Vayeshev – December 22, 2005 – 21 Kislev 5766
The darkest part of Yaakov was lies, deception: He tricked his brother out of the blessing, he and Aisav kissed each other.
Daven with your head down – the head is heavy with an honest accounting – with a heart full of Chanukah candles.
A core symptom of society is how men look at women.
There is a parallel between Yehuda going into the tent with Tamar and with Abraham going up Mount Moria in the cloud.
Leah was Yaakov’s bershert; we know this because their son, Yehuda, gave birth to Meshiach.
Abraham and the Aish Kodesh both kept walking into the darkness. The Satan told Abraham the truth, that HaShem did not want him to sacrifice his son, and Abraham didn’t know how to choose between reasoning and intuition.
A chazzan is someone who can speak the prayers and see the vision. He is the person who sees the vision, not the person with the best voice. One must have a good intuition to be a vessel for prophesy. In old shuls, the chazzan stood in a hole. From the depths I cry out to you.
Joseph has to find himself to find G*d. You have to go down into your deficit to find G*d. You don’t climb a mountain. To go down takes enormous strength. Keeping faith in that dark room. Abraham’s darkest space was abuse/lack of love. And he kept walking towards it. When Abraham was walking up the mountain, he was actually going down, because every step was a test, reliving the moment his father tossed him into the oven.
Tamar came from the yeshiva of Shem and Aver.
Chamor means ass – he was the father of Shechem.
Aish Kodesh:
We define an ignorant person as someone who doesn’t tithe. Your property reflects your ethics. If you dig a hole, you need to put a fence around it – this was a new idea at Sinai.
There are two groups of people: people of the cloud and people of the ass.
Why was the cloud visible only as they got closer? Each step was a test. Faith kept Abraham walking. Faith is based on doubt; it is not based on knowledge. The Aish Kodesh was not compelled to explain away pain.
Morah is “the place that I will show you.” It’s an inner place, the place of vulnerability.
The world of tsimtsum is dark – we have to open a capillary of light to bring down the idea in the mind of G*d to earth. And action/mitzvah. And speech.
G*d’s light doesn’t guarantee anything – there has to be a vessel to receive it.
People who survived the death camps would have visions of Yitzak, bringing wood to the ovens.