Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello my friends and welcome back for this week's episode of the Practical Parsha podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohon and I hope you are well.
[00:00:08] For this week it's Parshas Vayetse and we are flying through the weekly Parshios, the story of our forefathers, the patriarchs, the matriarchs, and it is a jam packed parsha.
[00:00:26] And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, just would like to just say hello, really, I mean it. I'm a nice guy. Send me an email. Rabbi Shlomo Kon k o h nmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:00:42] So as I mentioned, this week's parsha is Parshas Vayetse. And just to give a quick overview of the parsha before we jump into some practical Parsha ideas, the Parasha begins with Yaakov Jacob leaving Beersheva, leaving his father's house and going towards Haran to find a shidduch to get married.
[00:01:06] And on the way, the Torah tells us about a dream, a prophecy that Yaakov has on Mount Moriah in Hamaria, which is the place of the future temple. And he dreams of a ladder, I shouldn't say a dream was a prophecy. And he sees angels going up and down.
[00:01:25] And the commentaries tell us the different significances of this prophecy of angels going up and going down. One simple understanding is that as he was about to leave the Holy Land, so the angels that escorted him in the Holy Land went up and new angels came down that were going to escort him now in the Diaspora, which is outside the land of Israel.
[00:01:49] But there are many deep, uh, meanings to this prophecy of Yaakov.
[00:01:55] There's references in this prophecy to the different exiles that Jewish people have had and are currently in.
[00:02:02] And different commentaries explain it differently.
[00:02:08] And different ideas are expounded from this specific dream of Yaakov. Parasha continues with Yaakov meeting his future wife, his future wife, Rachel. Rachel.
[00:02:24] And Yaakov wants to marry her. And he goes into an agreement with her father, Lavan, who happens to be his uncle, to work for seven years for Rachel.
[00:02:38] Lavan is known as a trickster. Laban, he's a trickster. And the night of the wedding he switches Rachel for Leah.
[00:02:47] And in the morning when he wakes up, he finds that it's not Rachel, it's Leah. And he works another seven years for Rachel. And he has two wives. And the Torah tells us, um, eventually also the Rachel and Leah also give to Yaakov their maidservants to also get married to them as well. So he's married to Bila and Zilpah. And in this week's Parasha, the Torah tells us of the children that are born to Yaakov from his wives.
[00:03:16] One theme we see in the Parsha is that Leah is having children and Rachel is having a hardened, harder time. She's barren, she doesn't have children until finally, towards the end of the Parsha, she gives birth to Yosef.
[00:03:31] Now, the Parsha concludes with Yaakov with Jacob having a meeting with his wives, primarily Rukhla and Leah, to discuss with them, um, about what Lavan is trying to do to him. He's trying to harm him, and he's had enough.
[00:03:49] He's been living in Lavan's house for many years. He's dealt with all his trickery, and now he's ready to move on. And the Torah tells us how he picks up and leaves, leaves Lavan's house to move on. And Lavan, um, seeing, you know, the downside, the loss of having the great Tzadik, the great righteous person, Yaakov, leaving his house and all that blessing that is attached to it, chases after Yaakov.
[00:04:18] Lavan is warned with a prophecy from Hashem to not harm him. And finally, the Parasha concludes with a treaty that Lavan makes with Yaakov.
[00:04:28] The first idea I wanted to discuss today takes us to the episode of the Parsha that deals with the feelings between Rachel and Leah.
[00:04:43] So we know the background here is that Rachel was supposed to get married first to Yaakov. She was supposed to be the only wife even.
[00:04:55] But what happened? Lavan switched Rachel for Leah.
[00:05:00] And the reason why Yaakov didn't discover this is that Rachel gave these signs. He knew Levin was a trickster, and he gave the secret code that he made up with Rachel.
[00:05:14] She gave it to Leah.
[00:05:16] And Leah, uh, it wasn't discovered that, you know, that he got married to the wrong person.
[00:05:23] So. And we see also that Leah gives birth right away. She has children very quickly, but Rachel does not.
[00:05:31] And the Parasha tells us that Rachel, you know, has feelings of this. There's tension between Rachel and Leah. Now, of course, we're talking about great people here, that the matriarchs were great people. You don't understand exactly what this means, but we see in the Torah that it says, It says, and Rachel saw that she was not bearing any children to Yaakov, and Rachel envied her sister.
[00:06:06] That's what the Torah says. She had Envy to her sister Leah. Leah was giving birth to children, and Rachel did not have any children, and it caused her a lot of pain. And it seemed like, you know, even Leah was paining her, whatever that means. And I think, according to the commentary, she did it on purpose because she wanted her to daven harder, she wanted her to daven more sincere, so she should have children.
[00:06:30] But we see very clearly that the psukim tell us. The verses describe to us that Rachel was jealous.
[00:06:37] It says it straight out.
[00:06:40] Now, think about this for a second.
[00:06:42] I saw it brought down from Rabbi Plissken that his father would say that envy is a human trait. Now, we discuss a lot of times about getting rid of envy, and there's a concept of us having a realization that everything that we have is meant for us, and everything we don't have is also meant that we shouldn't have it.
[00:07:07] And we're never going to get something we're not supposed to have. It's just. That's how the world works. It's divinely decreed that everything we have, we're supposed to have, even to a tiny.
[00:07:19] Down to the penny, down to the smallest thing.
[00:07:23] So really, if we logically envy, jealousy, kinna makes no sense.
[00:07:31] But we see from the parsha, the Torah, that it's something which is a very real feeling, because think about. We're talking about the imahos, the matriarchs of our people, Rachel and Leah. Rachel. Leah.
[00:07:47] Rachel was, you know, such a high level. You know, uh, the matriarchs were on such a high level. We talked last week about how, you know, God made them barren to hear their prayers, so they should get to this high level.
[00:07:59] But yet still it says about Rachel that she was jealous.
[00:08:07] She had the human emotion of jealousy. Now, I must mention, though, Rashi explains on this verse that it wasn't a normal jealousy like us, because it says, kinu bemaisim hatoyvim.
[00:08:23] She envied her good deeds, Amra. She said, alulay shetzad kamimeni laizakhsa levanim. If not that she was more righteous than me, she would have not had these children, these boys.
[00:08:40] But yet at the same time. So it was a spiritual aspect to this jealousy. It wasn't like a, uh, jealousy of just jealous.
[00:08:48] She was jealous that she was on this higher level than her, that she was able to have children.
[00:08:53] But Rabbi, uh, Plisken brings down that it seems that there was an aspect of jealousy there.
[00:09:01] And I think the lesson that we could bring out from this Is that the great Rachel? The great Rachel who was the matriarch of our people, One of the matriarchs, she had a feeling of jealousy, of envy, that's what the Torah says.
[00:09:21] And it was a feeling inside of her. It's something that affected her.
[00:09:26] As great as she was, it still caused her pain, I guess.
[00:09:33] And I think the important lesson that we could take out of this is that on one side, we have to be very sensitive to other people's feelings.
[00:09:44] You know, when we talk about certain things, we talk about how much money we make or about our children or about all the good things that are going on in our lives. You know, we should talk about these things. It's important.
[00:09:57] But if we're talking about these things in front of a guy who doesn't make so much money or doesn't have grandchildren, who has trouble with his children, that's not being sensitive. You're going to cause someone pain about something, you know, that they don't, you have and they don't have.
[00:10:16] Now, obviously doesn't mean you can't talk about things. People, you know, people are happy for other people.
[00:10:22] But it's a certain sense of sensitivity that we need to develop within ourselves to be cognizant of what we're talking about, how we're speaking about things to others and who we're talking about. And. And I think this is something we learn from the psukim about Rachel because the Torah says it. The Torah says that she had this envy and it could cause pain. It causes pain. People are human. It's a natural human emotion that a person has.
[00:10:53] Now, sure, we have to work to get rid of it, but it's there.
[00:10:57] So that means we have to work to be sensitive and caring about the things we say. We shouldn't just talk. We have to be careful what we say and in front of who we say different things.
[00:11:11] And also on the flip side is that when it comes to our feelings of envy, we shouldn't feel guilty and bad about the feelings of envy that we have now. Again, we have to work on it. We have to develop realization that everything we have, we're meant to have and everything that we don't have, we don't have.
[00:11:32] But if we do feel envious, we shouldn't start bashing ourselves and say we're a horrible person because that's what the Yetzer Hara, uh, tries to do to us sometimes. He wants us to feel bad and to feel down. We should process, realize we're human and try to move forward to develop that attitude, to realize logically that envy is worthless.
[00:11:57] The second idea I want to share with you today is also a conversation about Rachel.
[00:12:02] The trait of Rachel Emenu.
[00:12:05] So the parsha details to us that Leah gives over there a co wife to Yaakov Zilpah, a maidservant.
[00:12:16] And Rachel gives Bilhah as a wife to Yaakov in the hopes that it will hopefully, you know, either that maybe that will be her son, that adopted son, or from that, hopefully it'll lead to her having children as well.
[00:12:32] And the Torah tells us that when Bilhah, huh, gives birth to a boy, Rachel names him and the posse reads as vatoy merochel naftulei el ei kim naphtalti imachosi gam yochoti vatikreshemoi naphtali. And Rahul said, sacred schemes have I maneuvered to equal my sister, and I have also prevailed. And she called his name Naphtali.
[00:13:02] Now, Rashi points out to us that different meanings to the word Naphtali or the name Naphtali.
[00:13:11] And his understanding of the source of the name is that it comes from this word of stubbornness, that naphtali comes from this idea that Rachel was being stubborn in this idea of being equal to her sister in regards to children, that she also wanted children, and she was being stubborn that she would do whatever it takes to have a child.
[00:13:40] And that's what the word naphtali comes from.
[00:13:45] And the idea which really we see from this, from these verses and from the name Naphtali, which is a trait in Rachelimeinu and Rachel, is that when it comes to spiritual matters, to be stubborn, to not give up.
[00:14:04] And this idea is an idea which is expressed by Rabbi Yeruchem Levavitz, that we see these two things, that when it comes to spirituality, it comes to Rukhnius, that Rachel, she could have given up. Her sister was having children, and she was not having any children. She was barren, she was having trouble.
[00:14:28] And she decides to give over this maidservant to Yaakov to have children. And from that she'll build upon that, hopefully have her own children.
[00:14:38] She doesn't give up.
[00:14:41] She keeps going. She wants to be part of this special spiritual mission of having a part in the 12 tribes. That's what she wanted. We're not talking about people who are, God forbid, we're not talking about regular people.
[00:14:54] We're talking about the matriarchs, great people.
[00:14:58] And she wanted part of this spiritual mission that Yaakovina was on to have the 12 tribes. And she wouldn't give up. She wouldn't give up.
[00:15:06] And I think the idea that Rabbi Yeruchi brings out is that many times people start things, you know, and this is especially true when it comes to our rukhniyas, our spiritual lives. We start things, we get inspired, and when it gets hard, we drop it.
[00:15:24] We have to be stubborn in our spiritual pursuits to not give up. When it gets hard to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
[00:15:35] And if we face difficulties, if we, you, uh, know, if things are coming in our path to challenge us, that usually is an indication that we're doing the right thing and we need to persevere.
[00:15:49] And if we keep persevering and we try even harder, we're gonna reach that success. We're gonna have that hatzlacha, that success in. In that spiritual matter. You know, there's so many stories of people that they were pushing and pushing, and finally there's that breakthrough. They were able to break through and push through. You know, And I'm just thinking about it today, actually, that when you train for a race for running, and I might have said this before, but it's worthwhile to say it again, the way you train is that there's going to be a moment in the race where you're going to feel that you want to give up.
[00:16:27] You just don't have any energy anymore.
[00:16:29] You can't go.
[00:16:32] And my coach, when I was running in this half marathon, he said that's the moment you've been training for, that hard moment where you can't go anymore. That's where all the training is for. For that second to keep pushing at that moment.
[00:16:51] And usually it gets easier from then on.
[00:16:54] And I think if you speak to people who've made major changes in their life or have accomplished a lot of, uh, you know, especially the spiritually in their lives, they've taken upon themselves mitzvahs, they've learned Torah, they made commitments to Torah study.
[00:17:10] They'll share a similar idea to you that in the beginning, maybe even longer than the beginning, it was hard.
[00:17:16] They had to persevere, but they pushed through. And I don't think it's even. I don't think it's such a novel idea. Because in the business world or the, you know, the entrepreneurial or the corporate world, where people have a dream of making money, of making a product, of building a company, people have to kill themselves to build that company. It doesn't just come easy, doesn't come by itself. They have to put in the long hours.
[00:17:43] And the difference a lot of times is that the people who are successful, not always.
[00:17:48] That's why this is different than spirituality, but not always. But the people that are successful didn't give up when it became hard, but they kept pushing and pushing and pushing until they got that breakthrough, till they were able to push through and have that success. But by spiritual matters, it's different, because if you keep pushing, you will have that success. It's 100% return. We just have to give our effort. And we should remember to ourselves that we're not the only ones facing these challenges. And the great people that we know, the tzadikim, uh, of our generation, they didn't just wake up one morning and become great. They had to persevere as well. They had to give it their all day in and day out. And eventually they got that breakthrough, that tziyata deshmay, that heavenly help, that divine assistance, to become who they became. And I think this is a beautiful idea from this week's parsha, that stubbornness. Although we think of it in a negative way, we have to remember that it could also be used in a positive direction to be channeled to really achieve great things with our lives.
[00:18:48] The last idea I want to share with you takes us to the episode in the parsha that has Yaakov meeting with his wives about Lavan and eventually causing him to leave.
[00:19:02] So the Torah tells us that Yaakov gathers Rachel and Leah, um, and tells them as vayishlach, uh, Yaakov, uh, M el tzoyno Jacob sent and summoned Rauchon Leah to the field to his flock.
[00:19:20] Vayoimir M lohen roye anoichi es pene avichen ki einhenu elai kit moshel sheim.
[00:19:32] And he said to them, I have noticed that your father's disposition is not toward me as in earlier days, but the God of my father was with me.
[00:19:42] And he goes on to tell them how he's cheating him and trying to steal from him and how he's been honest throughout the years, and it's time to leave now.
[00:19:54] The obvious or, uh, the most simple understanding of this pasuk of this verse is that Lavan started treating Yaakov differently than before. Maybe before he was more friendly to Yaakov, and now he became more hostile to Yaakov.
[00:20:14] But according to, um, other commentaries, there's another interpretation which I think could really bring out a very powerful lesson, um, that I think it's worthwhile to internalize and to remember that when Yaakov says that your father's face towards me is not like it has been in earlier days.
[00:20:36] He wasn't saying that he was friendly to me before, and now he was hostile. But according to this understanding, this new understanding, is that what Yaakov was saying is that beforehand, when I saw your father, Lavan, he repelled me. He was an evil man to me. I recognized that. I saw him as evil.
[00:20:59] And now I don't see him that way. I see him as a regular guy. I'm, um, indifferent to the person who he is.
[00:21:09] Meaning Yaakov was telling his wives that now that we've lived with Lavan for so long, I've come complacent. I've gotten used to the bad, the evil this bad surrounding, this influence. I become indifferent to it. I become complacent. I've become okay with it.
[00:21:30] And now it's time to go. Because if I'm not able to recognize the evil of love, on, then we got a problem.
[00:21:40] And I think this is, uh, a very powerful idea when it comes to recognizing bad, becoming indifferent to it, um, not keeping that feeling inside of us of what's correct and what's wrong.
[00:21:57] We live in a world today where we get bombarded with information, and unfortunately, we see things we shouldn't see, we hear things we shouldn't hear.
[00:22:08] And it sort of desensitizes us to, you know, what's right, what's correct, having that feeling, that connection to Hashem. Um, and one example which I'll give is that, you know, people watch movies. There's so much death on movies that if. Or on television or whatever it is, we're exposed to so much that when it actually hits us, it numbs us.
[00:22:42] We don't react the same way we should react.
[00:22:45] That is just one example. I mean, even being around people who don't speak properly, they curse, they speak crudely.
[00:22:57] If we do that for a long amount of time, we're going to be okay with it. We're going to become okay with it. And God forbid we might even start speaking differently, it'll have an effect on us. That's the first step to being influenced, is being complacent and thinking it's okay.
[00:23:12] And obviously, when it comes to evil as well, if we see evil and we become used to it, we become complacent, we become indifferent.
[00:23:25] That's something which is dangerous in and of itself.
[00:23:28] And I think we have to, you know, obviously this is something which is not an easy task because we're so surrounded by things which are not correct.
[00:23:37] But I think the first step is always realizing, you know, even if we can't change a situation to realize something for what it is. You know, there's a famous story that they. That's brought down. I forgot with which gado, which great person that, uh, when he was in Yerushalayim and the first time he saw someone driving on Shabbos, he cried.
[00:24:02] The second time he didn't cry.
[00:24:07] And it bothered him. It bothered him.
[00:24:10] And it bothered him that it didn't bother him anymore. It didn't bother him as much as the first time because he got used to it. He become complacent. And the Gemara has this concept as well that Talmud brings down, that if a person, you know, there's a back and forth in the Talmud about a person doing an avera, doing a sin, that it nasis lake heter becomes permitted. So the Gemara says it becomes permitted to him. So not that if a person does a sin again and again and becomes permitted. Rather, if someone sins and does it again, it's like it's permitted because you become indifferent. It becomes normal.
[00:24:46] And I think the lesson that we can get from this, from the Parasha from Yaakov Avinu from Jacob, that he wanted to leave Lavan when this was happening, that was his reason to not become, uh, indifferent to it, not become okay with it. And I think the way that we deal with this is that when we see evil or we view something bad or in the environment of something negative, we have to tell ourselves this is wrong, this is not good, and at least tell ourselves that we shouldn't be affected by the negative, bad, evil surroundings that we find ourselves in.
[00:25:23] So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me email at Rabbi Shlomakon Kohn at gmail com. Have a great day.
