{"id":217,"date":"2013-11-08T02:23:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T02:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=217"},"modified":"2013-11-08T02:23:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T02:23:27","slug":"vayeishev-5770-2009","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=217","title":{"rendered":"VaYeishev 5770 (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Drash for VaYeiShev 5770<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Marc Mangel<\/p>\n

When I prepared my Torah portion, I was particularly taken by the last part that I read (Ch 39 v21-23):\u00a0 \u201cHaShem was with Joseph, and He endowed him with appeal and He put his favor in the eyes of the prison warden. The prison warden placed all inmates that were in the prison in Joseph\u2019s custody, and everything that was done there, he would do. The prison warden did not scrutinize anything that was in his custody, because HaShem was with Joseph; and whatever Joseph would do HaShem would make successful\u201d<\/p>\n

We see that long before Joseph is running things for Pharaoh, he is running the prison.<\/p>\n

It is inescapable from those verses that even in the worst place in Egypt, Pharaoh\u2019s prison (and those are still pretty terrible prisons, as Daniel Silva notes in one of his recent books) God is present and active.\u00a0 God is sometimes hidden, some times not hidden, but always present and our job \u2013 wherever we are — is to find God\u2019s presence.\u00a0 How do we do that?<\/p>\n

Last night, and for the next seven nights, we will light Hannukah candles.\u00a0 There are many things that can be said about the light that comes from the candles, but here\u2019s the one for today:\u00a0 the light coming from the candles is both a wave and a particle.\u00a0 That is, the answer to the question: is light a wave or a particle is: yes.\u00a0 Sometimes it behaves like it is only a particle, sometimes it behaves like it is only a wave. Trippy. Ilan and I will be happy to explore this further with you, but not on Shabbat.<\/p>\n

To the question: is Hannukah the remembrance of the victory by a small eastern people over an invading and much more powerful western force or is Hannukah a remembrance of a miracle of rededication of the Temple?\u00a0 The answer is: yes.<\/p>\n

To the question: is every Jew a physical being living in a physical reality or a spiritual being connected to another world?\u00a0 The answer is: yes.\u00a0 Sometimes we appear to be only in the physical world and sometimes we appear to be only in the spiritual world (think of Joseph\u2019s dreams).<\/p>\n

The last Lubbavitcher Rebbee taught that every time we perform a physical mitzvah \u2013 putting on tefillin, lighting Shabbat or Hannukah candles —\u00a0 we connect the physical world to the spiritual world and help make a dwelling for God in our physical world.<\/p>\n

It could be said that the only certainty in Judaism is duality.\u00a0 Tonight when you light those Hanukah candles \u2013 and remember light that is simultaneously a wave and a particle \u2013 also remember that you too are simultaneously in the physical world and the spiritual world and lighting those candles, like every other physical mitzvah, links them.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Drash for VaYeiShev 5770 by Marc Mangel When I prepared my Torah portion, I was particularly taken by the last part that I read (Ch 39 v21-23):\u00a0 \u201cHaShem was with Joseph, and He endowed him with appeal and He put his favor in the eyes of the prison warden. The prison warden placed all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-217","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/217\/revisions\/218"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}