this. Why? Because they didn't recognize him. They were searching for him, but they didn't recognize him. So what did Yosef do? Yosef said, "I got to keep working on this. I got to keep working on this." Until finally, he says, "Ani Yosef, haodavichai." That climactic moment—it wasn't just for his brothers; it was also for him. What was he declaring? "Ani Yosef" I finally did it. I came into myself. Haodavichai. Who do I care about? I care about my father. That's what I care. He knew his father was alive.

34:59 I care about my dad. Up until now, did I really care about my father? When we're acting selfishly, when we're acting from an impoverished mentality, we don't care about others. Now Yosef says, 'Ani Yosef, I will ravichai.' And in the climax of the story, what happens? The same father that sent them away to go find his brothers, which maybe was a little bit of a mistake. If you know the brothers hate him, why are you sending Yosef Fatzadik to go find him? The ultimate symmetry Yaakov Avinu is brought down to Mitzrayim. Finally, Yaakov Avinu, who in our parsha is Bkeshleishev Beshalva, is looking for some serenity in his life. Where does he get the serenity? He doesn't get the serenity all the way till the end of his life when he reunites with Yosef Hatzadik. Yosef is at the center. When Yosef is in self, everything else falls into place. Everything else clicks. This is an unbelievable mussar for us.

35:50 We're sitting here in December of Arshanah Aleph. We're in December of Arshanah Bet. We came with hopes and dreams and aspirations that this would be a transformative year. There's three types of people. There's people that come, they coast through their year. They come, they coast. I was a good girl beforehand. I'll be a good girl afterwards. I'm fine. Say that. Not too bad, not too good, just kind of coasting. And there's girls that they'll change. They'll make those changes in their life, but they're external. And if you're doing that and you're saying, "And I feel unfulfilled," I'm going to tell you the reason you feel unfulfilled right now. It's because it's not coming from a deep place of self. You're not doing the real work. You're not challenging yourself to go to that Egyptian jail that lives inside of all of us and say, "How did I arrive in this moment?" If you're spending your time blaming everyone else for your condition, just know that's the symptom of the original condition that destroyed your life.

36:51 You know how many girls walk around and they go, "I don't know. Why don't they do this in this seminary? Why don't they do that?" Why aren't the girls more like that? If you're spending your time talking about other people, if you're giving dibasam ra, if you're sending out negative messages, it's not because places are negative. It's because there's negativity living in your heart. I heard once an amazing line from a rav of a shul. When he became rav of the shul, he said There's no such thing as saying this shul. Don't say this shul. Why in this shul do they do it like that? He said, 'There's no such thing as saying this shul.' He said, 'Just change it to our shul.' Why in our shul are we doing it like this? What is the difference? In one, you're blaming, and in the other, you're taking ownership.

37:40 People who live in self take ownership of their lives. You want something to be different in Toma Devora? Make it different. It's your seminary. You want something to be different? Own it. He wants to say I don't understand why I'm not connecting to the girls. There's a story. It's not a true story, but it's a good martial of a guy that dated two hundred girls, and he went. It's not a true story. Two hundred girls. Just let's make it three hundred. Why not? Three hundred girls. And he went to his rashiya complaining. He said, Rebbe, I don't understand. Why can't I find someone to get married to? So rashiya starts stroking his beard and he starts chuckling. And finally, he says to the guy. Is there tzara shave? Is there something that all these girls had in common? A reason why all of them didn't work out? This was a real yeshiva guy, he's a real thinker. So he starts thinking himself. I broke up with this girl for this reason, and I broke up with that girl for that reason. Rebbe, there's no tzara shave. Every single one of these girls was different. So the yeshiva looks at him and he goes, No, there is one thing they all had in common.

38:37 The Bachar goes, What is it? He goes, You. You're the one thing they all had in common. There are people that walk around and they dispel people from their life. They go, I don't understand, why don't people connect to me? If you're in self, you're a nuclear reactor of love and connection. If you're who you're supposed to be People are naturally attracted to you. They want to be a part of your orbit because it's beautiful, pleasant, wonderful, and non-judgmental. Accepting, inviting place to be. Who wouldn't want to be around a person like that? If people don't want to be in your orbit, there's something in your orbit that's not going on. It's not a happy place. Nobody wants to be around that. There's always these people that walk around with a kayak of cynicism. Cynicism is a machlo. You should know. Cynicism is a disease.

39:25 It's one thing to pay attention to things and say we're going to fix them. Cynicism is a disease. You see cynical people. They feel very powerful. There's always one commonality when you meet a cynical person. They don't have real friends. Who would want to be around that? You ever meet somebody who speaks a lot of lashon hara to you? And somewhere deep inside of your heart, you go like, "I don't want to tell her anything. She's not a place of trust." How do I know that one day she's not going to speak that way about me? When we're in self, we're inviting people in. We're happy, pleasant, wonderful people. We won't be sent away. People come looking for us. That's the avodah. The avodah of this generation is to be like Rabbi Freifeld said about the Chazon Ish: a giant circle. The bigger the circle, the more people you encompass.

40:15 The story ultimately is a tragic story. The story of Yosef Hazadik going down to Mitzrayim is about a young boy who was disconnected from himself, and as a result, was disconnected from his brothers. The hero of the story is Yosef Hazadik because he had the courage to look inside of himself, to become a person of connection, and ultimately to connect with his brothers. Halavai, we should be zocher to do the same. Girls have a wonderful Shabbos.