Parshas Vayeishev

This week’s Parsha is called Parshas Vayeishev (VAH-YAY-SHEV).

In this week’s Parsha we learn that Yosef (Josef) was the youngest and most favorite son of Yaakov (Jacob) because at that time Yosef was the only child of Rachel, the wife that Yaakov loved the most. Because of his great love for Yosef, Yaakov made Yosef a special overcoat of many colors. Yosef’s older brothers became extremely jealous of him and their jealousy lead them to want to kill their younger brother. One night Yosef had a dream that he shared with his older brothers in the morning. The dream was as follows: There were ten bundles of wheat which represented the ten brothers and they were encircling one large bundle of wheat in the center which represented Yosef. Then the ten bundles began to bow to Yosef's bundle. Upon hearing this dream, his brothers became furious with him and felt, “what do you think that you are going to be a ruler over us?” Because of his dream, Yosef was hated even more. The next night Yosef had another dream and in the dream there were eleven stars and the sun and the moon and they all began to bow to one star. Again, Yosef related his dream to his brothers and also to his father. After sharing his dream, the brothers were angry with him again and Yaakov said to him, “Are I and your mother and your brothers to bow down to the ground before you?” after telling Yosef this, the passuk (passage) says “his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. “What this means is that Yaakov had a very special power called “Ruach HaKodesh” which means that Yaakov was given the ability by Hashem to see clips of the future. When the passuk says that Yaakov kept the matter in mind, it means that Yaakov saw (through his Ruach HaKodesh) that one day Yosef would be the ruler over all of them when…. Oops I guess I should save it till we learn about it in the upcoming parshas.

Anyways, Yaakov sent Yosef to check on his brothers who were working in the fields and as Yosef approached them they said “Hey look here comes the dreamer!” As Yosef got closer his older brothers began plotting on how to get rid of him, some said kill him, but Reuven said that they should throw him into one of the nearby pits. And they did. After having thrown Yosef in the pit a caravan of Ishmealites (Arabs) approached them with spices to sell. And the brothers thought of a better plan, they sold Yosef to them as a slave. Yosef was then taken to Egypt and sold to Potiphar. He worked very hard and Yosef’s master, Potiphar had a wife that liked Yosef a lot. Since he would not enter into a relationship with her Potifar's wife told her husband that Yosef attacked her and he threw Yosef in jail. Things just seemed very dark for Yosef.

While in jail there were two other prisoners, one a butler, and one a cupbearer, both were former servants of the Pharoh (King) and each of them had dreams that Yosef interpreted. The butler’s dream was; there was three baskets of bread on his head and birds were hovering around him eating the fruit. The cupbearer’s dream was he took fine wine from three grape vines and gave it to the Pharoh. Yosef said that in three days both the butler and cupbearer would be released from prison and the butler would be taken for death and the cupbearer would be restored to his position under Pharoh. This became the fate of both men.

After making the terrible decision to sell Yosef the brothers wanted to hide what they did and to trick their father, so they took Yosef’s colorful overcoat and dipped it in animal blood. When they took it to Yaakov right away he assumed that a wild beast tore Yosef to bits. Yaakov tore his clothing and mourned the death of Yosef.

There are different perspectives in which one can view this terrible story. We can think " how could brothers (and not just any brothers but brothers so holy that we cannot understand their greatness) do such things and have such feelings, and how is it possible that Yaakov (the father of the B'nai Yisrael) favored one son more then the rest? Etc. Or one could look at this and learn that even though we often think we are in control of our own personal situations, we are NOT! Hashem is in control of everything and everything Hashem does is for a reason and we are often unable to see the reason but no matter how good or bad the circumstances are Hashem hand picked them as the perfect experiences for each and every one of us. We are going to learn in the next few weeks how out of this seemingly dark story will come the brilliant light of the Jewish people.

May we all learn from here to always, know that everything Hashem does is for our best! -Amen!

HAVE A GREAT SHABBOS AND WEEKEND!

Stay tuned for next week’s Parsha called Parshas Miketz!