דבר תורה פרשת וישב

דבר תורה פרשת וישב

There are so many times in this week's Parsha that Yosef finds himself in trouble situations. Each time, he somehow comes out in an okay position.  First, Yosef is thrown into the pit by his brothers to die, and then by chance a merchant caravan travels by and saves him. Next, while Yosef is working in the palace of Potiphar, Potiphar's wife accuses him of some wrongdoing, and he is then banished to jail. Another fall. In jail, somehow he meets some other prisoners, and he is brought out of jail to serve in the palace again.

  

Some people might call this luck or coincidence, but I am going to call it a נס, a miracle, or God guiding our lives from above.  Why נס?

A נס in hebrew is translated literally as a banner or a sail. These two items are things that lead people. The sail is there to give a boat direction and a banner tells people which way to go.  The נס for Yosef was God directing his life to success. 

Even the word נס in Hebrew alludes to the combination of fall in the direction and going back . נס is spelled Nun Samech (נ ס).  The Nun (נ) as we see in the Talmud refers to the word נפל - falling down. The Samech (ס) reference is to סמח which is to support and pick up, give direction. So the word implies both falling, and getting up or supporting. 

This is exactly what happened with Yosef. Each time that he was put in a tough situation, each time he fell, he was brought back up, was supported. This was not a coincidence - this must have been a נס - a miracle - from Hashem, who supports each and every one of us when he fall. 

Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Steven Penn

דבר תורה פרשת ויצא

דבר תורה פרשת ויצא

Yaakov comes a long journey, and reaches Eretz Bnei Kedem, right near Charan. He arrives to the well outside of the city to see that there are some flocks of sheep along with three shepherds waiting to drink. There is a big rock on top of the well, and Yaakov asks, "Why don't you take the rock off of the well, so that your sheep can drink?" They respond that they CAN NOT remove it until all of the other shepherds come. It is too heavy to be removed with just three shepherds! Each day, they have a meeting time for all of the shepherds to come together to take the rock off of the well, and at that time they all give their sheep something to drink. 

Right then, Rachel was coming to the well. When Yaakov sees Rachel coming, he goes to the well and removes the rock so that he could give water to her sheep. 

How was he able to remove the rock all by himself, wasn't the rock too heavy?

Rabbi Norman Lamm says that he was able to do this because he put his mind to it. The shepherds did not believe that they could do it, so they were not able to. If you put your mind to something, and it is important enough to you, you will be able to do it. Yaakov shows us this. 

Later on, in Parshat Vayishlach, when Yaakov is fighting with the angel, at one point, it says that the angel realizes that he COULD NOT beat him. This shows us again, how Yaakov is triumphant when he has an attitude that he CAN do it. 

If we believe that we CAN do things, anything is possible. Progress is made able by attitude. We should take a lesson from Yaakov Avinu and realize that we are capable of anything that we set our mind to. 

Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Steven Penn