Weekly Parasha Newsletter
Parashat Vayeshev
by Rabbi Yaakov Haber
There are people around us. Sometimes we see them, sometimes we don’t. At times we
are so absorbed in our own world that we hardly notice that they’re there. But they are,
and they have lives, stories, and challenges. And sometimes we’re only put here for
them—yet we fail to realize it, just going on with our lives.
Yosef couldn’t have known how he would end up being released from prison. He was all
alone in the word, so distant from anything and anyone he cared about—or who cared
about him. And there, languishing in his cell, he saw that two individuals seemed to
have had a bad day. So, he set aside everything else on his mind and asked them what
was wrong. They replied that they were plagued by strange, cryptic dreams that gave
them no rest. Yosef asked them to share, which they readily did, and then he proceeded
to explain exactly what the dreams symbolized.
As it turned out, that brief exchange was his ticket to freedom.
Two years later, the reinstated royal butler recalled the Jewish fellow still imprisoned,
and informed a desperate Pharaoh of the young man’s talents. Yosef was immediately
released from prison, groomed, and brought before the king to interpret his dreams. A
few minutes later, he was the official second-in-command over the land of Egypt.
And to think that it all happened because he stopped to notice two unremarkable, forlorn
prisoners. They weren’t his subordinates, they weren’t his superiors, they were just two
random individuals. And yet, they had been placed there for him to ask after their
welfare—for him to begin his trip to freedom.
Who knows how many people cross our paths simply to give us an opportunity to
interact with them? Who knows how often we are placed in a position to change a life
that briefly enters ours, and maybe even to enrich our own lives in the process?
And, who knows how many times we allow those opportunities to walk right past us?
Yosef Hatzadik didn’t make that mistake, and his few moments of concern changed the
course of history.