D’var Torah: Miketz 2025/5786 מקץ
Rabbi Ari Ebstein ‘08, Grades 4 and 5 Jewish Studies
If You Want Something Done, Give It to a Busy Person:
Yosef, Chanukah, and the Limits of Expected Outcomes
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) z’l was a very busy man: He wrote several translations of the Talmud, ran two schools, and did outreach work with Jews in Russia. He was finding it hard to maintain his workload, so he asked his teacher, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which area he should focus on. The Rebbe told him, “Keep doing all these things, and in fact, add to your schedule.”
In this week’s Parsha, Miketz, Pharaoh dreams of seven cows and seven stalks of corn. What is the significance of seven? Seven represents the natural world, such as the seven-day week or the seven-year agricultural cycle. Pharaoh believed the world was run by purely natural forces.
The Shaloh haKadosh, noted for the free kosher-lunch program that bears his name, says the parsha of the week always relates to the time of year where it falls. This week is Chanukah, which celebrates the eight-day miracle of the little cruz of oil burning extra-long. Eight represents above nature. It turns out, there is more to the world than meets the eye.
There is a movement in sports called analytics, which runs stats through formulas to dictate decisions, from fourth-down conversions to the elimination of the midrange jumpshot. Some fans balk at this trend. Sports, they argue, is not about a collection of probabilities but rather about people showing what they’re truly made of, through guts, grit, and moxy. These fans see not expected outcomes but rather the man in the arena.
Yosef haTzaddik was such a man. If he were to assess his situation objectively, how bleak it would appear. Betrayed by his brothers, conspired against by his boss’s wife, and languishing in jail, it sounds like the opposite of good! Analytics would have written Yosef off, his career finished! But Yosef’s story was just beginning: He ascended to the second in command in Egypt, saved the world from famine, and reunited with his family.
Yosef, Chanukah, and the number eight–what do they all have in common? They testify to a power that is above logic and limitation. Like always happens, just when we think we can’t eat one more latke, somehow, miraculously, we make room. So this Chanukah, let’s give a little extra gelt, spend a little more non-productive time staring at the Chanukah lights, and add a little more holiness to our already jammed schedules. In this way, the blessings we experience will also be bli gvul, beyond any limitation.
