Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] This week it's Parshas Vayechi and it's also Shabbos Chazak, meaning this Shabbos. When we read the Torah, we're going to be finishing the book of Genesis and we'll be starting next week, God willing, the book of Exodus, the book of Shmois, which will take us into the Egyptian exile and our eventual redemption from Mitzrayim from Egypt.
[00:00:35] This week, before we jump into the podcast, there's two things I wanted to talk to you about.
[00:00:40] The first thing is something that I've been doing for the past couple of years and that on Parshas Vayaki this Shabbos, it's customary for a lot of congregations and rabbis to talk about end of life issues.
[00:00:58] Now, this is obviously something which is uncomfortable for everybody, but it's important to remember that if we live our lives as Jews, we want to pass on and die as Jews. And this week's parsha, because this week's Parsha deals with the death of Yaakov. Yaakov Jacob makes preparations for his own passing and he gives instructions to his children. It's become a custom of sorts that many people, you know, congregations, they discuss these topics and it doesn't have to be so scary, but the point is people should be educated as to, you know, what the Torah's, uh, requirements are for a person to be buried properly, to not be cremated, and to, to do the correct halachic living will. That life for us is so important. We don't just pull the plug.
[00:01:52] So there's a lot of education that is important for all of us to have so we can make the right decisions for our loved ones, for ourselves after a long life.
[00:02:04] Bless everyone with a long and healthy life for them and all their families and everybody. But if we don't educate ourselves, if we don't know what we're supposed to do, then God forbid, things can happen that were never meant to happen.
[00:02:19] So before we begin, I'm going to leave a link in the show notes.
[00:02:24] It's for nasc. It's an organization that educates the Jewish community about end of life issues. I'll leave the link in the show notes. Now, another point I want to bring up actually is a story that happened to me this week.
[00:02:40] So thank God it's been a busy week.
[00:02:43] And earlier this week I had a very nice car repair that I Had to take care of. It's good. I try to take care of my cars. And if something was acting. The van was acting a little funny. So I brought it to the mechanic, and it was a nice repair.
[00:03:03] Thank God paid for it.
[00:03:05] But it was a little bit unexpected.
[00:03:09] And when I got a text a day or two ago that somebody had some money for me, $1,000 that had just come out of nowhere, I was excited. I was like, wow, okay. It made sense to me. I helped someone out.
[00:03:24] So there was somebody else who had a check. He's like, I have a check for you.
[00:03:30] Um, I didn't totally add up, but I'm like, okay, if somebody has a check for me, that's. That's great. I'll take it. So this fellow who had the check, I was supposed to be at, uh, an event where he was going to be at.
[00:03:42] I know it's a little bit ambiguous here, but it's too hard to get into the details. But the point is, we made up that when he would be at this event yesterday and I would be there, he would give me the check, and I would be able to go on my way. And I was a little bit, uh. I was happy about it because I wasn't expecting it.
[00:03:58] I'm like, okay, I guess I helped. I helped out, and it was decided I should get a few dollars.
[00:04:06] So yesterday, I see this fellow. He hands me this envelope, and on my way out, when I have a few moments to myself, I look in the envelope, and I see very clearly that the check is not made out to me. It was made out to something else. He misunderstood.
[00:04:23] The envelope was addressed to me, but the check was meant to go somewhere else.
[00:04:26] And I obviously, I gave it back to him, and he apologized for making that mistake. But it sort of, you know, had me thinking a little bit. Like, Hashem, um, he wanted me to have this expense a car up here.
[00:04:42] I accept that. No problem. You know, threw me a little bit of a loop, but it's good. And then I got excited because maybe some of that money. Hashem was also sending me some money to pay for the KAR appear, right?
[00:04:55] But then it wasn't for me. So I was trying to think about it, like, you know, why did these things happen? Right? Hashem, uh, was the one who made this person reach out to me, and at the same time, it wasn't for me. But why does that happen?
[00:05:09] And I think a lesson for us to really maybe internalize, for myself included, is that a lot of times in life, it's easy for us to thank Hashem for everything that goes according to the way that we want it to go to. So when we make the flight or we get that random check in the mail from the IRS giving us, uh, this money that they owe us. It actually happened to me once. But the point is, when we get that money out of nowhere, it's like, oh, thank you, Hashem. Everything. Hashem M Runs the world perfectly.
[00:05:41] But when we have a situation where we miss the bus, we miss the flight, right? And things don't work out as planned. Right. The check is not for you. It's for someone else.
[00:05:53] We have to realize that it's exactly how Hashem wanted it, and it's exactly how it's supposed to be. It's not just when things work out for us. We realize that Hashem runs the world.
[00:06:04] But even when they, uh, when it seems like they don't work out for us, everything, of course, does work out for us. But the point is, we only see it with our meaty eyes that don't see so far. So I wanted to share that little tidbit with you, that little experience I had this week, you know, and I think maybe sharing with you gives me a little more HIZQ gives me a little more strength, and I hope it gives you a little more strength as well. And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to reach out. Maybe you want to share your story about these Hashkakha protest stories, these divine providence stories. Feel free to send me an email at rabbi shlomokon koh chanmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:06:48] This week's parsha is Parshas Vayechi. And as I mentioned before, the parsha focuses on Yaakov of Enu Jacob's passing and the preparations that he makes before he's going to die.
[00:07:03] He calls Yosef, who is the Viceroy of Egypt, who is his son that has the capabilities to ensuring that his final wishes will be respected and will be carried out.
[00:07:15] Yosef comes to his father. He blesses Yosef and his children, Ephraim, uh, and Manasseh.
[00:07:20] And Yaakov tells him to gather the rest of his brothers so that he can bless all of them. Right? There's this concept of a blessing, a bracha, where, you know, uh, that we have the ability.
[00:07:34] You know, it's even though Hashem is the one who grants blessing, he who gives it, but a person who's a righteous person, really any person, when you give a bracha, we sort of have this ability. It's like a prayer that Hashem should grant the things we need. And the more righteous a person is, greater effect that their blessing that their supplication can have with Hashem. Uh, so Yaakov instructs Yosef together, all the brothers, and he blesses each and every one separately, giving a civic blessing to the strengths and even weaknesses of each child, blessing them in their area where they they're going to lead, or their area that they need to strengthen.
[00:08:18] And the parsha continues with Yaakov passing away and the procession of.
[00:08:29] Of the brothers taking their father outside of the land of Egypt, because that was his instruction, to not be buried in the land of Egypt and to be taken to the land of Israel to be buried. Finally, the parsha finishes with Yosef reassuring his brothers that even though his father has passed, he reassures them because they're still nervous that maybe only after Yaakovinu has passed, now he'll take revenge. And he says no. And he forgives them again.
[00:08:56] And he gives over the signs of the eventual redemption from Egypt to the next generation. And Yosef passes on. He passes away in this week's parsha.
[00:09:06] The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the parsha.
[00:09:13] Yaakov, Jacob. After blessing Yosef and his two children, he starts giving brachos these blessings to Reuven.
[00:09:23] And the posseq reads as Reuven, bechairi a' ata koichi voracious oyini yeser se eis vieser.
[00:09:33] The next posse continues.
[00:09:40] Um, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and my initial vigor, Foremost in rank and foremost in power.
[00:09:49] Water like haste. You cannot be foremost because you mounted your father's bed. Then you desecrated him who ascended my couch.
[00:09:59] Now, the commentaries explain that this was a little bit of a chastising towards Reuven.
[00:10:06] Reuven, after the passing of Rachel, passing of Rachel, who is the mother of Yosef and Binyamin, moved his father's bed, meaning after Rachel had passed away, Yaakov moved his bed to the tent of Bilhah, who was the maidservant of Rachel. But Reuven, who was a son of Leah, felt that this wasn't, you know, honor for his mother, that Bila, who was like sort of the, uh, secondary wife, she wasn't the same status as Rachel and Leah. He felt it wasn't appropriate for his mother's honor that Yaakov's bed should be in the tent of Bila, who was, you know, not on the same Level Rukhlan Leah. So he took the bed and moved the bed from the tent of Bila to the tent of Leah.
[00:10:58] And Reuven was punished for this because Reuven was the firstborn, and the firstborn, he should have been entitled to the kahuna, to the priesthood, and the kingship that Reuven, uh, from him, he could have had the king. He could have been the line of kings could have been from him from the firstborn, and the priesthood could also been from the firstborn. But since he was, uh, too fast, he was water, like, he was quick to make a decision, it showed that he wasn't on the level to be the king and he was not on the level to have the priesthood. Now, obviously, this is hard to understand.
[00:11:43] Seems like he's rebuking his son. And there's. The commentators explain how this was a blessing for Reuven.
[00:11:48] But the point here is that I think we see a very important lesson when it comes to leadership and when it comes to making quick decisions.
[00:11:57] Now, obviously in life, we have to make decisions all the time. And the more, I guess the higher you go, uh, in leadership, the more decisions you need to make, right?
[00:12:12] But there's one thing you need to remember, and we need to remember at all times.
[00:12:17] Sometimes some decisions cannot be made too fast or out of emotion, because decisions that are made out of emotion, that are not made with the proper state of mind, are going to lead us to failure. And that's what happened. Obviously, we're talking about Reuven, who was, you know, the 12 shvatim. Um, they are the greatest of the great. We can't even comprehend the level. But on their level, he made a mistake. He made a mistake, Reuven, that he acted too fast. Maybe out of, you know, indignity about his mother's honor, he acted. He did this act. Maybe it was rooted in a correct place. He had the correct feeling of, you know, how he was feeling about her honor.
[00:13:01] But he did it when he shouldn't have. This is a powerful lesson that we see from this week's Parasha. Not just for leaders. Now, surely for a leader, don't just act out of emotion and make quick decisions. We should be deliberate in our judgment and make decisions from a rational place, right?
[00:13:20] And even if you're not a leader, but you're the leader of your family, you're the leader of yourself, right? Think about our children, that when it comes to our children and people who look up to us, they're looking how we make our decisions. We want our children to think before Acting right. And just not even just children. Like, how many people in society today, they just act and then they think later. And then when they think it's too late already because they made a decision that they're gonna have going to have consequences for the rest of their life.
[00:13:55] Obviously, the decisions we make are not always like that.
[00:13:59] Thankfully, we all make these mistakes. But the point is that we have to train ourselves to think before we act, not to act before we think. We need to be careful and deliberate to make sure we think before we act. And even more than that, think before we speak, to not just have no filter, let things come out, let just do whatever we want. It's not like that. And I think we see from this week's Parash the importance, from the fact that the leadership, the kingship, the kahuna, these positions of leadership that were supposed to go to Reuven were taken away from him because he had that trait. Now, obviously on his level, he had this trait of being too fast, making the decision too rash.
[00:14:39] It was taken away from him. We see the emphasis that we must place on working on this mida, this character development for ourselves.
[00:14:49] The second idea I want to share with you is a beautiful thought I saw brought down from, uh, Rabbi Twersky. He says that when the psukim, when the verses start out by telling us how Yaakov blesses his sons, it reads as, vayikra Yaakov el banav vayomer heyosvu va uh kit alachem.
[00:15:13] Then Jacob called for his sons and said, assemble yourselves, and I will tell you what will befall you in the end of days.
[00:15:21] That's the first verse. And actually the commentaries explain on this verse that Jacob, he wanted to tell his sons when Mashiach, when the end of days, when the Messiah is going to come. But hashem, ah, took that knowledge away from him. It was hidden, became hidden from Yaakov, and he didn't give it over to his sons. But either way, we see that the Torah refers to Yaakov as Jacob here.
[00:15:49] But then at the end of the Brachos, right after Yaakov blesses all his sons, the verse reads as follows.
[00:16:03] Asher dibel, Asher kivir, chosoi, beirachoisoi. All of these are the tribes of Israel 12. And this is what their father spoke to them.
[00:16:16] And he blessed them. He blessed each according to his appropriate blessing.
[00:16:22] So over here, after blessing all of his children, the Torah refers to Yaakov not as Jacob, but as Yisroel, as Israel, right? Yaakov had two names. His name when he was born was Yaakov Jacob, because he held on to the heel of Esav.
[00:16:43] And we know that after, you know, later on in his life, after he battled with the, uh, Malach, his name became Yisra'. El. And we know there was a subsequent prophecy where Hashem came to Yaakov and he said, you, name is Yisrael, which comes from the fact that he battled with a divine being and overcame.
[00:17:09] So it's very interesting. In the beginning of the Brachos, it refers to him as Yaakov Jacob, which is that heel, which was the name that was given to him at birth.
[00:17:20] And at the end of the Brachos, at the end of the blessing, the Torah refers to Yaakov not as Yaakov, to his children as Shivtei Yisrael, the tribes of Israel.
[00:17:33] And I think there's what to be said here. Btwersky brings down a beautiful thought about this. If you look at the name of Yaakov and the name of Yisrael, what does it symbolize? So, as I mentioned before, Yaakov Jacob comes from the word Okef, from heel. Yaakov was, you know, when he was born, he grabbed onto his brother's heel.
[00:17:57] That's the name he was given at birth.
[00:18:01] But Yisroel represents Yaakov after a life lived. It represents the fact that he was able to battle with a malach and overcome and still be standing. It represents accomplishment. So on one end, Yaakov represents raw materials, what he was given at birth.
[00:18:22] But Yisroel is this name that embodies Yaakov's accomplishments in life. What he became, the finished product that he was able to take his potential and actualize it.
[00:18:36] So now, uh, it makes sense if you think about it. So the blessings of Yaakov was when he gives it over to his children, how did he bless them? He didn't bless them with riches and, uh, jewels and money.
[00:18:53] It's very interesting. How did he bless them? He gave each and every child the blessing that was specific for them, that had to do with their character traits. And in a lot of the blessings, he likened his different children to different animals who have certain traits. For example, Yehuda, who is the kingship, he compares him to a lion, right? The lion is the king, the king of the animal, uh, kingdom for Binyamin, for Benjamin, he likens him to a wolf, right? And the different character traits of a wolf. For Naphtali, he likens him to a deer, right? So the point Is he knew his children, he knew their abilities, and he blessed them according to the strengths that they had.
[00:19:42] Now, if you think about it for a moment, what's, uh, the best thing a parent could want for their children? The best thing that a parent could want for their children, for their child, is for that child to actualize his or her potential. That's what we all want. That the, uh, what they could do in their life, what could they accomplish with the tools and the skill sets that they have? And us as parents, right, we try to train them to take that potential and to turn it into something that's real, turn it. That they could take their life and live a life of accomplishment.
[00:20:23] And that's what we see over here, the two names of Yaakov, what they represent, especially how the fact that Yaakov, how he blessed them. And I think this gives us an insight into our own aspirations and what we daven for and what we think about as success.
[00:20:39] Yaakov blessed his children that the potentials that they had, each and every one of them, that they should actualize it. He knew what they could do, and he blessed them accordingly. That's why at the beginning of the blessing, it's this raw material. And at the end, we referring to them as Shiftei Yisroel, right, The tribes of Israel, because we want the Jewish people as a whole to get to their point of completion.
[00:21:10] And part of that is actually when we all do this together, because we do also see a focus in the blessings, that they should gather, they should come together. And I think from this verse that at the end of the blessing, it sort of reiterates this idea because, uh, it calls them the Shifta Yisrael, the tribes of Israel, that they're all together. And only then do we refer to them, you know, regarding these blessings as Yisrael, as this accomplishment. And I think the lesson for us is obviously when it comes to our children, we want them to focus on their potential, who they are and not what we want them to be.
[00:21:48] We want them to actualize their potential, not to be, not to live our life vicariously. And even for ourselves, we have to remember that when we daven, when we think about who we want to be and what we want to accomplish, the first thing on our mind shouldn't be, we want to make tons of money, we want to be rich, we want to be famous.
[00:22:11] We should think to ourselves, hashem, I want to fulfill my potential.
[00:22:15] You know, during Shmona, Esre, the Amidah, uh, there's different parts of Shmona Esre, where, you know, we ask for different things. There's different types of. There's praise to Hashem, There's. We ask for different things from Hashem.
[00:22:30] And there is one section in Shemona Esrei, Shema Koleinu, where at a certain point in the Shmon Esre, in Amidah, we have the ability.
[00:22:41] It's a free road, it's open mic to make a joke there, right? Open mic. You could daven for whatever you want.
[00:22:48] And one thing I try to have in mind every day is that hashem should give me the ability to fulfill my potential. Now, we don't know what our potential is, but we have to daven and have it on our mindset that that's what we want to do with our lives. And the way that manifests itself could be in different ways. Obviously, our heart pulls us in different directions, but we should try to keep, you know, be cognizant in our mind that what we want to do is serve Hashem, serve God to our fullest potential. I think we see that from this week's parasha with the blessings of Yaakov. The last idea I want to share with you today takes us to Yaakov's blessing of Yesacher Issachar. The posse reads as Yisachar Chamor, Gayrem Royveitz Beina mishpatim, right? Yesacher is a strong boned donkey. He rests between the boundaries. The next verse continues M.
[00:23:53] And he saw tranquility, that it was good, and the land that it was pleasant, yet. Yet he bent his shoulder to beer and he became an indentured laborer. Now, as I mentioned before, Yaakov compared his children to different types of animals. And Ysocher, he compared him to a donkey. Right?
[00:24:13] And a donkey is, um, made for carrying heavy loads.
[00:24:18] You take a big load of something, you put it on the donkey, and the donkey has to work to transport it to the proper place.
[00:24:26] Chavitz Chayim brings down from this a very important, um, idea. And the commentaries discuss about the significance of Yasacher. Yasachar was the Torah scholars of Israel. Actually, they were great Torah scholars. And we compare them to, um, donkeys. Right? What does that mean? Not in a bad way, but donkey's stubborn. You got to continue. You got to be able to carry the load, right?
[00:24:51] And the Chavez Chaim brings this, you know, home a little bit more. Aside from that, the ol of the Torah, the yoke of the Torah is something we have to bear and we have to push forward with. He brings this idea, this connection to Yasakhar a little bit deeper.
[00:25:09] And he says that when we have an animal, it's not just about. It's not just loading the animal and putting the load onto the donkey.
[00:25:18] The donkey has to bear the burden and move forward. Right? And that's what the Pasuk says. Yet he bent his shoulder to beer and became an indentured laborer. Right. That the donkey, even though he has this load on it now, step two is going forward with it, which in a way is harder than step one.
[00:25:37] Chavatz Chaim explains on this that it's not just enough when we think about learning Torah and doing mitzvahs. It's not just enough that we learn about something and we learn about a mitzvah. Uh, we have to take the Torah and the mitzvos that we're learning about that we're doing and put it in our heart and make it part of our lives.
[00:25:57] That's the job of a Yid, of a Jew. Right. We have to. It's not just learning it. We're learning it to apply it to ourselves.
[00:26:06] It's an action based religion. We're part of an action based, um, religion. And it's not just learning, it's not just doing. It's taking it and putting into action, putting it into our heart, changing ourselves. And I think if a person has this mindset, the Torah will change, you know, will affect that change for him. Right? You just have to make the mindset first to have that attitude and be Ezra Hashem will be able to become great people. So that I'm going to finish for today's podcast. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me at Rabbi Schlomocon Kohn at gmail com. Have a great day.
