Happy Hanukah and welcome to my world of Torah ideas.  This week’s parsha (Torah portion) is always read on the Shabbat of Hanukah.  One aspect of Hanukah is about bringing light into the darkness, and the parsha, and Yoseph (Joseph) in particular, is all about waking people up from their darkness, so they can fix the things that they need to fix.  In the parlance of the tradition, Yoseph is all about doing tshuvah (literally an answer or to turn, often translated as repentance), and helping others to do tshuvah.

Let’s look into the parsha and see why I say this.  We ended the last parsha with Yoseph still in jail, and the cup-bearer (bartender) to Pharaoh forgetting that Yoseph helped him understand a dream.

Two years have gone by, as we begin our parsha, and the Pharaoh has a troubling dream.  Nobody can explain the dream, and the cup-bearer finally remember our hero, Yoseph, and mentions him to Pharaoh, who calls for him to interpret the dream.  Yoseph tells him that the dream represents what haShem (god) is going to do.  First will be 7 years of plenty, followed by 7 years of famine.  Yoseph then tells Pharaoh what he thinks Pharaoh should do to survive the famine.

Pharaoh is so impressed with his interpretation and suggestions, that he appoints Yoseph to be his number two, second to only the Pharaoh in power, and charges him with carrying out his suggestions.

This, by-the-way, is an example of how to create opportunities for yourself.  Note that Yoseph was honest, straightforward, and positive.  He saw a problem, and offered a solution.  Pharaoh did what a good manager should do.  He found someone who is pro-active and competent, who sees a problem and offers a good solution, and he gave him the responsibility AND authority to implement the solution  He then he gets out of the way and lets Yoseph do his job.

Pharaoh also gave Yoseph a wife and Yoseph, who we are told is 30 at this point, gets busy storing food.  While the land is producing plenty, so are Yoseph and his wife, who have two children at this time:  Menasheh is the older, and Ephriam is the younger.

Then the famine hits and not just Egypt is affected; all the region is caught in the throws of the famine.

Yakov (Jacob), in the land of Canaan, sends his sons, minus Binyamim (Benjamin) to Egypt to get food.  When they get to Egypt, Yoseph recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him, and Yoseph accuses them of being spies.  They deny it.  Yoseph takes Shimone and tells them to return with Benyamim to prove their intentions.  He then has their bags filled with grain and puts their money into the sacks as well, and they leave.

On the way home, they discover the money and freak out.  When they get home, they tell Yakov the story and Yakov is not a happy camper.  However, when the food is gone, he has no choice, but to send them back with Benyamim.

When they get to Egypt, Yoseph has them come to his house and eat with him.  He gives them grain again and sends them on their way.  Of course he also has their money put into their bags again, and he also has his scrying cup put in Benyamim’s bag.  Then he sends his trusted servant out after them, and when the cup is discovered, Benyamim is arrested, and they all return to Egypt.  Yoseph only wants Benyamim, the “thief”, while the other sons say they won’t go.

And this is how we end, at a cliff-hanger until next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

I have already pointed out how Yoseph has learned how to present himself in a respectful and positive way, no longer touting himself, but letting his light shine from his honest and positive words.  From this we can see that Yoseph has done tshuvah.

But what is tshuvah and how does he help others fix their mistakes?

The first step of tshuvah is to wake up.  What do I mean by that?  Well, people often sin, or make mistakes because they are not awake.

To say this a little differently, people sin or make mistakes because their level of awareness is too small.  For example, why did the brothers get rid of Yoseph in the first place?  Because he was their dad’s favorite, and he had those dreams of lording over them.

A person can certainly understand why they felt the way they did.  But, if they had an awareness that was larger then their immediate feelings, if they had an awareness that Yoseph’s dreams were not meant to humiliate them, but to enlighten them about what Yoseph was destined to be, they might not have kidnapped him and lied to their father.

We see this in another place.  Why did Yoseph name his first born, Menasha?  The Torah says that he was named so because god made Yoseph forget about what his brothers did, and of his family that he was ripped away from.  The word for forget here is nashani.  A root of this word is shanah which means sleep.  Another root, nashah, means to forget.  Combine these meanings, and we get the method of forgetting:  by going to sleep.

When one goes to sleep, he looses awareness of the world around him.  As a person’s loses awareness of what is going in within and without, she becomes more and more asleep.  I would say that a person who does whatever they want with no regard for anyone or anything around them, is asleep even though this person might be active and not physically sleeping.

Getting back to Yoseph naming Menashe, Menashe is named because god put Yoseph to sleep so he would not be aware of his pain in regards to his family.

But how could Yoseph give him such a name if he was going to sleep or already asleep?  If he was asleep or going to sleep, he wouldn’t have the awareness to know that he had “forgotten.”

Rather, I think that god had put Yoseph to sleep by putting him in the position of running Potifar’s household, dealing with Potifar’s wife, and the not fun existence he had in jail.  Why then?  Because Yoseph was in the most pain right after he got sold, and so most needed the respite from the pain at that time.  It was only after he had a child of his own, that he started to wake up to the fact he had another family.

By this point, he was ready to start to deal with the pain of the separation.  He also was beginning to widen his awareness, to understand why he had to be in Egypt.  This awareness of why everything happened to him as it did crystallizes when he sees his brothers bowing to him and remembers his dreams.

By now he has done his tshuvah (repentance) which led to his awareness opening up (it works both ways, awakening leads to tshuvah, or tshuvah based on faith leads to greater awareness/awakening which leads to real tshuvah).  This awakening process started with the birth of Menasha, and hence Yoseph names him with a name acknowledging that he had been asleep, and was now waking up.

Now that Yoseph is awake, he is now aware that his brothers were doing the best they could, in their place of sleep/lacking awareness, to get him to Egypt.  And for this, he was able to forgive them, and he was also now in a position to help them awaken and do tshuvah for what they felt.

A few years ago, I was attending a class by R. Avraham Sutton and he mentioned that the word for the grain sacks the brothers had was amtacht, and only appears in this parsha.  He then said the word can be broken into two words, emet and tachat.  The first word means “truth” and the second “under.”  Hence the word for the grain sacks, amtacht, means the truth is under, or is being suppressed.  In other words, Yoseph’s brothers were suppressing the truth of what they did to Yoseph.  This is why Yoseph puts their money in the MOUTH of their bags or suppressed truths:  so they will be forced to hear it and wake up to what they did, so they can do tshuvah, and no longer feel the suppressed guilt and pain of their actions.

There is a third fixing, that Yoseph is doing, and that has to do with his mother stealing her father’s (Laban) “gods” or divination tools.  This is one of the reason’s he has his scrying cup put in Rachel’s son’s bag, to recreate the theft done by his mother.  Only this time the “culprit” gets caught so justice can be done, and Rachel’s sin can be fixed.

I have already given you a lot to chew on, so I am not going to go into more detail then this.  Suffice it to say, that we can now see how Yoseph is about waking up/becoming more aware, and fixing past wrongs, not only with himself, but with his generation, and across generations.

And what is Hanukah about?  It is about bringing light to the darkest time of the year; it is about bringing awareness where there was none. And when awareness shines where there was none before, people can start to see how they have hurt themselves, the people around them, and the environment around them. And then they can start taking steps to fix the hurts they have caused.  This is what tshuvah is all about, and this is what Yoseph is ultimately all about, and this is why this week’s parsha is always read during Hanukah.

May the whole world and everyone in it wake up, even just a little bit, and see the hurts they have done, and have the strength to change and fix/make up for these hurts, to themselves, other people, and the world and all that is in the world.

Happy Hanukah

If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.