Vayechi - And He Lived

I am with cold. I like saying it that way, as much as I dislike having a cold. I wrote to a friend of mine that "I am with cold," and he wrote back, "Well, that has 19th century Victorian novel written all over it."

When I returned from five years of study in Israel I went to Y.U. to finish up smichah. One end of one week I was approached by a red headed fellow who was feeling ill and was unable to go to Livingston, N.J. at the last minute. He asked if I could fill in for him as advisor. We didn't know each other but had overlapping friends. He prepped me on the session topics about spirits and more.

On Motzai Shabbos I was looking at my Sichot Mussar and learned a bit with a serious NCSYer who at the time was a student in the school that I would take a job in around 15 years later. Today he is a Rosh Yeshva at Yeshiva University.

I recall that the piece I saw for the first time on that Saturday night somewhere between Shabbos ebbing away and Kumzitz was this one:

Rav Chaim Schmuelvitz suggests that the name Yisrael connotes happiness while Yaakov reflects sadness. He says this is clear at the start of VaYechi: “And it came to pass after these things that someone said to Yoseph: 'Behold, your father is sick.' And he took with him his two sons, Menasheh and Ephraim. And someone informed Yaakov, and said: 'Behold, your son Yosef is coming to you.' And Yisrael strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.” (There’s some poetic and interesting literary parallelism here– first someone tells Yosef something about his father, then his father is told something about him.)
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First sad, then reinvigorated; Yaakov then Yisrael. This reminds me of an interview I saw in which Robert Klein was asked if he sees himself or someone else when he watches videos of his old performances. He said that he actually sees different people in each of the performances over time, not him as he knows himself now. We are all, hopefully, different people during different ages, different moods, different times.

Yaakov was sometimes so sad that he was a different person. And yet he was always forefather and role model. Different states of mind are opportunities, not excuses. This is a difficult truth, true nonetheless. And wherever we're at and whoever we are at any moment we are expected to be our best, to do to our best to be close to G-d.
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"It was really interesting; I could hardly sleep, I was thinking so much about this last night," I was told by a student I was meeting with. He's a passionate kid and was referring to Rabbi Twerski's Happiness book. It bothers me when people (including Rabbi Abraham Twerski himself) say that he writes the same book over and over again. I find something new and different in each work. Though, I must confess that in recent years I felt like holding back on buying a few of the newer books after having bought about forty of his previous ones. One book I didn't buy was Happiness.

My student told me that he's riveted by this book, presently by chapter 8. One part that really struck him was a story about an unappreciative older woman. Her nurse was frustrated with the woman's sour tone. Rabbi Twerski said that he had trouble responding to the nurse until he had an epiphany.

He was drawing blood from another elderly woman and as he inserted the needle he said that he would try to make it as painless as possible. The woman said that she was fine with it hurting. She explained that as she was preparing to leave this world, if there was no pain it would make it harder to go. Rabbi Twerski went back to the nurse who'd approached him with her complaint . He asked her what the woman she worked with her said at the end of each day. She said that she thanked her and said she'd see her tomorrow. Rabbi Twerski said that the woman was appreciative, but her apparent lack of gratitude was a manifestation of her making peace with the stage of life that she was at.

This student told me about that part of the book the other day and just came back to me with another insight. He said that Rabbi Twerski writes about cars and cylinders/engines. He says that if a car has 8 engines but it only using 6, it'll provide a bumpier ride than a car with 4 that is using all 4. He ties this in with people making the most of what they have at a specific stage of life, with the idea that you should use what you have to the fullest - as best as possible.

I wish I could converse with, listen to, learn from students all day.

Today I presented a talk to the Y.U. kollel members that are interning at my school this year. I focused on Torah Guidance and how it relates to the role of a teacher. I wrote up 20 questions that are on my school computer. Perhaps I will post them tomorrow.

A student recently recalled a story to me and I googled it. It sounded like it was about Simon Wiesenthal, and it was. I found it on a website of people remembering him and stories he told. In 1946 or '47 he went to a castle that was serving as a warehouse of books. He went with a rabbi and the rabbi picked up a prayer book and the prayer book had two sentences in it that never left him. The first was: "Whoever picks up this prayer book, contact my brother," and secondly, "Remember what these killers did to us." It probably was the words of the Book of Deuteronomy, "Remember what Amalek did you..." The rabbi looked at him and said this book is intended for you. It turned out that it was Wiesenthal's sister's Sidur.

This post comes to mind for sundry reasons: the quote, the poems, the readers' (thanks for being here Uri, Kishke) and my dynamic...

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4 ON VAYECHI

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Things Change

I'll take care of it
Yosef assured his brothers
And then he was dead

At the end of Breishit, Yosef tells the brothers, "I will provide for you." He settles them and guarantees their safety. We turn to Shmot and read that there's a new king to whom Yosef is insignificant. This juxtaposition reminds us how quickly things change .
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Holy Land

A deep connection
Jewish People, Jewish Land
We need to be there

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch states that Yaakov is telling his children, "I don't want to be buried outside of Israel." The implication of not wanting to be buried outside of Israel is that one should not want to live outside of Israel.
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Are We Almost There?

When already, when?
like an impatient father
awaiting the birth
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The Malbim was asked why he and others predicted the arrival of Mashiach, while Chazal tell us on this week's parsha that Yaakov Avinu tried to tell his children about the end of days and he was blocked from doing so. The Malbim uses the familiar image of kids on a trip to explain his position.

"Are we almost there yet?" kids inevitably ask minutes after the family car pulls out of the driveway. And fathers ubiquitously reply, "No. Relax!" Towards the end of the trip when the kids ask again, "are we almost there yet?" the father tells them "ten more minutes." Why the difference? Because at the start the question is inappropriate, but later, as the kids sense that they really are getting close the question makes sense.

The Malbim says that the beginning of Exile was not the right time to speak of when it would end. But after thousands of years, as we start to sense that we're almost there, it s logical to estimate how long it will be
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Not I Forgive

"It's from G-d," he said,
"You meant bad, He made it good."
But not "I forgive."

Years ago during Ellul, I heard Rav Nachman Kahane make the observation that with all Yosef says to his brothers, he does not say "Salachti." Teshuva is a gift from G-d that can not always be granted by humans. We try. Yosef wanted to make peace, worked on his feelings, attempted to rehabilitate the brothers' behavior. But the words, "I forgive you" seem to have eluded him.

Rav Eliyahu Lopian was asked to forgive someone. He surprised the person, saying that it was a hard process. He said he'd work at it that he'd tell them later if had yet been able to forgive them. May we all be blessed to work to forgive each other as best we can.