Yosef, Shulchan Lechem Hapanim and Channukah – Mikeitz
In this week’s parsha, Mikeitz, we see the prophetic culmination of Yosef’s dreams. The story of Yosef is the template story of Am Yisrael in galut. The underdog that rises from the lowest depths to the highest heights which are briefly enjoyed, only to be repeatedly dashed and plunged yet again into darkness – all as a precursor to the ultimate salvation.
A young man exiled and sold into slavery in a foreign land, rises to a position of success and power in Potiphar’s house for a brief time, only to be falsely accused of sexual assault and thrown into jail. Yosef again rises to the highest position a prisoner can, but has to endure years of suffering and bondage. Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he is extricated from the pit and within a few short hours becomes the viceroy of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. Yosef is reunited with his family and together they enjoy a “brief” period of prosperity before, yet again, being plunged into bondage and slavery – this time finally culminating with the salvation of the Exodus.
Similarly, Am Yisrael over the millennia in the Diaspora have risen from the lowest depths to achieve brief prosperity, power and greatness, in Spain, in Poland, in America, etc., only to be plunged repeatedly into the darkness of expulsion, Holocaust and anti-Semitism - a precursor to the final salvation, the Geulah.
Yosef is the first of the two messiahs, Mashiach ben Yosef, symbolizing material salvation, to be followed by Mashiach ben David, who will bring spiritual salvation. It is Yosef’s role to be the משביר, the provider, the statesman who will make peace with the nations of the world, in preparation for the arrival of Mashiach ben David.
Yosef is the medium through which HKB”H showers His blessing of sustenance on the whole world. Using the gift of Divine wisdom given to him by G-d, Yosef, צפנת פענח – the decipherer of mysteries, speaker of seventy languages - mobilizes Egypt to prepare for and endure the seven year famine. Yosef is the conduit to supplying food for the entire world. Eventually his father and brothers find their way to Egypt and enjoy Divine sustenance through Yosef, as he had prophesied.
In Meir Panim I explore the repeated connection between the Shulchan Lechem Hapanim and Yosef and his descendants, as revealed in the psukkim. These hints are uncovered by using different techniques used in the ספרי הסוד, such as ראשי תיבות – first letters of the words in the passuk, סופי תיבות – last letters of the words, ריבוע - compiling a word by repeatedly adding the following letter, like נ נח נחמ נחמן, gematria, etc.
Here are a few examples -
Yosef was a living Shulchan Lechem Hapanim. Through him HKB”H channeled sustenance and parnasa to the entire world. Not only grains during the period of famine, but even prior to that – in the house of Potiphar and as head warden in the prison, he was מצליח – in everything he did. The Midrash tells how HKB”H blessed the house of Potiphar through Yosef. Everything Yosef touched turned to “gold”. He would bring Potiphar a glass of red wine and Potiphar would say “Actually, today I prefer white wine!” Yosef would simply touch the cup and the red wine would miraculously turn to white wine. “Yosef this soup is already cold!” Yosef would touch the bowl and the soup would miraculously become boiling hot. Everything Yosef “touched” or was involved in was מצליח and caused great prosperity to Potiphar and the chief of the prison.
This is also the concept of the Shulchan Lechem Hapanim. It is a conduit through which HKB”H rains prosperity from the שפע העליון down to this physical, material world, in the form of offspring, food and parnasa. Every Motzei Shabbat we say the Mizmor Tehilim (קמד) before tefilat arvit, where David Hamelech describes the idyllic state of prosperity in Am Yisrael –
מזוינו מלאים מפיקים מזן אל זן צאוננו מאליפות מרבבות בחוצותינו. אלופינו מסבלים אין פרץ ואין יוצאת ואין צוחה ברחבתינו. אשרי העם שככה לו אשרי העם שה'א-לוקיו (יג-טו).
It was this state of material prosperity that persisted in Am Yisrael from the time of the Mishkan until the destruction of the 1st Mikdash, when it was briefly interrupted for 70 years of galut Bavel, but resumed with the rebuilding of the 2nd Mikdash and continued for another 422 years until the churban Bayit Sheini. A total period of 1311 years!
During this time, people had to work less than two hours a day for their parnasa (the minimum hishtadlut) and they had the rest of the day free to spend with their families and study Torah, איש תחת גפנו ותחת תאנתו (מלכים א, ה, ה). We have a lot of rich people in the world today, but this concept of effortless prosperity across the entire spectrum of Am Yisrael and through them to the entire world, was unprecedented. Not only was parnasa effortless, the quality and taste of the food during this period was so superior to what we eat today that we have no conception what good food is. We think grandma’s apple pie was great, or aunt Bracha’s chicken soup, from nostalgic memories of our childhood that we tend to romanticize – multiply that by 1 million times and you begin to understand that what we have today is a pale shadow of the food back then. Very few of us are farmers, but even so, most of us know the difficulty in growing crops today, with the astronomical rise in pests and disease that the pesticides and chemicals don’t get close to solving. The thrips in the lettuce, the plague of weeds in wheat fields, the mosaic viruses and bugs in fruits. These were unheard of back then.
This was all due to the Divine bracha transmitted through the Shulchan Lechem Hapanim!
We are currently celebrating Channukah. Chazal say that the chief target of galut Yavan was Yosef - the Greeks tried to eradicate the middah of Yosef from Am Yisrael. As we know from Al Hanissim, the Greeks tried to להשכיחם תורתך ולהעבירם מחוקי רצונך.
The Greek exile was not a threat of physical annihilation, like galut Bavel and Haman – it was a threat of spiritual annihilation. The ancient Greek philosophy is that One Supreme G-d does not exist, or if He does exist, He is not involved in our world at all. According to this philosophy it is only the natural laws that govern our physical world and our powers of reason and logic, there is nothing beyond that. The ancient Greeks therefore glorified nature – the human body, the elements, science – everything they could see, touch, smell, taste, hear and deduct with their minds. There were positive aspects of the Greek philosophy - advancement of the human mind, social justice, etc. but without a foundation in the morality of the belief in G-d, these aspects are potentially catastrophic.
It is a philosophy that is at the very foundation of modern Western civilization and culture – eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die. It is a philosophy of materialism, it glorifies materialism – celebrating the physical, materialistic world and all it has to offer – food, drink, art, cars, leisure, travel, vacation, TV, smartphones, streaming movies, gaming, entertainment – all made possible by the power of science and technology, the “pinnacle” of the human mind.
The largest and most immediate threat to such a philosophy is the Torah. The Torah recognizes that all the elements of the Greek philosophy are simply physical manifestations of the One Supreme Power, HKB”H and that this physical world is just a temporary, fleeting corridor to the true world, עולם הבא. The Torah does not deny us any of the pleasures of this physical world while we are briefly here, quite the opposite. It simply prioritizes and places them in the relevant framework, the framework of recognition and gratitude – recognition of the Creator who created them and gratitude to the Creator for giving them to us. The Torah is a philosophy of elevating the physical world to a higher spiritual level and not accepting the physical world as is, but as a springboard to something higher.
Amongst the many גזירות that the Greeks imposed on Am Yisrael was - "כתבו לכם על קרן השור אין לכם חלק באלוקי ישראל". They required each Jew to take a bull’s horn and inscribe on it “we do not have any part in the G-d of Israel”. Why davka a bull’s horn?
It was because the bull, שור, is the symbol of Yosef. We read in parshat Vezot Habracha, when Moshe blessed the Twelve Tribes, the blessing of Yosef בכור שורו הדר לו. The bull’s horn symbolizes Yosef. What was it about Yosef that the Greeks despised?
The Greeks were great scholars, they were the first nation in the world to translate the Torah into another language (a day of mourning, ח' טבת and one of the reasons we fast on Asara beTevet). They knew full well what Yosef represented.
Yosef never uttered a sentence without mentioning Hashem’s name!
How did Potiphar recognize that all his prosperity was due to Hashem? What did that rasha know of Hashem? It was simply because in everything that Yosef did, he mentioned Hashem’s name. Potifar would ask “What was the tally of today’s harvest?” and Yosef would answer “45 bushels in the east field, baruch Hashem!” Potiphar would ask “What is this morning schedule?” to which Yosef would reply “Be’ezrat Hashem we will be pruning the Cabernet grape vines this morning and composting the field”.
When solving the dreams of the שר המשקים ושר האופים, Yosef was quick to point out that the solution was not his, but G-d’s. Similarly when Pharaoh asked him to interpret his dream, Yosef said בלעדי א-לקים יענה את שלום פרעה.
Yosef’s very essence was the umbilical association of everything with Hashem.
It was this very association that the Greeks were trying to erase, which is why they davka chose the middah and symbol of Yosef.
If Yosef was a living Shulchan Lechem Hapanim, then the actual Shulchan Lechem Hapanim in the Mishkan and the Mikdash, also embodied this principle. In Meir Panim (פרק יד), I bring the fundamental principle of the Lechem Hapanim – איזהו עשיר השמח בחלקו. The recognition that HKB”H is the source of all and gratitude to HKB”H for all. Every component of the Shluchan Lechem Hapanim, the table, the bread, the levonah, exudes this principle.
The Shulchan Lechem Hapanim did not exist in a vacuum - it was paired with another vessel in the Mikdash – the Menorah. Both stood side by side in the Heichal facing the Aron Habrit. The Menorah and the Shulchan were a symbiotic pair symbolizing תורה and קמח, which are mutually dependent. Without the light of the Torah, radiated through the flames of the Menorah, there can be no קמח and no sustenance. Without קמח and sustenance we cannot physically survive to study Torah.
Channukah is not a festival of food, like Purim. In jest - some people theorize that the fact we eat sufganiyot on Channukah is a “finger in the eye” of the Greeks, that instead of developing our muscles and our body, we develop the “tire” around our waists. They also say that when you eat one sufganiyah, it burns for 8 days! The sufganiyah, a descendant of the first fried bread in history, the לחם רבוכה in the Mikdash (part of the Korban Toda and the Minchat Chavitin of the Kohen Gadol), is not about the קמח, it is about the oil. The focus of Channukah is not specifically on the Shulchan (the food), it is on the mix of the Shulchan and the Menorah.
The focus is on Yosef, who embodied this symbiotic pairing of the Shulchan and the Menorah, the משביר, the provider of sustenance, who never uttered a sentence without recognition and gratitude to בורא עולם.
As we celebrate Channukah this year, we need to keep this principle in mind. Resolving to enjoy our natural world and all it has to offer, not like the Greeks, but in the framework of the Torah. To elevate our material world to a higher spiritual level – using our cars to do more chessed, using the internet to study more Torah and help others, eating for the purpose of giving us strength and health to perform more mitzvot, relaxing and taking a holiday to recoup our physical and mental כוחות to serve HKB”H. Just like Yosef controlled his natural urges and did not sin with אשת פוטיפר, we need to declare war on our own yetzer harah. We are living in a turbulent period where the yetzer harah is running rampant in Am Yisrael, causing even great people who you would not think capable of it to sin in the worst way, with sin’at chinam and worse רחמנא ליצלן. It is not sufficient to simply resolve to fight our yetzer harah, we need to devise specific tactics and strategy to achieve this, much as an army wages war on its enemy - troop movements, timing and maneuvering so as not to be caught in the yetzer harah’s web, each according to their own personal challenges and weaknesses. And finally …..making a concerted effort to increase our use of Hashem’s name in our day to day speech. That will be our true revenge on the ancient Greeks.
