Vayeshev 1990

One of the underlying themes of the Torah portion Vayeshev is the garment. We find a garment throughout all this Torah portion. In the beginning of the Torah portion we learn Yaacov gives Yosef a striped garment. We learn later how the brothers killed a goat and they put the blood of the goat on the coat and how they showed their father the garment and how Jacob recognized that garment as Joseph's garment and he said, "Surely a wild beast has torn my son, Joseph." Later we learn about Judah and, again, we learn about a garment. We learn how Judah’s wife dies and Judah goes to take his sheep to be sheared. Earlier he had given his two eldest sons to a woman named Tamar and both of them had died. As was the custom in those days the next son in line should have married her, but Judah was afraid (after all, his first two boys had died) to give her this third son when he became of age. She was determined to have a child through Judah's family one way or another, so she sat on the corner of the road and pretended she was a prostitute. Judah came to her and as guarantee that he would send her payment he left behind his staff and his signet ring and B’Sealing. The rabbis explain that the B’Sealing stands for his garment, for his coat. Later when he came to retrieve these items by giving her a sheep, she was not there. Later when his daughter-in-law became pregnant she was to be punished but she produced the signet ring and the coat and the staff and Judah said that "she was more worthy than I."
Again we have the imagery of the coat when Joseph is being seduced by his master’s wife, the wife of Potifar, and Joseph does something very unwise. He stays in the house alone with the wife of Potifar and she grabs a hold of his garment and Joseph is tempted to lie with her but he sees the image of his father before his eyes and he leaves the coat in her hands and runs off. Of course, because she has the coat she can claim that Joseph raped her and, therefore, Joseph is sent to prison.

We see that throughout this Torah portion the coat has a very important role to play. The rabbis tell us that actually this coat, this garment, this cloak, that Jacob gave to Joseph was really a tallis and that it was really this tallis that teaches us something very important in this Torah portion. The important thing of the tallis are the fringes. They are known as the P’Seel, and that is why when it talks about Judah it says, "For his garment P’Seeling". We all know that in a tallis you are supposed to have a blue thread. We no longer know what that little sea urchin was that the dye was made from so we do not have a blue in our tallis, but we do know that the tallis and the fringe of the tallis was supposed to have at least one blue thread. The rabbis say that the blue stood for G-d's providence. It stood for the promise that G-d made to the Jewish people. It stands for the ideals of morality that G-d gave us here on earth, and the white stands for our own Sechel, for our own understanding, for our own reason. The white teaches us how to implement G-d's teaching in the world. The rabbis tell us that is why we need both the blue and the white. There is an argument among the Poskeem about how many blue threads you need. The Rambam says you need one blue out of the eight; the Raiv says you need two; and Rashi says you need four. In any event, we see that the garment was composed of blue and white threads, fringes.
The question is also asked, why is it that Joseph had two dreams? He had one dream of binding sheaves in which all the sheaves of his brothers got up and bowed down to him, and he also had a dream about the stars and the moon and the sun bowing down to him. It is the same dream, but the rabbis say, no, that these are really two distinct dreams. One is about material things, the sheaves, and the other is about spiritual things. It is similar to the blue and white threads on a tallis. Joseph was promised mastery in both the spiritual and the material arena of life. However, many times it is difficult to maintain ourselves spiritually and materially at the same instance. Sometimes people during the week act in

a material fashion and even violate the spiritual rules, but on Shabbos they are spiritual and they forget about the material things. The Torah saysf no, they
have to come together.
We see that the brothers thought that they were doing a good thing by selling Joseph. They thought they were saving their family, that Joseph was ruining their family with his tattletales and by causing jealousy among the brothers and by his monopolizing their father’s love. They thought if they got rid of Joseph that, therefore, their father would love them more, but it turned out he loved them less because he was cast into such deep mourning. The brothers, because they thought they were furthering a spiritual goal and even a material goal because the family would work better together, in effect put blood upon the garment, that they, in effect, destroyed their claim to spiritual and material greatness.
Later we learn the same thing with Judah. Judah went to a prostitute and that is why it says P1Seeling for his garment because he gave up his spiritual ideals to fulfill a momentary physical desire. Joseph, on the other hand, left his garment in the hand of Potifar’s wife. He sacrificed his material future because he knew that she would probably use it against him for the sake of his spiritual goals. Joseph was not compromised the way Judah was compromised.
In a few days it will be Chanukah. Chanukah always comes around the Torah portion Vayeshev. It is interesting to note that all the holidays have a special tractate devoted to them. Pesach has one, Succos has one, Rosh Hashonna has one, Yom Kippur has one, even Purim has one, but there is no special V'Sechta Gemora associated with Chanukah. Why? The rabbis tell us that one of the reasons is because the Maccabees, after they assumed power, violated one of their trusts by assuming the kingship, too. The kingship belonged to the House of Judah, not to the House of Levi. They were Kohanim. There is a deeper reason, too, and that is that

the rabbis were afraid of the holiday of Chanukah because based on the holiday
of Chanukah the Jewish people revolted in the year 66 and they revolted 7 years
later under Bar Kochba and both revolts were tragedies. A million Jews were killed
when the second temple was destroyed and probably another million were sold into
slavery, 600,000 Jews were killed in the time of Bar Kochba and probably another
million were sold into slavery. This was all done because the Jewish people looked
at the example of the Maccabees and said they were right and we are right, too.
After all, the Roman are persecuting us and hounding us, and all the Jewish people
did at that time was to look at the blue, at G-d’s promise. They said, "We are
acting in the right proper way. We are acting moral. G-d is sure to help us."
G-d has His own calculations and we cannot force it. We are also supposed to
act with prudence. We are supposed to act rationally and reasonably in fulfilling
G-d’s promise. Therefore, although we have to never give up the promise we also
have to investigate how we are to implement G-d's promise using reason and understanding.
We have to use our Sechel. This, of course, is something that is many times hard
to do. There are sane people who look at their Sechel and say the whole Jewish
enterprise is foolish and we should give up and not do anything. If the early
Zionists would have only looked to their Sechel then there would not be a Jewish
state, but, yet, we have to make sure that we do not do things that are going
to arouse the ire of our neighbors against us and destroy us completely. We have
to make sure that we act in a proper and prudent fashion.
That, of course, is what Joseph had to learn, too. Joseph was cast into prison because he put himself into a compromising position. He had to look at the Tachais. We can never give that up, but, at the same time, he should never have gotten himself into the position, but when he got himself into the position he was cast into prison. Fran prison he had to get out of prison. When he was in prison there were two dreams that came to him, one from the butler and one from the baker.

Why was it that the butler's dream he interpreted favorably and the baker's dream he intepreted unfavorably? The reason, of course, is that the butler did something. The butler acted. The butler was pushing, was pressing the grapes of Pharaoh into the cup. The baker was completely passive. In life we have to do things. We have to try to solve problems. We have to be active but we have to do it with Sechel. We have to never give up on the Tachalis. Unfortunately, many Jewish people, when they came to America, gave up on Jewish practices. It was too hard. They had to earn a living for their family. They had difficulty here. They gave up Shabbos and other things. I am not judging them because in those days if you kept Shabbos you earned zero and if you did not keep Shabbos you earned $10,000. It was a difficult thing, but, yet, we know that unless we are willing to see the Tachailis and work with the Tachailis and also do with reason and understanding and get into certain jobs where we can keep Shabbos it will be difficult. Joseph, when he was cast into prison and was able to interpret the dreams and he interpreted the dream of the butler favorably he asked the butler to remember him to Pharaoh. Sane rabbis criticize him not because he tried to rely on the butler to get him out of prison but because he only relied on the butler to get him out of prison. We have to try all avenues in order to solve the problems that we are cast into. We have to use our reason but we also have to make sure that we keep our eye on the Tachailis. We have to keep our eye on that which is G-d's promise to the Jewish people, but we cannot just rely on the promise. If we do that is suicidal, so today we are faced with a terrible situation, a similar situation to 1948 and even before where the whole situation is all unsettled. We do not know what is going to happen. The Gulf situation is very dangerous. The United States has asked us not to respond even if we are attacked. The United States has even said not to worry about our qualitative edge anymore, that the United States will protect us. We cannot protest too much because maybe then the United States will cut off all aid and we are dependent on the United States even for jet fuel. We have terrible problems today. Russia and the United States are now working

together, so how can we resist them? If we resist them they will cut off Soviet immigration. The situation is very fluid. There are so many dangers here, but we know that G-d will not let us down. G-d will help us, but we have to use our Sechel. We cannot blindly trust His promise without acting on our Sechel, without our understanding. Also, we cannot forget about the promise, too. We must combine them and use them together. Just as Joseph came out of prison and to greatness so we, too, will overcome all the problems of today and the Jewish people are assured with G-d's help we will overcome them and we will flourish and be a light unto the nations.
I am reminded of the story they tell about a boy who was standing at the shore of the sea waving back and forth a flag. About 4 miles offshore was a big ocean liner. A passerby came by and said, "What are you doing, little boy?" He said, "I am signaling the ship 4 or 5 miles offshore." The man asked why he was going that because nobody would be able to see from there and that nobody was looking at him. The little boy said, "Yes, the captain is looking at me because the captain is my father and he always sees when I signal." Our captain is Hashem and He always sees when we signal. Let us all hope and pray that soon we will get all of these difficulties resolved and soon we will be able to live lives of freedom and dignity and honor among the nations of the world because we have always seen the blue and the white, that we have always acted together with G-d’s promise and with Sechel. May this day cone soon. Amen.