Two Minute Torah Podcast

Miketz 5770 by Rabbi Shalom Kantor

Welcome to KOACH's Two-Minute Torah; a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

The story of Joseph teaches much about power and how God always seems to have a way of reversing things just when we thing that we have everything all figured out. Through the travails and accomplishments of Joseph we begin to understand that we must be careful of the gifts that we are given by God and how we use them.

In the beginning of the Joseph narrative we learned of Joseph's God given ability to dream prophetic dreams. Unfortunately, in his youth, Joseph did not understand how to really deal with his ability and thus his presentation of his dreams to his family eventually leads to his being cast into a pit and sold into Egyptian slavery.

In this week's parashah we find Joseph using his prophetic ability of dream interpretation to a very different end.

When called upon to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh we find Joseph presenting his interpretation in the name of God and not taking credit for the interpretation himself, "Not I, (but) God will see to Pharaoh's welfare."

After presenting his interpretations of Pharaoh's dreams Joseph, the boy who had been cast into the pit and sold into Egyptian slavery, is made the second most powerful man in Egypt. Pharaoh declares to Joseph, "See, I put you in charge of all the land of Egypt." And removing his ring from his hand, Pharaoh put it on Joseph's handÉ" With this new found power which Joseph was given he proceeded to prepare the land of Egypt for the years of plenty and famine which were to come. He led the country in preparing to preserve life through proper planning and caring for the land and the inhabitants.

Each year at Purim I read the third chapter of the Megillah of Esther, and thus, I noticed that they language used for the passing of the royal ring as a sign of power was almost an exact parallel between Our story and that of Acheshverosh passing his ring to Haman.

The two stories differ in two major ways: firstÑJoseph used his power to save lives through the proper rationing of grain, while in the story of Esther Haman had planned to use the power to destroy the lives of the Jewish people; second in this week's story Joseph had already gone through his transformation from abusing power to respecting power while in the story of Esther we see the transformation that God enacts as Haman is taken from a position of power and eventually is hung on the gallows that had built for the Jews.

Each of us has many wonderful gifts and abilities that we were each given by God. The true test is what we do with those talents and how we use them in the world. If we use our individual talents for our own self aggrandizement with out the thought of how it will impact others then there is a good chance that we will see the tables turned. If on the other hand we find different ways to use the gifts that G-d bestowed upon each of us to better the world then there is a greater chance that we will find greater personal satisfaction in many areas in our lives.