Vayeshev, וַיֵּשֶׁב "And He Settled" Genesis 37:1-40:23

Vayeishev / Jacob Dwells With Joseph

Poetic notes on the parashat Vayeishev*

Jacob with Rachel

He loved her like Adam loved Eve

Jacob with Joseph

He loved him with his love of the covenant

He loved him with the joy

of his victory over Esau

To Jacob, Joseph was the expression

of his redeemed love for Rachel,

For his natural love for Rachel

was finally redeemed and elevated to the level

of his love for Leah,

whom he loved only with covenant faith

But was not Leah hated?

It was only the hatred that arises from pain,

from the pain of the loss of true love in this world

For it seemed Leah was in the way

of the natural love of Jacob and Rachel

But if that true and natural love is redeemed,

if the love of Adam for Eve is redeemed,

if it is allowed to suffer God’s judgment

and come face to face with death,

for the sake of God’s covenant love,

then that love will live again eternally

That pain of loss will be turned to joy

For this redeemed love,

this covenant love,

is the love God promised to Abraham and Sarah

What was hatred for Leah is dissolved into holiness

when Judah is born

Jacob loved Leah with a holy covenant love,

and learned to love Rachel the same

To Jacob, the son of Rachel was all of this

Ishmael was Esau's secret power

As long as Ishmael had a claim on Abraham,

Esau’s claim on Isaac was even more!

But with the birth of Joseph,

both Ishmael and Esau lost their case

Jacob’s covenant love for Rachel

overcame his natural love for her

Abraham and Sarah's natural reasoning was corrected

With the turning to the natural way, to Hagar,

the covenant testimony of Abraham was blemished

That blemish was corrected in the house of Jacob

Adam’s love for Eve was redeemed in Abraham’s house

To Jacob, Joseph was all of this,

a worthy brother to Judah

And so it was

that a covenant family set foot in the promised land,

but at first did not settle down,

for there was trouble within

that was going to spin Dan and Naphtali,

Asher and Gad and then finally Simon and Levi

around the menorah-like coat of Joseph

The righteous family desired nothing more

than to dwell in a land of tranquility

The World to Come was prepared for them

They wanted to await it in a place without troubles

But troubles and exiles were made to make

the glory of redemption known

Abel’s blood had power to scream from the ground

because it received strength from the life of the world to come

It was Abel who cried,

but the sinner who actually died

And the unrepentant sinners who died

and died once again

The rule is that redemption purifies

The rule was established with Jacob and Joseph

When they had desired to dwell

in a land of tranquility

But Joseph had been lost to sight and hidden in exile

In truth, he was exiled only from the ways of this world

and put on a path to the world of redemption

And it was the sinners in Joseph's story

who went into an exile like purgatory

and would wait and languish there,

until the mystery of Judah and Peretz was encoded,

and the mystery of the tribe of Dan unfolded,

when Dan would judge his people

For Jacob’s prayers would build the House of God

His prayers would build the twelve gates of Israel

Then all the work would stop

And Dan and the brothers of Joseph

would pray and say to him,

"Our lives are in your hands!"

For how else could a testimony of grace be given in Jacob —

unless those who laboured to build God's House would stop

and repent and confess and testify and say,

"We cannot finish on our own

We are completely dependent on help from God

to overcome the adversary,

to lay the corner stone in its rightful place,

to build the wall, to build the city, to build the House of God"?

How could God's House be built without such words?

And who but those who perform hard labour could ever say them?

For the the tzaddikim, the Righteous,

like the King's own sons,

have no occasion to stop all their work

in order to confess their absolute need for the help of God,

in building God’s House of everlasting prayer

Their hand is always covered

by the hand of God,

Their prayer is always filled with the word of God

Then Joseph, the tzaddik, will answer Dan and his brothers,

“It was not you who exiled me

It was God who sent me to save a great multitude alive”

And so it was that in the merit of Joseph to come,

proving the union of his covenant love for Leah and Rachel,

God would return Jacob

whole and complete to Beth El

He returned with the promise of the home and hearth

of Rachel and Leah to one day be one,

and the promise of Judah and Joseph to one day be one

The House of God will then be eternally built

And many families of people shall go out and say:

“Come, Let us go up to the Mountain of HaShem,

To the House of the God of Jacob”

And at that time of return to Beth El,

having returned with his family from exile,

as a sign of the promise this prophecy,

Jacob made a pledge to all his children

As a sign to all his children,

Jacob gave a gift to one prophetic son

Jacob gave a cloak of many colors to Joseph,

as a pledge to all his sons

that like there are many colours in one flame,

so they all would be one House of God!

Upon the word of their father,

this would be through Joseph

ForJacob had the power

to give a double portion of the world to Joseph,

For the sake of the redemption of the place of Esau,

as he would one day testify to all his sons

This would be Jacob’s pledge to all who were his

His pledge would be that all his twelve sons

would have their own gate of prayer

in the city of the House of God

"I have given you one portion over and above your brothers,"

signified Jacob, by giving Joseph

the many coloured cloak

And so it was that Jacob set his pledge in motion

first at the very time he returned to Beth El

There the kingdom would first be divided

They would be first twelve separate stones,

divided between north and south at Beth El

Joseph would be torn between Dan and Reuben

Asher and Gad would be exiled from their places

The four camps of Israel would limp

Its hip would be out of joint

This was Jacob's pledge to his family

They would begin divided

In the rectification they would be one stone,

one body, one holy house, one holy city

and her voice would sing and her song would say,

"His left hand is under my head

and his right arm embraces me!"

This word is the reconciliation of the world,

the reconciliation of this world

with the world to come

All this through the covenant faithfulness of God to Jacob

All this through the prayers of Jacob

This is the rectification of the world through purification

Esau is left with no survivor to his name

For through the righteous faith and acts of Dinah,

who held through her purity in holiness

the secret of the double portion,

the thirteenth tribal place,

the place for Ephraim and Manasseh,

to be a light to the nations,

the twelve tribes are unified in the end

in the Rock of Israel

This rock is the mystery of the thirteenth gate

to the House of God,

the gate held open for the prayers of the nations,

even when the firstborn were set aside,

due to the sin of the golden calf

For it is the sin of turning to a maidservant again

not to the promised mother,

and so not to the promised seed

But Levi would be commanded

to hold the place of Dinah

until Mashiach comes

Having this faith,

Jacob would not be consoled

when his eyes and the lies of his sons

told him that Joseph was dead,

that the blood on the coat was his

To be consoled would have been to accept

what could not be

Having this faith in the covenant of his God,

Jacob would not be consoled

Even in the darkest depth of darkness

Jacob would not be consoled

It takes considerable merit

for a person to send his prayer

up to the House of God above

through his tribe’s appropriate gate

Jacob alone embodies the twelve tribes

and their twelve gates of prayer,

As well as the thirteenth gate,

that of Dinah and promised to Joseph,

meant to revolve in the time to come

among all the twelve gates,

as a light to illuminate a gate of prayer for the nations

What now would the tribes do

if the gate of Joseph could not be opened?

How would their mission live,

to build a house of prayer on earth for God?

What now would the tribes do

if Jacob would not be consoled?

If he would not find another way

to build their own gates of prayer and open them?

Even in the darkest depth of darkness

Jacob would not be consoled

His soul remembered:

When the sun set and it was very dark,

there appeared a smoking oven,

and a flaming torch which passed between the pieces

And now we see the length of this bitter exile,

how each day we cry out to Him and yet are not saved

Those who err say that all the prayers are for nothing,

that they rise up and do not find their gate

But in truth, all the repentant with the righteous understand

Together with Jacob they will not be consoled

They will not resign themselves to making the best of it

They are prepared to suffer with Jacob,

until their grey hairs go down to the grave,

with faith in the covenant of the God of Jacob

with the hope that Joseph lives buried deep in the darkness

Together with Jacob, even now

they quietly raise the prayers of each tribe to its gate

Bit by bit they build the House of God,

the form of the Shechinah,

until Mashiach comes to finish and consummate it,

just as Moses raised the Tabernacle in the wilderness

In the darkest depth of darkness,

with Jacob remember,

Mashiach encompasses all prayer

Your attachment to him safeguards all your prayers

Your faith surrounds you

When the double edged sword comes against you,

with Jacob remember,

All the prayers of the righteous are a sword for Mashiach

He will turn back the sword that comes against you

Let us pour out our souls like water to God!

And now, if we are hemmed in and closed up in exile,

and surrounded on every side by darkness...

Let us pray all our days that at least once in our life

we speak purely one word of truth before God

For the seal of the Holy One is Truth

This can be done through the light of Joseph

seen by Jacob even in the darkest depth of darkness

In answer to the prayer of truth

the tribe of Benjamin will be honoured by Judah

In answer to the prayer of truth

out of the invisibility of darkness Dan shall stop and turn

for help from the God of Joseph and take his place in Israel

Eternal thanksgiving is waiting in Judah,

as is written, “O House of Jacob, come let us go in God’s light.”

For in Beth El Joseph shall live again

And Jerusalem, the city of God’s House

will rest from mountain to sea

and from river to river

And Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

shall welcome all peoples into their home

for an eternal celebration of truth with thanksgiving

Then Adam and Eve shall sing the songs of Israel

And Mashiach shall open his Torah

*Being a meditation on parashah Vayeishev, based on lessons 2,9,12 and 112 of part 1 of Likutey Moharan by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and on the series, Torah Studies, by Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, (JLI),, as well as on a commentary by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum of azamra.org. Neither official teachers of Breslov nor the JLI, nor Rabbi Greenbaum have reviewed or approved of the content of this post.