Parshas Mikeitz

Liyluy Nishmas Elchonon Tzvi ben R' Yisroel Menachem, Zekaini Moiri R'
Baruch Moshe Aryeh ben Harav Zev Yehuda, Zev Yehuda ben Rav Shmuel
Mordechai, Avraham ben R' Yitzchok Zev, R' Dovid Meir ben Rav Shmuel,
Daniel Feivish ben R' Yaakov Yitzchak, Eliyahu ben R, Mordechai
Haleivi
 In perek mem beis posuk chaf dalid the posuk says, "Vayosov mei'aleihem vayeivch, vayashav aleihem vayidaber aleihem, vayikach mei'itam es Shimon vaye'esar oso l'eineihem."  "He (Yosef) turned away from them and wept,he returned to them and spoke to them; he took Shimon from them and imprisoned him before their eyes."  The Medrash Tanchuma gives two pirushim why Yosef imprisoned Shimon.  The first Pirush is because he was the one that pushed Yosef into the pit.  Another pshat is because he didnt wan't him to advise his brothers to kill him.  The Medrash continues that as soon as Yosef took Shimon to imprison him, Shimon said to his brothers, "This is what you did to Yosef and now you're trying to do it to me too!"  To which the brothers responded, "What do you want us to do? If we don't follow his orders our entire families will perish in this famine."  Shimon believed that just as the brothers wanted to kill Yosef, they wanted to get rid of him.  Even though he knew that Yosef was the one calling the shots, and they had no choice but to listen, he believed that somewhere in the hearts of his brothers they were happy to be rid of him.  The brothers response to him is to remind him of the seemingly obvious and already known fact that they have no control over the situation, and that if they don't listen their families will perish.  The Rosh Yeshiva ztl asks, how did the brothers response to Shimon remove his suspicions?  He knew that the brothers had no control and still had his suspisions so what changed?

   The Rosh Yeshiva explains, that when the brothers responded to Shimon, true it was something he already knew, but they said it whole heartedly, and truly meant it.  Shimon was able to sense that and realized that they weren't looking to get rid of him.  "Dvarim hayotzim min haleiv nichnasim el haleiv."  "Words that come from the heart, enter into the heart."  Shimon knew from the way their response struck him that they must have been telling the truth.

    This is an important thing for everyone to remember, Parents, Rabbeim and even friends, "Words from the heart reach the heart", and the recipient always knows where the words are truly coming from.. Good Shabbos and Afreillechin Chanuka!!

Parashas Vayeishev

Liyluy Nishmas Elchonon Tzvi ben R' Yisroel Menachem, Zekaini Moiri R'
Baruch Moshe Aryeh ben Harav Zev Yehuda, Zev Yehuda ben Rav Shmuel
Mordechai, Avraham ben R' Yitzchok Zev, R' Dovid Meir ben Rav Shmuel,
Daniel Feivish ben R' Yaakov Yitzchak, Eliyahu ben R, Mordechai
Haleivi

In Perek Kuf Yud Dalid Kapital Gimmel in Tehillim it says "Ha'yam Ra'ah Va'yanas" Chazal discuss that what the sea saw that caused it to split was the aron of Yosef that was coming toward the sea. Hashem told the sea "Yanus Mipnei Hanas" as it says in Perek Lamud Tes Posuk Yud Beis "Va'yanas Va'yeitzei Hachutzah"..Yosef fled and ran outside (away from eishes Potiphar).Rav Chaim Shmulevitz ztl is troubled by why running out was singled out from all the other things that he did - For stopping himself from the etzem aveira he got tremendous schar. Not only that, Chazal go through each limb of his and the schar that he got for not doing an aveira with that limb.Obviously there is  something extra special and extra hard about his running outside above all the other restraints,that caused him to get the greatest reward of all, having the Yam Suf split to save all of Klal Yisroel,.Reb Chaim explains,that this teaches us a tremendous yesod in the avoda of man. We all think that we will work on ourselves for years and then we'll go out out and fight our yetzer harah! We think that after preparing for the fight, we have a chance against him! How foolish can we be?! From Yosef we see the way to win is to run, get out of the ring.He knew that sticking around for even one more second would just increase his chances of losing the battle. He understood the power of the yetzer harah and therefore ran for his life not even taking a second to grab his beged (which ended up costing him jail time).Its not easy,in fact its extremely difficult,and that is why Yosef got the most schar for that action. However,it is vital for us to take this to heart. It is almost impossible to beat the yetzer harah, no matter how great we think we are. Don't make it into a boxing match,its not worth it. Sometimes it's good to look like a chicken, sometimes that's the only way to win..Good Shabbos

Parshas Vayishlach

Liyluy Nishmas Elchonon Tzvi ben R' Yisroel Menachem, Zekaini Moiri R'
Baruch Moshe Aryeh ben Harav Zev Yehuda, Zev Yehuda ben Rav Shmuel
Mordechai, Avraham ben R' Yitzchok Zev, R' Dovid Meir ben Rav Shmuel,
Daniel Feivish ben R' Yaakov Yitzchak, Eliyahu ben R, Mordechai
Haleivi,
In perek lamud hei posuk chaf beis the posuk says "Vayihi bishkon Yisrael ba'aretz hahi vayeilech Reuven vayishkav es Bilha pilegesh aviv vayishma Yisrael."  "And it came to pass While Yisrael dwelt in the land, Reuven went and lay with Bilha his fathers concubine, and Yisrael heard."  Rachel passed away and Yaakov moved his bed into Bilha's tent.  Reuven feeling that Yaakov's bed should have been put in his mothers tent went and moved it.  The Torah considered the aveira so wrong that he is considered as if he lay with his father's concubine.  The Ramban says on this incident that it shows the "anava", humility, of yaakov avinu.  He heard about what Reuven did and did not command him to leave his house and kick him out of the family and the shvatim.  Rather he counted him as one of the shvatim, and counted him as the first one as the shvatim, his true spot. 

      The Torah is complimenting Yaakov on his great humility for not kicking Reuven out of his house.  Its obvious that the Torah is not praising Yaakov for not having a wrong amount of "gaivah" because it is no "chidush" that Yaakov did not attain a level of "gaivah" that would be totally incorrect.  Rather the Torah must be praising Yaakov for being totally void of "gaivah" and on a tremendous level of "anava", and is saying that without this he would have thrown Reuven out.

       The Rosh Yeshiva ztl asks, "mima nafshach", if the right thing was for Yaakov to throw Reuven out then why is he praised for not throwing him out, and if the right thing to do was not throw him out, then why such praise for doing what he was supposed to?  The Rosh yeshiva explains that the right thing to do was what Yaakov actually did do, however even a drop of "gaivah" would have changed his decision and caused him to believe that the right thing to do was to throw him out.  The fact that he was on that level deserves recognition.  The Rosh Yeshiva explains that there is still a question begging to be asked.  Lets say Yaakov wasn't a full fledged "anav", and maybe he had a little bit of a negia to want to throw Reuven out, but we know the draw that Yaakov had to the truth "Titein emes l"Yaakov", shouldn't his desire for the truth overcome everything else?  He explains that obviously from the Ramban we see that even with his tremendous draw toward "emes", just a drop of "gaivah" would have skewed his decision.  We see from here the extremely negative effect that even a tiny dose of gaiva has on a person.  We should be zoche to work on our gaiva and be able to make the right decisions in everything in our lives. Good Shabbos

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Parshas Vayetzei

Liyluy Nishmas Elchonon Tzvi ben R' Yisroel Menachem, Zekaini Moiri R'
Baruch Moshe Aryeh ben Harav Zev Yehuda, Zev Yehuda ben Rav Shmuel
Mordechai, Avraham ben R' Yitzchok Zev, R' Dovid Meir ben Rav Shmuel,
Daniel Feivish ben R' Yaakov Yitzchak, Eliyahu ben R, Mordechai
Haleivi,
 In perek chaf tes posuk chaf hei the posuk says "Vayihi baboker vihinei hi Leah, vayomer el Lavan ma zos asisa li halo b'Rachel avaditi imach v'lamah rimisani" "And it was in the morning and behold it was Leah, so he said to Lavan, what is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that i worked for you? Why have you deceived me?"

 Rashi explains, that Yaakov only realized in the morning that he had married Leah when he believed he was marrying Rachel, because he had given Rachel "simanim" signs with which she was to identify herself. Rachel however realized the embarrassment Leah would have felt when her father sent her in the place of Rachel, and she would fail to give over the simanim correctly, and gave Leah the simanim.

 The Medrash Raba, on the posuk where Rachel names Naftali (lamud, ches) says, that originally when Rachel allowed Leah to marry Yaakov, Rachel said "If I am not deserving of having the world built from me, at least let it be built by my sister".

    The Rosh yeshiva ztl asks, what does Rachel mean she is not deserving?How did she know that she did not deserve to the the "Ima" of the world? She was the woman he had planned on marrying, she was the one he had worked so hard to acquire .She just felt she couldn't go along with his plans because she could not bare to cause such pain to her sister, as is explained in the gemora in Megilla. It would seem that she was the rightful zivug, she was not undeserving or the wrong one, she just felt that the right thing to do was to give it up.

 The Rosh Yeshiva explains that what Chazal are teaching us, and what rachel was saying was that this marriage was obviously not for her. Rachel was saying that if she was truly supposed to marry Yaakov, Hashem would not have put her in a position where the right thing to do was to give up the simanim. She understood, that it was not " I'm the rightful match just something came up", that something coming up wass a raayah, that that is not the way it is supposed to be. That is why she said "If i am undeserving i may as well let my sister be zoche". "She is not stealing this zechus away from me, because it is not rightfully mine" 

 I heard from my Rebbe, Rabbi Kaufman shlita what is a davar pashut but so true, and oftentimes forgotten. If a businessman was about to close the biggest deal of his life, when suddenly a a Navi hashem walked in and told him " Do not make that deal it will be a tremendous mistake" The businessman would probably feel indebted to the Navi forever for saving him from this terrible mistake. However, if this same businessman was about to make the biggest deal of his life, and the fellow offering him this deal says " Ill see you Saturday morning to close the deal, and I don't want to hear any excuses if you're not there you can kiss this deal goodbye". Although the businessman would not go, he would probably hate Shabbos for the rest of his life. We all are guilty of this on one level or another. Shouldn't the businessman realize that Shabbos is Hashem's way of telling him "Don't do the deal", it is the same as the Navi Hashem just in a little disguise. There are times in our lives when we may have grand plans of how things in our life will work out, but how we think they will end up and how they do, are many times completely different. So many times if we just take a moment to realize that the fact that things didn't work out the way we thought they would is because Hashem being the loving father that he is causes things to happen sometimes hold us back from what we think we want in order to do what is truly best for us. This is not to say that one should not feel any pain, as we said recently "when it hurts we cry" and I'm sure Rachel was deeply grieved to be unable to marry Yaakov, yet she understood that not marrying him was the right thing, it was what Hashem wanted. We should be zoche to see the not so obvious yad Hashem in all aspects of our life, but especially when things may seem to be the opposite of what we had hoped for. Good Shabbos