This piece by Rabbi Joel Kenigsberg was originally published in yesterday's Hanassi Highlights.
Parashat Vayeshev opens with a note of hope: Yaakov finally believed he had reached a point of calm after a lifetime of struggle. After wrestling with Esav, surviving Lavan, and enduring the trauma of Dinah, surely now he had earned a measure of peace.
But Chazal tell us otherwise: “Bikesh Yaakov leishev
b’shalvah—kafatz alav rogzó shel Yosef.” Just when Yaakov longed for
tranquillity, the anguish of Yosef’s disappearance fell upon him. Shattered by
his sons’ report and the blood-stained coat they presented, Yaakov enters a
prolonged and unrelenting mourning. His children rise to comfort him, yet the
Torah records: “Vayema’en lehitnachem”—he refused to be comforted.
Why? Other great figures experience devastating loss yet
eventually find strength to move forward. The Torah tells us explicitly how
Avraham arose after grieving for Sarah. What made Yaakov’s grief different?
The Midrash, cited by Rashi, teaches that consolation is granted only when death is final. Since Yosef was still alive, Yaakov felt an inexplicable inability to accept comfort. But the Netivot Shalom adds a striking layer: Yaakov sensed that Yosef was alive—but what tormented him was not Yosef’s physical state. It was the fear that Yosef, alone in a foreign land, surrounded by moral darkness and spiritual danger, might lose himself. Would the Yosef who grew up in Yaakov’s home still exist? And so “vayema’en”—he refused to give up on his son. He prayed, he hoped, he believed.
That same rare word appears a second time in our parasha.
When Yosef faces relentless temptation in Egypt, he too refuses (“vayema’en”).
Rav Soloveitchik notes that this word is marked in the Torah with a shalshelet,
a musical note shaped like a chain. Yosef remembered he was part of a chain—of
his father, his people, his destiny. The Gemara tells us that in that moment he
saw his father’s image. Remembering that Yaakov had never given up on him gave
him the strength not to give up on himself.
This is the story of Jewish history. Through darkness,
dispersion, persecution, and the pressures of modernity, we have refused – refused
to surrender our identity, our mission and our faith. Because our ancestors
believed in us, and because HaKadosh Baruch Hu believes in us still.
The candles that we light on Chanukah represent this
stubborn refusal. The pirsum hanes of these special days is the fact
that, no matter how strong the winds outside, those tiny flames will always
endure.
Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Same’ach, Rabbi Joel Kenigsberg
