WEEPING?

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

I would like to share 2 issues which came up this week

The first is an interesting lesson from this week's Sedra Vayigash, which I heard from Rabbi Y Gordon, explaining part of a sicha from the Rebbe, on the verse 45:14, "He (Yosef) then fell upon the neck of his brother Binyamin AND WEPT, and Binyamin WEPT upon his (Yosef's) neck." (This took place at their reunification after having been parted for 22 years)

Rashi explains that each had prophecy and foresaw the destruction of the Temples in each other's territories in the future, and therefore WEPT.

Now the verse uses the plural expression of necks about Yosef weeping on Binyamin's shoulders. The First and Second Temples in Yerushalayim were both in Binyamins territory, (plural), and hence Yosef was weeping about their (plural) destruction.

With Binyamin weeping on Yosef's neck, here neck is in the singular, and Rashi says that Binyamin was weeping for the destruction of the Temple in Shilo, which was in Yosef's territory.

But now the Rebbe asks an interesting question - If they were both weeping about the destruction of these 3 Temples, why did they not just weep about the Temples in their own territory? Why did they have to weep about his brother's Temple or Temples?!

And the Rebbe gives a beautiful answer (amongst others) - When someone else has a problem and you are trying to help them, there may come a point where there is nothing further you can do, except WEEP AND PRAY FOR THEM.

BUT FOR ONE'S OWN PROBLEMS THERE IS NO WEEPING. Here there has to be only efforts to resolve the issues, and steer clear of becoming a victim.

(As it says in Hayom Yom 9TH Adar Sheini - "My father (the Rebbe Rashab) writes in one of his letters: A single act is better than a thousand groans. Our G-d lives, and Torah and Mitzvot are eternal. Quit groaning and work hard in actual avodah, and G-d will be gracious to you.")

The second issue is that today is Hei (5th) Teves, and without going into details, it is a day where we make resolutions to buy more books and increase our Torah learning.

Also, coming up on Chof (20th) Teves is the Rambam's yohrtzeit, and so I decided to contribute to these 2 events by offering for free all the PDF files of my Studying Rambam Series. (See Offer attached)

Please feel free to make use of the Offer, but I would also be very happy for everyone to pass this on to all your associates, or communities.

I am happy to announce that on the first day of our campaign (yesterday) we had a wonderful response of uptake on our website BH.

Gut Shabbos to all!