Parshat Vayigash – Dreams to Destiny

“Ani Yosef, I am Yosef whom you have sold to Egypt.” What would it take for a person like us to be able to announce to ourselves Ani so and so? It requires a tremendous amount of self recognition to be able to stand there confidently, knowing that all the hard work, the struggles and pain that we’ve gone through was all worth it for this day. At this point it seems like Yosef’s entire 22 years away from home was like a dream in the past, and all he had to do was simply wait for the ending to come true the way he envisioned it before it all started. Pharaoh had two dreams and Yosef interpreted it by saying, since Hashem showed it to you twice that means he is eager to bring it about. But hasn’t Yosef himself had two dreams, so why did it take 22 years until they finally came true?

The answer is simple; the difference between the two is when they suffered, earlier or later? When suffering is last there is a smaller chance of getting back up and making the most out of it, and without Yosef’s genius proposal and hard work Egypt would be completely wiped out due to the high cost of living and inflation, and due to the rolling blackouts and lack of property ownership. But when the suffering comes first and is ultimately followed by success, the victory lap we take when all is said and done is way greater than a mere seven years of abundance. When we are gifted an enormous amount of wealth at once we don’t know how to be grateful and become complacent with our riches, which only helps the downfall worse, but when suffering is experienced first we come to grow resilience and therefore appreciate the blessing that comes afterwards and we live gratefully with gratitude for His great gifts.

Going through so many years alone reminds me of what I heard from a music artist who would travel from state to state to perform. He said, “It is on the road that the real you comes out. You hear yourself talk most of the time, you drift off to pleasures and excitement on the open road and in the vast distance between there and home. The true character of a man is exposed when it is not his bed he rests his head on at night and when he hasn’t tasted a dish made with love.” Being sold into slavery and exiled from his father’s home had Yosef facing his biggest challenges, first with learning to accept his fate, next confronting the urge of his basic human needs and desires, and then all of the above while imprisoned with the criminals of Egypt.

But the test still hasn’t ended there. The true mark for a king is given when he remembers his younger days and the battles he won that actually raised him to the throne. Many ask, why didn’t Yosef just send a postcard or a bird with a tweet to his father back home saying that he was alive, wasn’t he king for nine years before they came down? But in this manner we can understand that his test was about to get even harder when he realized that being king is not the key to freedom. It requires all the lessons he gained over the years to remain on his mind and in front of his eyes all the time. The access to pleasure and the ease for submission is so great at that point, as we know, the girls would sit on the gates of the city just to glance at his face and aura when he passed his window. It was the biggest test of his lifetime to keep himself together with the principles he had set for himself from the moment his mother passed.

All of those seconds, all 693 million of them, were challenging. Keeping those thoughts at bay and instead focusing on the true meaning of life without giving in even once. How much time does it take for us to crumble under financial pressure, heartbreak, or worse, boredom? How many times do we find ourselves knowing that what we are about to do or are already doing, is completely wrong but we still don’t have the strength to stop? What are the thoughts that run through our minds that cause mood changes that are only recognized after we’ve fallen and stumbled with our weaknesses? I bet that it is less than 22 years of pain that leads us to giving up. What we can learn from Yosef is that all it takes to remain holy and pure is to take each moment as the gift of life, and most importantly, believe in the dream of a brighter future.

As Yosef announced who he was to his brothers the Torah states, “And they did not recognize him.” Rashi points out that he had left without any facial hair and now had a beard, (who knows, he may have had an egyptian one?) What is interesting to note is that in the beginning of Parshat Vayeshev, Rashi explains that Yaakov and Yosef were similar in their looks, so why didn’t the brothers recognize the complexion of their father when they looked at him? The Gemara in Sota 36b states that when Yosef was in the den with Zuleikha he saw his fathers complexion through the window. Was it his own face that he saw mirrored off the glass, or was it a memory of his father’s soothing smile teaching him the core faith of our belief with all its rights and wrongs? Or shall we go even deeper?

Much like you, if you made it to this paragraph you understand that the words I laid out above all created imagery in your mind of Yosef and feelings in your heart as you resonated with him. The same is with every text that we read, we are being pulled into the script and are allowing the contents to form an entire world of thought around us until we literally forget about the reality that is happening around us. We forget to keep track of time, we light up with the joy of the imagination and are completely engulfed in the context. The same thing happens when we experience feelings, when we hear a song we haven’t heard in twenty years we instantly revert back to our youth and start feeling younger as we are reminded of that country road we heard it way back when. We become consumed by that memory and it transfers our entire consciousness to that memory. Our feelings are where the power lies and once we tap into one we become surrounded by it and it takes over our reality. Ask anyone with depression.

Yosef was taught love by his father, a love that can only be described as so intense that it led his brothers to hate him out of jealousy. He experienced a feeling that was so grand in its essence that all he needed in his life was to remember how to get that feeling back again once more so that he can relive and revivify those moments. As he stood there in the empty house, being sweet talked, persuaded and seduced, the emotion of love started moving its gears within, but as Hashem told Bilaam, “Avraham has preceded you,” the same happened here, the love Yosef experienced through his father was reawakened and he was instantly shot back to those times and he had the courage to keep himself together. When he said “Ani Yosef,” he didn’t just mean it superficially, he said it with confidence and empathy, remembering the trials he faced and the creeping thoughts that tried to drown him. And now with this experience he was able to stand tall and announce to all, “I am him!” We are all like him, and we should be grateful for the challenges and hold on tight to the eternal promise, and soon we will all awaken from the dream of our exile. 

David Lemmer is an Orthodox Jewish Writer and Hypnotherapist based in NJ. He can be reached at LemmerHypno@gmail.com