Rabbi Minkowicz Weekly Torah Lesson Parsha Vayeishev November, 18 2013

it's time for rabbi minkowitz weekly tour lesson a place where life's most difficult questions are answered here with his spiritual perspective and insight rabbi minkowitz welcome to our weekly torah thought this week is practiced by yeshev today's question we're going to be discussing is what is the ultimate state of tranquility and how is it attained so as we look into this week's torah portion participative we find something profound here we're introduced to yaakov after overcoming challenges with esau and laban and trem he's finally sitting down to relax with his family and enjoy his family time what happens the strangest thing a beautiful family as yaakov and his sons holy people it breaks out a fight between the brothers joseph and the brothers the brothers who are holy people become jealous of joseph up to the point that they wanted to kill their own brother and eventually we know they sold them into slavery yaakov who's in the dark in all this and thinks or feels like they might that his son might be dead so the torah tells us in verse they came to comfort him by humanely smacking he could not be comforted so the question is asked is a very simple question why is it that yaakov should have this unnecessary suffering and how is it that the brothers should be so jealous up to the point of wanting to kill their own brother and actually going to sell him so the rebbe comes up with a phenomenal idea and he says as follows the rebbe says that up until here the struggles that yaakov had namely with laban and esau and shrem he was confronted with evil people that were out to destroy him and people that were just basically when he overcame those struggles as we discussed in last week's torah portion he overcame the struggle with laban and esau much all transformed to good he felt great but here is the biggest challenge what's the evil here they're her sons they're brothers what's the fight all about and the rebbe explains this is exactly what hashem wanted to introduce yakov to because the ultimate state of tranquility comes not when you're fighting with evil and you overcome the evil but the ultimate state of tranquility comes when you're faced with challenge and your faced with suffering and the only question you ask is why how could it be it doesn't make sense and the only answer then is hashem has a plan hashem runs the world and we might not necessarily see or understand but the answer is probably right around the corner and as soon as we're able to accept that everything comes from hashem and this is the only answer you really have in face of such a challenge that is when you achieve true peace through tranquility and as we see that ultimately all these things which didn't make sense eventually led to the salvation of the jewish people and more importantly in k in the in terms of yaakov being truly tranquil at peace the torah tells us at the end of genesis yaakov finally achieved true life he went from trying to relax but actually to really really living and really living is when you're able to accept the fact that god runs the world and then you're able to experience true love so in other words the answer to the question how does one achieve the ultimate state of tranquility is by accepting the fact in hebrew it's girl it's that god runs the world that every aspect of your life is run by god that will give you the ultimate state of true peace and true happiness thank you so much for joining us please join us thursday 11 o'clock muhammad gives a class on the parsha thursday evening we have a class on teachings are there resale 7 30. saturday morning we have a cabala class 9 o'clock followed by davening followed by a fabrian and we look forward to you joining us next week shabbat shalom it's steinomite