english VAYIGASH 2012
HOW ABOUT NOW
We find something in this week’s parasha that blows my mind every time I think about it. והנה עיניכם ראות ועיני אחי בנימין כי פי המדבר אליכם . Rashi tells us here, in accordance with the Talmud in Meggilah 16, Yosef told his brothers – just as I do not have anything against my brother Binyamin, who was not involved in selling me, so, too, I do not have anything against you . How was Yosef able to accomplish this? To put the years of jail, degradation being sold as slave and separation from his father all behind him? Not only did Yosef forget about what they did to him, he even called his son Menashe, כי נשני אלקים את כל עמלי . Yosef named his son after his ability to forget all of his troubles from the past. How did Yosef master this astounding ability to forget and forgive? What was the trick that Yosef had that allowed him to “let go” of the past? So much of human psychology today is focused on helping people who are entangled in their past emotions to break free of them. What did Yosef do, without the assistance of a psychologist, to get over things?
Yosef told his brothers his secret… ועתה אל תעצבו ואל יחר בעיניכם כי מכרתם אותי הנה כי למחיה שלחני אלקים לפניכם… , ועתה לא אתם שלחתם אתי הנה כי האלקים… And now, do not be sad, do not get angry at your having sold me to this place, because G-d sent me out before you to sustain you… And now, you did not send me here , but rather G-d… What was Yosef repeating to them with the word ועתה, Now? Just skip the word “Now”!
The answer is the secret that preserved Yosef’s true identity. ועתה , Now. Yosef did not try to forget about the past. He just lived in the present, the present being whatever G-d had made his reality , and the past was automatically forgotten.
This is extremely difficult to explain. But it is very easy to understand. There are different levels of Now. Anything that we can see, hear, smell, feel, or taste is in the Now. Anything that is actionable is in the Now. Anything and everything else is past or future. All the sadness, anger and stress that we humans just can’t let go of are thoughts of the past or future, not thoughts of Now. We cannot do anything about the past or the future, and that is why thoughts about the past and future (about 80 percent of average human thoughts are past / future thoughts) are so stressful. I will repeat that. The reason why thoughts from the past are so stressful is because we cannot do anything about them; they are not actionable. Even when we try talking to others about these thoughts of past and future, they can never fully see ,feel , hear what we mean, just the way it is in our mind. So, we remain alone in our thought. The thought does not exist anywhere else in the world except in the mind of the person suffering from it. Most people, by now, may think that I am exaggerating when I say 80 percent of “thoughts” are past and future. But I will prove this to you. Next time you notice that your mind was not focused while you were praying, try to remember the thoughts to which your mind drifted – they were either past or future. If it had been thoughts of the present, the Now, then you would have been focused in your prayers. Any other thought is not actionable during prayers, because you were standing with your feet together, just in middle of praying. At that time you could not do anything else, so they could not have been thoughts of Now or actionable thoughts.
I once saw that someone wrote, “Any thought that you think about more than once is a stressful thought. If it is actionable, then, just do it. If it is not, then it is just slowing you down, so forget about it.” This is what Yosef said – ועתה אל תעצבו . Now- in the Now, after your repentance, there is nothing to be sad about. Don’t start digging up the past, regretting that you sold me. The Chasam Sofer actually points this out. The Midrash (ב״ר, פכ״א) tells us that the word, ועתה is a word that connotes Teshuva. Whenever we see that word, there is something that relates to repentance. The reason is that Teshuva is bringing a person into the Now. The person repenting makes the most out of the Now. The penitent leaves the past behind him. In the Now, he is a new person. Teshuva is not about ripping out the past. That is impossible for us humans to do. Only G-d can do that for us. When a person wants to go to the past and change things, he is making an unrealistic request; that is not Teshuva. When a person wants to make the best out of the Now, to assure that whatever it is that he regrets will never happen again, that is Teshuva. Once he does that , he gets closer to G-d. And connecting to G-d uproots all evil, including the evil of the past .The person that he was before his proper repentance no longer exists. It is just a thought. And this is what Yosef told his brothers, as well. I love you now, because the brothers that I see in front of me have repented and do not want to be the same as they were in the past. Now that you did Teshuva out of love, your past action is nullified. My being sold as a slave was solely an act of G-d. (חתם סופר על התורה )
A step further. There is no greater tool to bring one success than his own mind. And, conversely, there is no greater tool for self destruction than one’s own mind. We all have thoughts, all the time. This does not mean that we are thinking. “Thinking” is facilitation thoughts that are actionable in the present, in the Now. No one ever got hurt from thinking. People get hurt only from thoughts. Thoughts are past and future. “Thinking” is in the present. When we get into the present we are connecting with reality, not just theoretical thoughts, and if there is something to do, there is no stress.
The “Now” is not only a concept of time. It is a concept of bechira, of remaining in the field of free choice presented to me by G-d, where I can be the most “actionable” . Not only past and future thoughts bring stress, stopping one from being in the Now, and doing the most effective, actionable thing that can be done. When we look around us, feeling that we are competing with others and not with “our self of yesterday”, this is another cause for stress that removes us from the Now. Yosef told his brothers אל תרגזו בדרך , Don’t get angry on the way. The Rebbe from Kretchenif (תורת חיים ואמונה) has a great Chassidic take on this passuk. Yosef told the tribes that each one has his own unique way of getting close to G-d; each shevet has his way of being mekadesh shem shamayim in the world. Don’t start fighting which way is the right way. When we do that, we are missing “our way”. We are missing the Now.
THE MOST NOBLE OF ALL
Many of us know that theHoly Temple in Jerusalem was situated in the portions of Yehuda and Binyamin. The reason for the Temple being located in Binyamin’s lot was for something he did not do. All the tribes, excluding Binyamin, bowed to Esav. Binyamin had not yet been born. Yehuda, however, merited his share of theTemple by actively choosing to take responsibility for returning his brother, Binyamin, to his father. Yehuda also merited being the direct forefather of King David and the royal family, including Mashiach. He won these significant honors for having confessed his intimacy with Tamar.
We may ask why confession and responsibility were rewarded so highly. We may wonder why Yehuda merited such great things for his actions.
The Yalkut states, concerning Yehuda (on the passuk,(יהודה אתה יודוך אחיך One who overpowers his Yetzer and admits his misdeeds – he merits the World to Come. R’ Dessler deduces that one can truly admit his shortcomings only if he first overpowers his Yetzer. What are the ramifications of this statement? Many confessions are made. Few are made out of an understanding of the severity of the transgression and out of an inner will to respect justice. This purity of motivation was reflected by Yehuda, who did not have to admit his deed with Tamar. No one else knew what had happened. His confession was an act of answering his own inner truth, and was not affected by any external considerations.
Yehuda did not have to take responsibility for Binyamin. He wanted to. Yehuda realized that his life went downhill following his having arranged the sale of Yosef. His sons, Er and Onan, married Tamar and lived lives with unacceptable behavior before G-d. He lost his sons as punishment for having taken away Yaakov’s son from him. When Yehuda confessed to himself what he had done, he wanted to take responsibility for his actions. This is the trait of a lion, a symbol that Yehuda so much deserved. The strength of a lion is that he does not care what any other animal thinks. He eats large quantities of meat, sleeps most of the day and lives the way he wants. What he does and how he acts is dictated by what he feels. To overcome the yetzer and do a genuine form of Teshuva, one’s actions must come from a feeling that I am not doing this in order to impress others. I am going to do what is right and take responsibility for my actions, because that is what I really want to do.
This is the greatest and deepest aspect of the rebuke of the End of Time mentioned in the Midrash (Rabba 93:10). The Midrash compares Yosef’s rebuke of his brothers to the rebuke of G-d to humanity in the future. G-d will come and reprove each and every person according to who he is. Rabbi S. Pincus explains that the most frightening judgment we will endure at that time is hypothetical judgment. Suppose that the negative acts we refrained from would have been accepted socially: would we still have refrained from them? This judgment will reveal the true self, not that which was dictated by social mores. Let us take murder, for instance. How different is a person who did not commit murder because it was not accepted in his social circles from a person who refrained from such an act in obedience to G-d’s commandment? If, for example, killing would be socially acceptable, as it was in Nazi Germany, many people would “go along” with what was the “norm”, without examining their actions against any absolute concept of right or wrong. If, for some reason, the doctors in a hospital were on strike, and it was accepted that doctors were, at present, off duty, would a particular doctor still keep his hands in his pockets , refraining from treating patients who could be healed? The judgment of the End of Days reveals if we are who we are because that’s who we want to be, or because we are the product of social pressure. We will be tested to see if we would have passed the test, even if no one would ever know our mark.
This nobility in the act of Yehuda shined forth in a very unique way. We know that Reuven also, took responsibility for his brother, Yosef. He convinced his brothers not to kill Yosef, but instead, to throw him into the pit. We do not see that Reuven was rewarded for this. In what way was his act different from that of Yehuda?
To pursue the question further: there is a Midrash (Mechilta Beshalach, ch. 5) that offers a second reason as to why Yehuda merited royal descendants. While the brothers wanted to kill Yosef, Yehuda saved him, by persuading his brothers to sell him as a slave. This act afforded Yehuda great merit. (see Rashi 49:9) Although we saw in other Midrashim that Yehuda lost his children as punishment for causing his father to lose his child. Also, Yehuda was excommunicated by his brothers for selling Yosef (וירד יהודה) after they saw that their father, Yaakov, could not be consoled. Still, it remains to Yehuda’s credit that Yosef was not killed. Reuven, for the same act, was not rewarded at all.
The Siftei Chachamim, (37, 40), states that Reuven’s motivation was partially due to the fact that he was worried that his father would blame him. He had already angered his father once (by moving Yaakov’s bed from Bilha’s tent to Leah’s), and he wanted to avoid doing so again. Reuven was more concerned with keeping his good name than he was with taking responsibility to save Yosef’s life. Yehuda, on the other hand, was credited for saving Yosef’s life by selling him, because he did not care what anyone would say. He knew that this was the only way he could save his brother, and he knew that he might be excommunicated for it. He merited having the HolyTemplein his territory, for he had taken responsibility for Binayamin out of his sense of duty alone. He did not act in order to exonerate himself from Yaakov’s suspicion that he had had a hand in the sale of Yosef. His father would not look at him in a bad light if he did not take responsibility, for Yaakov did not know that Yehuda was a main character in the selling of Yosef. And still, Yehuda felt that he wanted to take responsibility.
We find this nobility of dedication to doing what is right in the testimony of the Torah in regard to Yosef. When Yosef kept his distance from his master Potiphar’s wife, he told her that his reason for restraining himself was וחטאתי לאלקים And (by being with you) I would sin before G-d . Not because the master would find out his action. Not because Yosef’s family would find out. Not because of social status. Rather, because such an act is forbidden by G-d. This inner strength was unique in Yosef. It was also unique in Yehuda, expressed through his confession. This is the inner strength we find in Yehuda. For Yehuda to become a real baal teshuva from his actions with Tamar and in selling his brother, he had to be honest with himself and overcome all self-justification.
We can learn from Yehuda responsibility for our family. We can learn responsibility to the truth and to justice. We can learn to do good things, just because they are good. Nothing to do with how it makes us look. And we can learn the traits of the lion and humble ourselves and relinquish our honor for things that are more important. This behavior is fit for kings. These royal traits can be found in each and every one of us. All Jews are princes .(Shabbat 111a)
