VIDEO: Yosef and His Unyielding Respect for the Holy Mission of the Descendants of Yaakov

In this week’s Dvar Torah, Rabbi Nachum Shifren discusses Yosef and his unyielding respect for the holy mission of the descendants of Yaakov.

©2025 Rabbi Nachum Shifren. All rights reserved.

TRANSCRIPT

JDL USA presents Rabbi natham schiffren public speaker author and good friend of the late Rabbi mayor Kahana we are back together pares Vos and um may have a little bit of background noise here but uh let’s just ascribe that to in other words the cabalic cabalistic way of saying there’s a whole lot of mess messes going on here um this par is interesting because uh the main the main thing is this this um continuing story of Joseph being sold into slavery well it started with the the beautiful coat that his father made him now there was 12 Brothers why did the father make one coat for Joseph and nobody else well that’s a story in itself but now naturally their other brothers were quite jealous not just that but they wanted to kill him sounds sounds like a story out of the newspapers right jealous Brothers kill each other God forbid but that was it they put him in a hole the thing back then you know you used to imprison people by keeping them underground and from there they sold them to isim after that they show he was sold to the
Egyptians then he went into Pharaoh’s house himself before that he was in a jail there was a falsely accused by Pharaoh’s wife for doing the usual didn’t happen there the whole story behind that is absolutely incredible how he resisted all the blandishments of Pharaoh’s wife nobody was there blah blah blah and then even in jail he used God’s name all the time saying to thank God for this and thank God for that and and his Jailer the person in charge of the prison said you know what this guy really does believe in God he really does and he therefore referred Joseph because he was so such an amazing help to the the chief you know prison guard that he was referred to Pharaoh regarding the dreams we mentioned last time he was he solved some issues about dreams from a couple of people until he became interpreter of Pharaoh’s dreams and then after that he became viceroy to the entire Egyptian Colony or whatever the entire world was under Egyptian rule at that time so second in command going from a little kid you know um studying with Jacob during the time that they were together learning from him little kid walking around a coat a beautiful coat his brothers are jealous all that transpires in order for him to be the second in command of of Egypt regarding the meeting that faithful meeting by the way you know this meeting between Joseph and his brothers whether you know it or not has been translated into almost every language the very famous German playright Thomas Man wrote a book about Joseph and his brothers it was a hit as we’re all of them this whole thing is so incredible and when Joseph finally meets his brothers and he can’t bear it anymore the brothers are very contrite and they’re very sad and morose that that they tried to kill him and they don’t know where he is anymore when he finally reveals himself self to the brothers they were in shock they broke down and cried they cried they weeped on his shoulder he weeped on their shoulders and they said he Joseph Joseph wanted to mistfy them and ease their pain and their their their distress about what they did obviously they were contrite they were very uh they were completely into um you know doing chuva Redemption he told them that everything was from God it wasn’t he was sold into
slavery for the purpose of giving a refuge a source of sustain sustenance for his brothers and his father imagine that you know anybody that could do that he went through hardships just incredible incredible you know bad luck and here here he is now saying that it was God’s will to in order for him to be in charge of Egypt and that he would take care of his brothers who as you know there was a famine back then right remember we talking about seven years of seven good years where do we see I’m thinking of a song right now it’s at the tip of my tongue seven years of bad luck many a blue singer has sung those words seven years of Plenty followed by seven years of famine and in the first and the second year of the famine is when they had their encounter with each other and again this theme recurring theme of Joseph nothing about him everything that happened to him was complete Divine Providence what does that tell us when when Joseph was in really bad Straits he never panicked he never became stressed he never did anything other than say it’s all good this is an amazing thing teaches us two things one no matter what happens to us look at the bright side and always and never get angry anger is something that’s an attribute that we don’t want to go into it says that whoever becomes angry it’s as though they’re serving Idols why because they forget about God they think about only themselves why they’re angry why they have to get revenge on somebody or get back at somebody when the opposite is true and we see that this is a complete model a paradigm for us and for people all over the world not just Jews this story has been translated into every language so there’s that what else do we have there’s another incredible story a lesson that we can all learn when Yehuda a very faithful meeting between Yehuda and and Joseph after Joseph has decided to enslave oh gosh Joseph instead decided to enslave one of the brothers and Yehuda said you know what you’re just like Pharaoh just like he doesn’t keep his promise you don’t keep your promise in other words to let them be and not not enslave any of their kids any of their brothers Uda steps forward and he says you know what our commentator Rashi again interprets the harsh words that you would had for Joseph just like Pharaoh I’ll kill you and I’ll kill your boss pharaoh and he said and the entire Egypt will go down as well pretty amazing why for one small Jewish boy that was put that was put into captivity by Joseph for one Jewish boy he was ready to sacrifice himself of course he didn’t think that he would be at all you know in danger but he would he would get rid of the entire country of Egypt sacrifice them for the sake of this one boy what do we learn from that it’s it’s hard for me to say because this lesson has not been it has not been realized in our days we haven’t seen it materialized but if we look at the state of Israel how many people have been murdered how many people have been raped we just saw a situation and October 7th over a, Jews 1,200 Jews you were either raped shot to death burned mulated and several months later we see the IDF bringing diapers to the people in Gaza medicine water pallets of rice and beans what what what this is a war these people voted 85% of them for Hamas they wer they’re not stupid they knew what Hamas was doing with their end goal was and what do we say about those people that were in captivity who died there and the parents will be grieving the rest of their lives so our lesson from Judah Yehuda was simple when somebody’s in danger we don’t make any deals or compromises or whatever especially when someone’s life is in danger it’s just unbelievable that we have to deal with this after the crucifixions and the Holocaust and the and the the the the inquisitions and the cacs and the five Wars against Israel we we are the students of Rabbi mayor Kahana we used to say never again now the new slogan is again and again and we it’s up to us to remind the world to Stand Fast to learn God’s Torah to learn what it means to be a Jew whether it’s praying whether it’s giving to charity whether it’s learning Torah all those things that will keep us above the water MIM as it says and we can only hope and pray that the future will be better things are changing rapidly in the Middle East some people think this is the beginning of a 6th Messianic cycle I never would have imagined in my lifetime that Saudi Arabia and Israel would be signing a Covenant with each other we also learn that we don’t sign covenants with uh Gentile Nations that’s never been done before anyway I wish everybody a wonderful shabas and shabbat shalom to everybody and this is a very very strong para totally worthy of looking at in detail checking out maybe the maybe the midrash maybe some other things commentators what they have to say about Joseph and his brothers I think everybody will find tremendous moral you know Ventures Pathways there that we can all learn from God bless you all take care and remember kazak shabbat shalom.