Intro (00:03.778)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast. 

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (00:13)
All right, welcome back, everybody. It's so wonderful to be here. Last week's Parsha was Parsha's Vayeshev. I was in Israel, so I didn't have the privilege of doing a Parsha episode. Last week's Parsha, we talked about Yosef. Yosef was an ish-matzliach, the Torah says.

V'hi Hashem es Yosef, V'hi Ish Matsliach. Hashem was with Joseph and he became a man who was successful. V'hi beves Adonov HaMitzri and he was the master of the home of his Egyptian master. V'yar Adonov ki Hashem ito. And his master saw that Hashem was with him. V'chol asher hu ose Hashem matsliach bi yodo. And everything that he does

Hashem succeeds His hand. It's amazing that you have some people, everything they touch is gold. Everything they touch is gold. And that was Yosef. Yosef, whatever you gave him turned into gold. It was an amazing thing. And his master saw it. So what did he do? I'm skipping a few verses now to chapter 39 verse number 6.

And he left all that he had, B'yad Yosef, to the hand of Yosef. And he did not concern himself given his presence with anything except for the bread that he ate. And Yosef was handsome of form, and handsome of appearance. So, we are students of the Torah here, right?

And what do we do? We ask questions. What's the obvious question that jumps out from this verse? What in the world does one thing have to do with the other? We understand the first part of the pasuk. The first part of the verse states that his master trusted him, relied on him, depended on him, except for his bread. The only thing he dealt with is, I want to make sure I have my bread. Everything else, I trust Joseph blindly. He's got everything covered. Except...

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (02:26.402)
The verse ends with something very unique. It says, and Yosef was really handsome. He was a good looking guy. What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with anything? Let's look at Rashi. Always when you have a question like that, what do you do? You look at Rashi. What does Rashi say?

got a little bit excited here look at me I suddenly you know I was once in the pit I was sold as a slave I was put into a prison I was released from prison and now look at me I'm master of the home like that from rags to riches in no time he started feeling a little good about himself so what did he do?

He started eating. He started drinking. And he started brushing his hair, curling his hair, styling himself. And our sages explain what's really going on here is that Joseph realizes I am destined for greatness. I'm destined to become a senator. I'm destined to become a president, a vice president. I better look the part. I better start dressing the way I need to dress.

I better start taking care of myself so that I can be presentable in front of other people. wasn't that he was being arrogant per se. Amar Kaddish Baruch Hu, but Hashem had a complaint against Joseph. What was his complaint? Amar Kaddish Baruch Hu, Avicha Misabel, your father is mourning you? Ve'atam misal subasarecha, and you're busy styling your hair? The priorities are off here.

אני מגר בכה אס הדוף. Okay? This is an amazing thing. I'm going to send you temptation now. I'm going to send you a challenge. And what was the challenge we know right after that was the wife of his master starts to seduce him to have an inappropriate relationship with him and Yosef realizes I have to protect myself. And he avoids a tragedy. Our sages tell us

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (04:51.202)
that this would have been a tragedy for all the future of the Jewish people had Yosef fallen to that temptation and Yosef becomes the great leader that he is. There's something that we need to understand here is that Hashem always is guiding us. You see when something comes from heaven we say, Hashem, was the hand of Hashem. But when something comes from another person sometimes

We attribute it to the other person. Look what he did. Look what they did. How can they say that? How can they do that? And we don't attribute it to Hashem. We think that that person was really in control and we are wrong. It's not that person. It's Hashem sending that person to test us, to elevate us, to bring us to a place of our greatness. And it's sometimes very hard for us to see that.

What are you talking about? What are you telling me, Rabbi? You're telling me that my friend who didn't invite me to their child's wedding

to their bar mitzvah? You're telling me that that was Hashem? No, that was my friend just being mean. That friend who just doesn't know how to be appreciative and we can find many, many different ways to package why our friends did what they did or why humanity did what they did. But if we look truthfully in the Torah, we will see

We will see that they're all the hand of Hashem. We see this by Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar. He was a wicked man, did terrible things to the Jewish people. Boy, how does Hashem refer to him? Nebuchadnezzar Avdi, Nebuchadnezzar my servant. Although he did something terrible to the Jewish people, he still fulfilled God's desire.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (06:58.306)
that something happened to the Jewish people. That means he is doing something. Now, we can say, well, in that case, you're to say that he was a good person. No. That means there is a heavenly decree that something will happen to the Jewish people. And God says there's a ticket. Like, know, when they do the fast food.

The fast food and there's a ticket that's and the chef puts the ticket in there and he looks at what the order is and he puts together the salad and he puts away together, you know, whatever the food is. There's a ticket that's in order. And now who's going to be the one who says, I want to execute it. I want to be the one to murder the Jews. I want to be the one. And that they'll be punished for. You're so wicked that you want to perform the decree against the Jewish people.

even though it's a heavenly decree from God. You shouldn't want to do that. You shouldn't want to bring about pain, sadness, murder.

Even if it's a decree from Hashem, let Hashem find his own messengers. You don't have to volunteer and say, ooh, me, I want to kill six million. I want to murder them. That's a very terrible thing. So we have to understand that there is a very delicate balance between the message from Hashem

that is always a mida kineged mida, it is always an eye for an eye versus the ability that a person has to interact with that mida kineged mida. That means why am I praying? Why am I praying? We're about to do our prayer podcast in a few minutes. Why do we pray if everything is already decreed from Hashem? If Hashem already decreed that I should be hurt, God forbid,

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (08:54.562)
So what does it make a difference if I pray? If God forbid one is supposed to be sick, then why in the world should I pray for healing? Why should I interfere with God's desire? God already prescribed it. God said, this is what's going to be. Why in the world should I interfere with my prayer? Our sages teach us that we are able to change it. We are able to influence

and change Hashem's mind, so to speak.

and have decrees changed. That's the power that we have in prayer. That's the prayer, the power we have in our service of Hashem, whether it be in our study of Torah, doing mitzvahs, we're able to persuade God to make a change. That is the power that we see here. And we see that Yosef, although there was a midah kineged midah, there was an act for an act, he started beautifying himself.

That beauty led him down a trail that was not a good one. But he immediately realized one second, I went astray. I must change that. I must realign myself with Hashem. And we see this many times by King David where it says how David went out to protect someone and plea on his behalf in front of Hashem.

so that their punishment can be removed and the decree against them should be changed. We see that we have that power, we can make that change. So, for everything that we do, for every act, there is a reaction. For every action, the good that we do, and heaven forbid, the wrong that we do, there is a reaction.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (10:58.616)
But we can always catch it before that reaction takes effect. And that's why we say in our 13 attributes of mercy that Hashem controls the world with, Erech haPayim. God is slow to anger. When we make a mistake, we can immediately correct it. We talked about this yesterday in our Jewish Inspiration Podcast. We talked about teshuva, repentance. What is the purpose of repentance?

Right? God said, going I'm going to sin. So I'm going to sin. No, you can change the, you can change the story. You can change the narrative.

Because before Hashem punishes, before Hashem exacts an eye for an eye for our actions, you can say, Hashem, I can't believe I messed up. I can't believe that I made a mistake. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. And Hashem changes according to our request. And here we see that Yosef did this. Yosef realigned himself. He readjusted. Hashem...

saw that he did something that he shouldn't have done. He forgot about his father's pain. He forgot about his father sitting. His father was mourning for him 22 years while he was in Egypt. 22 years. And Joseph, you're busy styling your hair. I'm going to send you a challenge that will wake you up. What was the challenge? what does that styling do? It brings beauty.

Now I'm going to challenge you with that beauty that now you're going to be enticed by the wife of your master.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (12:44.802)
What happens? He wakes up from that and he says, you know something? Hashem is sending me a message here. Hashem is telling me I need to focus myself better. I need to be more in tune with the Word of Hashem. And Yosef, Yosef is called Yosef the Tzadik. One of only two people who is called a Tzadik in the Torah. You have Noah who is a Tzadik and Yosef who is a Tzadik.

Unbelievable. Yosef was a man of total greatness. But he was a man who was always in a struggle. And it's an amazing thing how connected this is with what we're going to talk about today in our prayer podcast. Because we're going to talk about how King David says, miyur divor. How he's saying, Hashem, don't let me fall into the pit. Don't let me fall into desperation.

Don't let me fall to a place where I cannot get out of. Who was put into a pit? Joseph was put into a pit. Joseph was the greatest of all the brothers. You know what comes with greatness? Challenge. Joseph was the one who had the most challenge of all the brothers. Because if you want to be great, you're going to be challenged.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (14:12.046)
And anybody you talk to who's had success of any measure in life, they will tell you that their biggest success came after their biggest challenge. You want to go really high, you're to have to go really down, really, really down deep.

You're about to give up on the business. You're about to give up. I tried, I called. You see people, say that you'd call 100 people a day and people would hang up the phone on them. Don't call me again. Don't ever talk to me again. Don't even bother. I know some, I have a very good friend of mine.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (14:48.222)
He was trying to sell his service. And people told him, don't lose my number. Don't call me back again. I'm not going to do business with you. I have my people I do business And he kept on trying and kept on trying and kept on trying. And that's what eventually sold them. Eventually they said, you know what? This guy is really, really, he's not letting go. Let me give it a shot.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (15:17.324)
And that's where their success came from. Obviously, their success came from Hashem. But we need to realize that the greatest success doesn't come because we're in a mode of success. It's because we're in a mode of challenge. Those who fall down deep are the ones who are able to go really high. And you see this throughout our history. Those who are the greatest had the biggest challenges.

We don't see in spiritual growth steadiness. We see ups and we see downs and ups and downs and ups and downs.

Moshe was so great, how can he sin? Because he's so great, he makes mistakes.

God said to hit the rock, you talk to the rock, God says talk to the rock, you hit the rock, what's going on here?

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (16:12.664)
Follow instructions.

There's a challenge. There's a challenge to that growth. And we have to embrace that challenge because, you know, we say this all the time.

If you look at the echocardiogram, you see how the heart rate goes, the heart pulse goes up and down and up and down and up and down. Why can't it just be steady, straight, a straight line? Because that's when you're dead. Living people have ups and downs. Dead people don't. It's like I saw here in our parking lot, right here in front of the torch center. I saw someone had a bumper sticker.

It had a picture of grass and on top of it it said good, beneath it it said bad.

Right, as long as we're on top of the grass, it's good. Remember that perspective. Remember that once we're done and we're beneath the grass, there's nothing we can do anymore. We can't change things anymore.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (17:23.724)
This is the gift that we have in life. The gift of facing challenges, embracing challenges, and not relenting, not giving up, and just pushing forward. This is the gift, and this is something great that we can learn from Yosef. It's an excellent question, Babi. You know, some people think that the only way you can serve Hashem is by sitting and learning Torah.

or actually physically going out and doing a mitzvah of like acts of kindness, delivering meals on wheels, know, that is a mitzvah. But me, just a little me, what can I do? I'm just folding laundry. What type of mitzvah is that? I'm going to work for my livelihood. What, that's a mitzvah? Yes, that is a mitzvah. Everything, and I heard a very prominent rabbi say this.

He said it for women particularly. Women sometimes are a little bit more limited with going to synagogue. They're taking care of young children. On Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur. She wants to go to haven and synagogue, but you know she has little children. She needs to feed them. She needs to take care of them. You know what the rabbi said? He said that is your fulfillment of Yom Kippur. Not because you're less. It's not...

That is your fulfillment of it. That is your mitzvah. I'll give you example not relating to a woman. My grandfather, when he was in Yeshiva, in the Mir, in Poland, it was right before Moshe from Yom Kippur. And one of the great elite students walks over to my grandfather right before Moshe. Imagine Moshe is like the highlight, the highlight, like the highest point of Yom Kippur.

He comes over to my grandfather, he said, we are so and so. So my grandfather said, he's sick in bed. So the student asks my grandfather, did you go visit him? He says, now? Like right before Musif? He says, what are you talking about? That's your mitzvah today. Sometimes we don't value the mitzvahs that we have. Raising a beautiful family is your mitzvah. Taking care of your children is your mitzvah.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (19:48.802)
going and earning a livelihood is your mitzvah. We're a woman, it's not exclusive to women, but anyone who's doing laundry, this is your mitzvah.

But a lot of the busy that we are doing on a regular basis is a mitzvah. We're doing it for what? For what purpose? We're doing it so that we can serve Hashem. So that we can bring light to the world. And we sometimes discount and minimize the good things that we're doing because we're like, that's not, it's not that level mitzvah. No, it is. It really is. And a person needs to appreciate

that what they're doing is the will of Hashem. I want to just add one more thing because we mentioned this. For Rab'nachman's teachings, he says something so beautiful. Rab'nachman says, achievements came mainly through simplicity. I spent much time simply conversing with God and reciting the Psalms. Rab'nachman yearned to serve God like the simple common people. Now listen to this paragraph.

Every good and holy thing can be done with absolute simplicity. We should study Torah, pray, recite Psalms and other prayers and perform its vote all with the utmost simplicity and sincerity and with great joy. Reb Nachman loved and praised the simple acts of people. Whether it be reciting Psalms, singing songs at the Shabbos table and so on.

He would deride those who thought themselves too smart and clever to act simply. Until he later became terminally ill, he himself would sing many songs at the Shabbos table. You wonder, like, he's a great rabbi, like, say like lofty thoughts on Torah, say great ideas, things that, the world stands on this, and you say all these simple, simple things.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (21:57.688)
We have to realize that the lighting of the menorah, very simple mitzvah is a mitzvah that I was thinking yesterday before I lit the menorah. I close my eyes and just take and get in. What am I doing here? I'm about to light the menorah. Where am I standing? I'm standing in front of my window. What are we doing? It's winter time. It's long winter nights. And what are we doing? We're taking light from inside.

and shining that light out.

That's our job. We all have a light within us. That light can be our passion, it could be our joy, it could be our devotion, it could be our conviction, our faith. It's all within. We have to shine that out. We have to shine that out to the world. It's such a simple concept.

We don't have to get complicated about it. We don't have to get complicated about our service of Hashem. Simple. Be simple with Hashem your God. This is the verse in the Torah.

Don't make it all complicated. God loves simplicity. The simple acts that we do. The great rabbis say that when someone goes and shows up at work, they should say, just like you do before you do a mitzvah, here I am, behold, I am about to perform a mitzvah of providing a livelihood for my family.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (23:45.056)
of making every effort so can put food on the table for my children so that they can serve God. they can like think of all of the laundry that you did for Scotty his whole life so that he can become a righteous scholar today in Jerusalem. You understand what you've done? Don't take a single one of those and say, well, it was just ordinary. I have to do that for my children. Yes, we do have to, but I can do it because it's a debt that I have to take care of.

I can do it out of joy because look what I'm bringing to the world. I'm bringing beautiful children who are going to be servants of the Almighty. You understand the power in the simple mundane act that we do? Feeding our family with dinner. They have to eat. What do you mean? I have to... I'm the mother. I'm the father. I have to take care of them. That's true. But add a little spice to it. Add a little spice.

look at what I'm doing for my children, bringing light to their life so that now they can go and be educated in good health. And now they can go and become a good doctor, they could become a good lawyer, they could become a person who volunteers for the community. Think about that. It's not just I'm feeding them to sustain their physical being. There's the spiritual component that's beyond that. And that's what we're feeding.

All right, my dear friends, have a great Shabbos. Thank you. There are two components to this. Firstly, is that yes, you need to use your Yitzher Hara against him, against himself. Trickery. Our Torah teaches us, use trickery against your Yitzher Hara. Well, you have to be very careful about that. You have to be very careful about using evil forces.

to bring about success. There are many, many people out there who have a fortune of money and it's all tainted money, spiritually tainted money. Right? They may have earned it legally in an appropriate way, but the Yetzirah says, you know what, if this is the way you're getting your money, all of this money is never gonna have blessing. It's never gonna go for a good cause. One second, let me explain. I mentioned this previously. I have a friend of mine has since passed away, but he told a story.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (26:11.85)
about how he became a rabbi and he was a rabbi teaching in school, you regular school children, but how much, how much do you earn being a rabbi in a school? Not very much. So he would go, his friend says to him, why don't we go to Atlantic city and we'll go do a little bit of gambling, you know, and they went always with a limited amount of money and I don't encourage anyone to go gambling. And he went gambling and he made a fortune.

money, a fortune of money. And he went once and then he went the next week and he went the next week and every week one time he made five thousand sometimes he made ten thousand sometimes he said one time he walked out with thirty five thousand dollars. He came in with one thousand walked out with thirty five. That's a pretty good return on your investment right there. Right. And each time he was just like always coming back as a winner until he opened up a book that talked about the good that the

evil forces bring to you. And one of them is through gambling. he'll use the evil force will say, you know what, I'm going to shower you with goods. I'm going to shower you with good. But now everything that you use that money on is tainted. It has, you know, if you look in the DNA of it, it'll be impure money because it came through unkosher means. He never went back to gamble ever again after learning that never went back.

And they called him up from the casino. And they said to him, we've never had anything like this. Someone who's been on a winning streak to not show up ever again. It's never happened. Never. Ever. Usually you lose a lot of money and then, okay, you you forfeited your house. You gave away everything you had. That's when people stop. They have no choice. They have nothing more. But you, you're at the peak of your success. Why are you stopped? Because it's impure. It's impure. I don't want to have it.

I'm going to give that to pay the tuition for my children. I'm going to give the impure, like it's tainted money, spiritually tainted. It impurifies those good causes. It impurifies the good. I can try to find the Kavayashara and learn it together here, where he brings this, this, this. It's a very powerful idea. And it's not, we'll talk about this actually in our prayer today. We'll see that there's these two parallel worlds. We have the spiritual world.

Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (28:39.512)
We have the physical world. There's a spiritual world to that money. So while a person can actually earn that money, but if he earns it through means that are not kosher means, so the spiritual realm of that money has an aura of impurity. Lottery, I don't think so. Lottery is not considered gambling. Not in the same way. Look, a lottery is you're taking a chance. It's not a very...

great chance because your likelihood of winning is one in 225 trillion, right? So the likelihood of you winning is not great. But a person should never put their trust in it, right? If it's the right thing. I always say, look, if it's the right thing, Hashem, you have easy ways to give it to me. The lottery can be one of them, right? If you don't want me to have it. So I'm just, I'm enjoying a sport for $3. Okay, that's it. Okay, my dear friends.

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