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This week’s Torah reading begins with Yehuda approaching (VaYigash) Yosef, and describes, in detail, the reunion of Yosef with the rest of his brothers and father in Egypt.

At first glance this story seems too uneventful to be the sole topic of an entire weekly section. The Torah could have simply told us at the end of last week’s section that Yosef brought his family to Egypt. Why such lengthy detail?

I think the answer can be found in the following story.

Shortly before the miraculous Six-day war victory in 1967 the Lubavitcher Rebbe began ‘Mission Tefillin’; all Chabad Chassidim were to take to the streets and put Tefillin on any Jew that was willing.

The idea of approaching non-religious strangers in the street with a request to do a religious ‘mitzva’, and such a complicated one at that, was unheard of. And although the Chabad Chassidim did it with some success and it continued doing it after the war was won no one knew exactly how to explain it other than it’s what the Rebbe wants.

Formal and informal meetings were made by Chabad throughout Israel to discuss the issue, and it became a main topic at one Farbrengen, the Chassidim in Kfar Chabad made.

[A Farbrengen is an informal, serious and often joyous gathering of men of all ages, with the goal of improving us and the world around us the way G-d wants. Vodka (LeChiam) is often consumed and people open their hearts and thoughts to one another.]

The main speaker was Rabbi Mendel Futerfass a salty Chassid and the spiritual director of the main Yeshiva of Kfar Chabad, who had spent many years imprisoned in Siberia for his Jewish outreach activities. He tried explain this totally unorthodox idea, at first with no success, until he remembered a story that he heard from a fellow prisoner fifteen years earlier when he was in Siberia.

Rav Mendel began by explaining that from everything he heard and saw there he tried to learn a lesson in the service of G-d, and usually he succeeded. But there was one story he heard from a prisoner that, try as he could, he couldn’t figure out what was the spiritual point …. until now.

(He once told me that what it says in Chabad that Rav Zusia of Anipoli learned seven positive lessons from a thief (‘Yom Yom’ pg. 107] is because Rav Zusia never sat in prison long enough. But if he had, he could have learned thousands of things from a thief!)

The prisoner telling the story claimed to have been a deep-sea diver in the Czar’s navy, now imprisoned by the Communists and his story was as follows:

“It occasionally happened that one of the ships of the Czar’s navy would sink, sometimes because of a storm at sea, or because it struck a rock, or sometimes in battle. In any case because ships are worth a lot of money, just the metal and the equipment alone were often worth millions, the navy made big efforts to lift such ships from the ocean floor and tow them to shore to be fixed or at least partially salvaged. And that’s where the divers came in.

“What they would do is find the location in the sea where the ship had sunk and then situate two towing-ships on the sea above it. After that each ship would lower a long, thick chain with a huge hook on the end, and then the diver would go down to attach them, one hook to the front of the ship and the other to the rear, so the towing-ships could reel in their chains, lift the sunken ship from the ocean floor and tow it to shore.

“Now, this was all fine when the sunken ship had been under water for a short time. But after a few months the ship rust would set in so the hooks we attached would bring up big parts of the ship, only huge chunks of iron, leaving the rest ship behind.

“So someone developed a brilliant idea. The two tugboats, instead of lowing just one chain each, would spread a huge, flat sheet of steel with several hundred steel ropes with hooks on their ends attached to it and put it between two mats of rubber so the ropes ran through special airtight holes in the lower rubber wall.

“My job was to go down with a few other divers, lower the mat over the sunken ship and attach the hooks to as many places as possible. Then a motor on one of the two tugboats would pump air into the mat and slowly inflate it so it began to pull upwards until … WHOOPA!! Suddenly the entire ship lifted at once and could be towed to the docks and eventually hoisted to dry land for repairs.”

“That was the story I heard” said Rav Mendel. “but just now I began to understand what it means”.

“The ship is like the Jewish people; rusty and falling apart because they have been sunk in exile for almost two thousand years. Each is separate and different and nothing unites them. But they must be salvaged and fixed somehow.

“So the Rebbe’s idea is to save them with Tefillin; to save the ship! And we Chassidim, are the Rebbe’s deep-sea divers. We have to attach a hook to every single Jew … put Tefillin on as many Jews as possible, and then when enough ‘hooks’ are attached …WHOOPA!!! HaShem will pull everyone up TOGETHER.”

This answers our questions about why devotes such detail to Yehuda and family approaching Yosef in VaYigash.

The word ‘VaYigash’ means ‘To come near … to come together.’ Unity is the only vessel for the blessing of G-d (see Mishna, Uktzin 3:12) and is the foundation of Judaism as Rabbi Akiva, said: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is the main principal of the Torah”.

We pray for it three times every day in the concluding prayer of the Shmone Esre “Bless us, our Father, ALL AS ONE.” And the lack of it is the reason for the destruction of our Holy Temple and the painful 2000-year exile we are presently in.

But Moshiach, by teaching the Jews to love each other just as G-d l loves each of them…… unconditionally will put an end to this tragedy.

And these teachings, begun by the Baal Shem Tov, are called ‘Chassidut’. Therefore his teachings are called ‘Torhat HaMoshach’ to awaken in each and every Jew the unique G-dly soul; the only thing that binds us all.

But just learning is not enough, action is required. We must actually come close to another Jew ‘VAYIGASH’ as Yehuda did to Yosef, the deep-sea diver did to the ship and the Lubavitcher Rebbe ordered all the Chassidim to do with Tefillin (and later with the other nine ‘Mivtzoim’).

[Yehuda and Yosef represent all the Jewish people who were divided after the death of King Solomon. Bringing them together is a necessary step in the redemption from this terrible exile as explained in this week’s Haftorah (Ezekiel 37:15).

This answers our question: the details of this week’s Torah reading warrant making it into a separate Torah Portion (and also why it comes before the blessings of Yaakov to his sons in next week’s section).

Because this week’s Torah portion describes unity… the prerequisite for the greatest blessings possible; meaning, joy and true freedom.

But it all depends on us. Each of us has to connect with others and connect them to their Creator; Jews through the 613 commandments and Gentiles the Seven Noahide Commandments.

And not much is lacking to make it happen. We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish sacrifice, prayer and suffering now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought will awaken our inner, positive potential to do the seemingly impossible and bring…

MOSHIACH NOW!!

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