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By Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim, Kfar Chabad, Israel

This week’s reading opens with Yehuda approaching (Yigash) Yosef to demand justice.

The plot is complicated; twenty-two years earlier Yosef had been despised by his brothers, led by Yehuda, and sold into slavery. And now the situation had paradoxically reversed.
Yosef was now the, de facto, king of the entire world and his brothers (who don’t recognize him) are his prisoners.

This meeting is so special that it merits being the beginning (and the namesake) of an entire Torah section. But it’s not clear why is this episode at all important.

There certainly are more dramatic scenes to begin this week’s reading with. For instance; Yosef later announcing his true identity to his astounded brothers, or his emotional meeting with his father who had given him up for dead.

What was so special about Yehuda approaching Yosef?

To answer this, I’d like to bring a story that occurred some 70 years ago (Rabim Hashiv M’avon vol.1 pg 76 by Rabbi Ahron Dov Halperin).

Thirty years ago Rabbi Yitzchak Wolfe of Chabad Chicago was sitting in a bus on the way from Toronto to New York, when he struck up a conversation with a religious Jew sitting next to him who said he was a member of the ‘Papo Chassidim’, and told him a story about friend of his, another Papo Chassid, who had been saved by Chabad.

The story begins some forty years earlier when his friend was a young boy.

The lad was bright and handsome and his love of learning the Torah brought tremendous pleasure to his parents. When all the other children were playing games, his only interest was to learn and learn and learn. Not only that, but he understood and remembered everything he read or heard with ease, and his mind was so sharp that even the most difficult Talmudic problems were no challenge for him.

It wasn’t long before he had surpassed all the pupils in the entire school and his teachers were having trouble finding new challenges for him.
But grow as he did academically, he was severely lacking humility. There was simply no one for him to be humble before, and people began to whisper that he was conquering the Torah and forgetting the “Giver of the Torah”.

Although his parents tried to keep him from bad influences, it wasn’t long before he met up with new “friends” and discovered the “enlightened” world of non-Torah knowledge; Philosophy, Politics, Art, Literature. It was all so new and alive to him, and he took to it like a fish in water.

Here was a world of action and results, freedom and excitement with no restraints or invisible G-d telling you what to do. New vistas opened before him with new challenges, new experiences, and most importantly…new admirers.

As soon as his parents noticed what was happening, they tried appealing to his loyalty to G-d, to the Jewish people, to his family. They brought Rabbis to speak to him, first local Rabbis, then bigger and more famous ones, but the young man had become a cold-blooded genius, and not only answered each of their questions but asked them many that they couldn’t answer.

It wasn’t long before he left home, moved in to live with his intellectual friends, cut off all contact with his old life, and enrolled in a local university where he succeeded beyond belief.

After a year, all the professors were so impressed with his progress, that they recommended him to the Sorbonne University in Paris – the best in the world at that time. In less than a month he was accepted with a full scholarship. A week later he was in France, briskly walking, head erect long hair ruffling in the breeze, to his first lecture. How exhilarating!

Now he was truly free! Now he was part of all mankind. The ornately decorated crowded University corridor with its high arched ceilings and exquisite paintings and murals, verified his thoughts.

Suddenly he felt that someone was staring at him from a distance.

Sure enough, through the crowd of students he saw a young, bearded Jewish man, hat on his head heading directly toward him. He tried to turn away and walk to the side, but it didn’t help.

They met face to face. The Jew confronted him, looked deeply into his eyes and said,

“Have you put on Tefillin today?”

He was stunned! How did he know he know he was Jewish? The stranger gently put his hand on our hero’s shoulder and continued.

“No? No problem, I put Tefillin on a lot of Jews, so I’ll put on you as well. Come, it will take no more than a few minutes.”

For some reason he didn’t resist as the stranger took him to the side, pulled a pair of Tefillin out of his briefcase, waited till he finished putting them on and remove them. Then shook his hand and left.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Somehow this religious Jew got his address and every day for several months came to his room with Tefillin, until our wayward friend contacted his parents and asked that they send his Tefillin. That young man returned to his Jewish identity and became one of the pillars of the Papo Chassidim.

After a while he began to inquire about that stranger who visited him daily and discovered that it was the son-in-law of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak; Rabbi Menachem Shneerson before he became Rebbe, when he was learning in the Sorbonne.

This helps answer our question about the importance of Yehuda meeting Yosef.

According to the teachings of Kabala (Mystical Judaism) the meeting between Yosef and Yehuda was the meeting of Malchut and Yesod; a preparation for the arrival of Moshiach.

Yehuda (Malchut) stands for action and humility: the name Yhuda implies thanks and surrender. Yosef (Yesod) represents Torah understanding and elevation (Yosef means “to increase”)

Yosef stands for greatness that can only be achieved by intellect (as Pharaoh praised Yosef 41:39)). But the danger of such greatness is that it may bring egotism, as we saw with the young man in our story.

So when Yehuda bravely approached Yosef with no regard for himself he represented a type of king who puts humility before success.

Therefore, Moshiach will come from the tribe of Yehuda and Jews are called Yehudim.

The first time the Jews were called “Yhudim” (Jews) was in Purim, because of their selfless stand against Haman and the entire world.

That is the essence of Judaism and the lack of it caused the destruction of each of the two Temples. Something like the young man in our story, the Jews knew Torah but abandoned G-d.

And the thing that will fix it is unquestioning action; just as the mysterious stranger in our story negated all the young rebel’s egotism and intellectual doubts.

That is what we can learn from this week’s reading. The surest way to bring Moshiach, who will unite the Jewish people, rebuild the Temple, and fill the world with peace and prosperity, is mainly through humility and good deeds!

It all depends on us.

We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish hopes, prayers and suffering. Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought will bring ……  

Moshiach NOW!!

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