Mikeitz/Chanuka

Dedicated Eli Schonbrun and Dani King

he posuk says, : but he [Yosef] acted like a stranger toward them [his brothers], and spoke with them harshly. The asks; how is it that a tzadik like Yosef wouldn't have forgiven them right away? Why would he have brought his father down, & make him suffer longer than he had to? Why put them through this whole charade? Was he just taking revenge? And he answers that all his actions were , in order for them to be forgiven for selling him. Why was that necessary? Why couldn't he just forgive them without putting them through all the heartache? The asks why the even had to go fight at all; being that it was all a miracle anyway. As Rashi says, there were 13 maccabes against 100's of thousands of Greek warriors. It was all a ,so why did they even have to bother going out to fight? There's a story told about the , that once in the dead of night he summoned the community leader to come to him without delay, & on the way pick up two members of the board. When they arrived, he said to them, it has become known to me that the duke has signed a decree that will spell out many calamities for the Jewish people. However, the decree is still on the dukess desk, & if he doesn't change his mind, he will send it out tomorrow. You need to go to his home now & get him to change his mind. So they headed out to go to the castle. As they came closer, they saw it was on the other side of the river, & at that late hour there were no boats going across. Finally, they found a fisherman sleeping in his boat & woke him up. He then begrudgingly took them across the river in a rickety, fishy, foul smelling boat. And with every turn they got soaked with the foul waters. As they got closer to the castle, the guards started yelling, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? Leave now. The commotion woke up the duke, & he asked what's going on here? The guard said three Jews are here. Once he was already up, the duke said to bring them in. They came in from the boat all wet & smelling like fish. He sat them down & told his butler to bring them a hot drink. As the duke is asking them why they are here, he says drink your coffee why aren't you drinking? The community leader, shaking with fright, says our rabbis' forbade us to drink milk that was not milked in front of a Jew. Theres nothing wrong with it, we just can't drink it. Asks the duke what kind of law is that? They answer that its to insure that its milk from a kosher animal & not from camel or donkey. The duke, incensed, says for this farfetched reason you won't drink my milk? Who even drinks camel milk anyway? Still they wouldn't drink it. The duke wouldn't drop the matter; he called in his butler to ask him where the milk came from. He sheepishly answered that the dukes goat where they normally got milk was sick so they couldn't get milk from her, so they got from the neighbor. Where does the neighbor get milk from, asked the duke. The butler answered, he has a camel that he gets his milk from...His answer shocked both the Jewish leaders & the duke, who was then in awe of the wisdom of the sages. He then asked why they were there, & they told him that their rabbi sent them to him so that he would abolish the decree. He promptly tore up the decree as he was so in awe of the sages of the Jewish people. The leaders came back to the and told him what had transpired. However they told him that in actuality, they were saved through a miracle, for by natural means, coming to the duke in the middle of the night smelling like fish & not drinking what was offered to them wouldn't normally get the desired result. It was really the ' s prayers & beseeching ' that saved them. Why bother having them risk their life on a dangerous undertaking for no reason when it was his prayers that abolished the decree? He answered that without their self sacrifice, his tefillos would be worthless. It was their risking their life that brought the tefillos up so that they were able to work. So too by the ,it was the fact that they risked their lives to go fight that ' went to battle for them. Once they showed their willingness to go fight for ' against all odds, ' fought for them. Maybe this is why Yosef couldn't just forgive the brothers, in order for them to be forgiven. They had to be prepared to risk their lives to get him back no matter how unrealistic it seemed, & show that they really regretted selling him. Only then would they be forgiven. We could learn from here that even when a task seems insurmountable, all we have to do is sacrifice a little to give it our best shot & then ' will take it from there, making sure we succeed!

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Refuah Shelaima Tzvi ben Faiga