Vayeshev - 2022

Chevre, this week’s parsha is וַיֵּשֶׁב (Vayeshev). This week we have story after story of problematic family relations. The brothers don’t kill, but end up selling Yosef into slavery and then lie to Jacob about what happened. This was even caused by Jacob showing favortism toward Yosef. And then we have the son’s of Yehuda, who were not so up standing, 1 died, his brother didn’t want to perform yibum or taking the other’s wife and was killed for spilling his seed. And then Yehuda doesn’t fulfill the yibum with the next son so that Tamar, the poor woman in this part of the story, has to trick Yehuda to do the right thing. At least at the end of the Yehuda/Tamar story, Yehuda does the right thing and tells everyone that she’s pregnant from him. This is a turning point in the story. In the building of an architecture, this is where the previous building and architecture mistakes are starting to be corrected. Next we have Yosef in the house of Potiphar and not sleeping with Potiphar’s wife, which gets him into more trouble. Sometimes, for every architecture fix, you may find other issues popping up. And then we finish with Yosef in jail and the stories of the cup bearer and baker. The baker is killed since he didn’t do his job well, architect well my friends, your life may depend on it. And the cup bearer is restored to his position, but he doesn’t remember Yosef. This could be because Yosef didn’t have faith in G-d (or his team of architects). We are left with a cliff hanger until next week. So we are in the process of moving from less desirable traits and architectures toward a higher moral standard and better architecture. Note, next week, I’ll be back in the US, and so my Dvar Torah will be delayed again. Shabbat Shalom.