Parshas Vayigash 5785 - "Vayelaket Yosef Es Kol Hakessef" - Yosef Prepares Everything for the Jews Until the Geulah

00:00 One of the older chassidim who remained in Russia after most of the Chabad community had left tells the following story. This was in 5706–5707, after the war. Most of the chassidim eventually left Russia, but those who did not manage to leave remained there for many more years. They were difficult years, years of self-sacrifice. He relates that among them was an older chossid, one of the chassidim of earlier times, who had been in Lubavitch. He educated the younger generation growing up there—children and yeshiva students—and was a teacher with a powerful influence. Naturally, he educated them in the spirit of the Temimim. He was always telling them about the yeshiva, about Lubavitch, about the education in Lubavitch, about how Tomchei Temimim had shaped the Temimim in those days, and about who the Temimim were. In this way, they instilled in the children and young people a thirst, a longing, a sense of what it meant, and a yearning to be a Tomim in Tomchei Temimim, despite all the difficulties they faced in Russia then. To the children, of course, this was their whole world; their world was Lubavitch and Tomchei Temimim. And he spoke about it again and again, with such feeling and such richness, that they always wanted it, thought about it, and lived with it. About this

01:39 there can certainly be a connection to [unclear]. One of the chassidim relates that something once happened: the children somehow got hold of a map of all of Russia, showing all its towns and cities. Well, the first thing the children wanted to find was: Where is Lubavitch? In those days, the chassidim were in Samarkand, Tashkent, and other cities far away in Uzbekistan, far from what had been the center of Chassidus in Russia. They wanted to know: Where is it? What kind of city is it? Having heard so much about Lubavitch and Tomchei Temimim, they were sure it was a large, important city. They began searching the map and could not find it. They searched here and there, looked up and down, right and left. They searched and searched in every direction, but the town of Lubavitch did not appear on the map. Of course, the reason is simple: Lubavitch is a small village. And as you know, there was no room on that map to mark very small villages with only a few houses. In any case, the children could not understand it at all. They looked at the map and asked about it. They met one of the elder chassidim—I do not remember his name now—they met one of the

03:07 older chassidim who had once been in Russia, and asked him: They had obtained a map showing all of Russia and all its cities, but they were looking for Lubavitch and could not find it. The chossid said, “That is very easy to understand. You have to realize that when a map of a country is made, it marks all the cities, towns, villages, and other places. But there are special towns and villages that hold the country’s true treasures. That is where its most hidden, precious, and important things are found. That is where precious stones, pearls, and diamonds are produced. There are things there that people do not want others to know about. So it is customary not to show where those places are on the map. You must understand that Lubavitch is a place where the country’s true, hidden treasures are created and found. That is why you cannot find it on the map.” Of course, when the children grew up, they understood that this was a parable. What the chossid meant was that Lubavitch really is the place where the true treasures are found—the true treasures of G-dliness, Chassidus, the inner dimension of Torah, and everything else.

04:44 The Temimim are the true treasures, a treasure of fear of Heaven. What they cultivate there in Tomchei Temimim is a treasure that cannot be placed on a physical map, which shows only the geographic locations of Russia’s cities and regions. In our parsha, Parshas Vayigash, we find that “Yosef gathered all the money.” Yosef Hatzaddik gathered all the money from the land of Egypt. The Torah dwells on this in the parsha, particularly in the last section of Parshas Vayigash, which deals with Yosef and how he gathered the money from all of Egypt, the surrounding lands, and all the cities. The Torah relates the details: There were years of famine, and people needed food. Whatever food they had, and whatever they had to sell, had already rotted, as Rashi says. The only thing left was the stores that Yosef, Rabbi Yosef, had amassed so that he could provide food throughout the years of famine, when there was famine not only in Egypt but in all the surrounding lands, as the Torah tells us. People came and paid money. “Yosef gathered all the money,” as the verses say. Then, when the money ran out, “he provided for them in exchange for horses, flocks, cattle, and donkeys”—that is what the Torah relates.

06:15 And a simple question arises: When we study these verses, what is the Torah trying to tell us? After all, the word Torah is related to the word for “instruction”; Torah is Divine wisdom. Seemingly, all the extended account at the end of the parsha, where the Torah goes into every last detail of what happened when “Yosef gathered” the money, is entirely unnecessary. What does the Torah want to teach us through this story? There is a passage in the Gemara in tractate Pesachim. The Gemara says, “Yosef hid three treasures in Egypt.” It gives further details. It says there that Yosef gathered not only the money of Egypt and its neighboring countries; the money of the entire world was in his possession. Then the Gemara says, “Yosef hid three treasures in Egypt.” Yosef took all the money he had gathered and divided it into three parts, which he hid. One treasure, one portion, he hid and kept. It says there that Korach received it, that Korach found it. Of the second portion, it says that Antoninus received it; he was a great man, as is known of Antoninus in the days of Rebbi. And the third portion is hidden away and reserved for the righteous in the future. We need to understand what the Gemara is teaching us here. The commentators discuss what happened. We see in the commentaries how the wealth came to Korach; others say that he had Pharaoh’s keys, and that is how he received all the wealth Yosef had left in that portion. And they discuss how the second portion, which Yosef had taken from the Egyptians, came to Antoninus, who was among the rulers of Rome.

07:49 The commentators investigate what the Gemara is telling us at a deeper level. We need to understand what this story really means: What are the treasures Yosef hid? Why these three in particular? What is the significance of Korach receiving one of the treasures? What is the significance of Antoninus receiving one? And what does it mean that the third portion is hidden away for the righteous in the future? This is explained at length in the teachings of Chassidus, in maamarim of the Alter Rebbe and explanations of the Mitteler Rebbe, our Rebbeim. There is also an explanation by the Rebbe of what the money and the whole story mean in a person’s service of Hashem. In general terms, the Alter Rebbe explains what Yosef Hatzaddik accomplished when he “gathered all the money”: The Hebrew word for money, kesef, is related to the words “nichsof nichsafti”—“I have longed deeply.” Kesef speaks of love. And there are several kinds of love. The desire discussed in Chassidus, the desire to love Hashem, the idea of “nichsof nichsafti,” the idea of

09:19 “My soul longs and even yearns”—that is, yearning, thirst, and love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In love of Hashem, there are generally two kinds of love. There is a love based on understanding, a love that comes through contemplation. A person contemplates the greatness of Havayah, and through that contemplation a feeling of love is awakened within him. This is the love produced by contemplation. But there is also a love present in every Jew by the very nature of their soul. This natural love is called a “hidden love” in Tanya. In other words, it lies deep within the soul of every Jew. We received this love from the Patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. But who secured it, who impressed this love so deeply that it would remain with Jews through all the difficult times of exile? Yosef accomplished that. This is Yosef’s role, and the distinction between him and the Patriarchs. Each of the Patriarchs brought something into expression within the Jewish people—as is known, Chassidus cites the teaching, “Only three are called Patriarchs.” A person has three Patriarchs, corresponding to the three attributes through which Jews connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: love of Hashem, fear of Hashem, and the attribute of compassion, which is Yaakov’s attribute. All three are present in the service of davening: contemplation awakens love, contemplation awakens awe, contemplation

10:43 It arouses the plea, “For the sake of Your abundant mercy, have mercy on us”—compassion for my soul and my neshama, and for the G-dliness that has descended into exile, and so on. These are the three attributes of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. But the Patriarchs were in the Land of Israel. The Patriarchs were shepherds. They lived at a time when there was not yet an exile. Yosef was the one who went down to Egypt. And Egypt represents the time of exile—not only then, but in every generation. Egypt is considered the first of the exiles, and all exiles are called by its name, “because they constrain Israel,” as the Midrash says. In other words, the nature of Egypt is that it constrains Israel, and so it is with every exile. Then there are all the concealments and hardships of exile. This was Yosef’s role: he prepared the way by going down to Egypt, standing firm there and doing his work, and “Yosef gathered all the money.” As the Alter Rebbe explains in a maamar, he gathered the money—the love, longing, and thirst of the Jewish people’s mesirus nefesh for Hakadosh Boruch Hu throughout the difficult times of exile. He gives an analogy for this. The Mitteler Rebbe explains it at length. What is the analogy? When a person sets out on a journey, if it is a short trip, he takes a bag and puts in a little food and the few clothes he needs for the road.

12:18 But when it is a long journey, one that might last weeks, months, or years, obviously a person cannot take a great deal of baggage, bundles, and bags. Even if he takes all the good things in the world, they will not be enough. He brings food, but after a few weeks it will grow moldy. So he also needs money. Money does not take up much space, so he takes it along. Nowadays there are better, easier ways. You do not have to carry much cash; you can take what is called a credit card or something like that. You hardly need any cash at all, because there are all those buttons and so on, and you can manage. But in the old days, you needed money on the road. People took a bag of money with them, and with it they could always buy, as needed and wherever they were, something to eat, something to wear, and so on—everything they needed for the journey. The verse tells us that Yosef Hatzaddik, the tzaddik who is the foundation of the world, was the one who went down to Egypt and prepared the Jewish people for exile—not only the exile in Egypt, but every exile, up to the final one. And the Midrash speaks, at the end of the parsha, at the end of Parshas Vayigash, about Yosef Hatzaddik’s weeping. We find several times in the parsha that Yosef Hatzaddik wept. The first time, when he met his brothers, “he sought a place to weep”; he wept. Later he wept on Binyamin’s neck, and afterward he wept over all his brothers; and then, when he fell on the neck of our father Yaakov, he wept. The Midrash says that Yosef Hatzaddik’s weeping was also over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and the exile.

14:13 Israel through the Babylonian exile. The discussion says: Yosef Hatzaddik saw what even the other tribes did not see. Only Yosef Hatzaddik saw, through ruach hakodesh, the difficult and bitter times of exile that the Jewish people would endure, through the Babylonian exile. He saw it before his eyes, and this is contained in “Yosef gathered all the money.” In other words, the whole idea of “Yosef gathered all the money” has an inner meaning: Yosef prepared provisions for the journey, prepared the money, prepared the hidden treasures—the stores that the Jewish people would need to get through the difficult, long, bitter exile, all those thousands of years of exile. After all, the Jewish people need enough strength to get through it. That is the real money, the money of “I have longed so deeply.” However distant the Geulah may be, and however long, deep, difficult, and bitter the exile may be, they always retain that “I have longed so deeply,” that thirst and yearning, until the Geulah comes. This is “Yosef gathered all the money.” And it is said that Yosef did not merely gather the money; he prepared and buried the hidden treasures, stores of yiras Shamayim and love of Hashem, so that a Jew would have faith in himself, in G-dliness, in his neshama, in the strength of mesirus nefesh, in the strength of love and in the strength of awe—and so that all of this would endure through every hardship and every circumstance throughout the exile. Moreover, the verse says that besides gathering all the money, Yosef also took the donkeys and the horses, the [unclear] and the donkeys and the horses. And the Rebbe explains: Yosef Hatzaddik took even the donkeys and the horses. That is, even the material and physical aspects—not only the G-dly soul, but also the animal soul, associated with donkeys and horses—would become a vehicle for Yosef. After all, these were the horses of Egypt, the donkeys of Egypt. Through his work in Egypt, “the nakedness of the land,” Yosef Hatzaddik [unclear].

16:20 He transformed the materiality and physicality of Egypt so that a Jew in every generation and at every time could be master over the physical, and know how to use material things—the donkeys and horses, the concerns of this world—to [unclear]. The body must not be master over the neshama, G-d forbid; on the contrary, the neshama must be master over the body. “He led them with horses and donkeys.” Yosef Hatzaddik gained control over the donkeys and horses too, so that all the things of this world would be like servants to Yosef, to Yosef Hatzaddik, the tzaddik who is the foundation of the world, and so that the physical could be connected to holiness and the sparks of holiness could be refined. This too is hinted at in the money: the 288 sparks of holiness, the sparks found in everything in this world, which can be elevated and made into a dwelling place for G-dliness. Yosef accomplished all this through his work—“Yosef gathered all the money”—and through “he led them with horses and donkeys.” He transformed the whole reality of the world so that it would be G-dliness, and so that Jews could carry out their work throughout the exile. And here we return to the teaching of our Sages, “Yosef buried three hidden treasures.” There are many explanations of this, and the commentators offer several beautiful interpretations and explanations of what those treasures were. But speaking of what this means in our avodah, as the Rebbe writes in a letter from Teves 5716—a wonderful letter the Rebbe wrote to Rabbi Menachem Zev Greenglass, who was a mashpia, with whom... they studied with him, and today, ah, [unclear], this is

18:02 on the day of his yahrzeit, I need, at any rate, [unclear] the Rebbe’s letter. The Rebbe writes about the activities of the Frierdiker Rebbe, and how Yosef’s role was present in the Frierdiker Rebbe as well. The Rebbe writes about all the activities the Frierdiker Rebbe undertook, and about what happened then, when the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America in those years and began to stir people to action on all these matters: education, Machne Israel, and so on and so forth; all the books and everything they printed so they could reach Jews and bring them closer to Yiddishkeit, to Torah and mitzvos, and so that there would be books of Chassidus from which people could study Chassidus. The Rebbe uses a very rich expression and says, “Yosef buried three hidden treasures.” As we said, Yosef placed the hidden treasures—not for no reason, [unclear]—the treasures that are within every Jew. Yosef did not bury the treasures in order, in other words, to hide them beneath all the earth covering them. Yosef’s intention in burying them was that people should be able to dig and uncover them. “If you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of Hashem.” Through his own avodah, a Jew should dig them out, clear away everything that gets in the way, and reveal the treasure. As the Baal Shem Tov, the holy Baal Shem Tov, says in his well-known teaching on “For you shall be a desirable land, says Hashem of Hosts”: every Jew is a treasure, containing the deepest and richest treasures of G-dliness,

19:33 of love and awe of Hashem. And through avodah, with love, we bring all these things up and reveal them. That is why it says there are three hidden treasures. And what is the purpose of Yosef Hatzaddik, the tzaddik who is the foundation of the world? Through the hidden treasures, he reveals the concealed strengths within every Jew, awakens them, and brings them to light. One of the things Yosef Hatzaddik—the tzaddik in every generation, the tzaddik of the generation—does is bless Jews. He blesses Jews so that they will have all the blessings, the Priestly Blessing and all the blessings of “May Hashem bless you and protect you,” even in simple material matters. Through this, a Jew can serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu as he should. This is the Rebbe’s intention when he blesses Jews. And regarding a tzaddik’s blessing, the Priestly Blessing says, “And bless His people Israel with love.” The condition for a blessing is that it must come from love. This is the meaning of money: money represents love and yearning, the love with which the Rebbe loves every Jew. The Baal Shem Tov said it is a love for Jews like the love for a child born to an elderly father, an only son. The greatest love a father has for his child—that is the love with which the Rebbe loves Jews,

20:57 And he is the tzaddik who, out of love, blesses the chassidim, blesses the Jews, and gives them every blessing in material matters. These are the treasures that came to Korach. After all, Korach was connected with the Priestly Blessing. As the Torah tells us, the whole matter of the Priestly Blessing—“Behold, the staff of Aharon had blossomed; it brought forth a blossom and sprouted a bud”—came in the wake of Korach. Korach himself was exceedingly wealthy, but afterward Korach’s wealth passed to the kohanim, who have the Priestly Blessing and the staff of almonds, from which all the blessings and abundant material bounty flow. This is one way the tzaddik blesses a Jew materially, so that the Jew can then transform those material things into something spiritual and, through the blessing, reveal the treasures hidden within him. There is also the second treasure, connected with Antoninus. This is the purpose of the Rebbe’s work, the work of Yosef. After all, Yosef is related to the words “May Hashem add another son for me”: he turns an “other” into a “son.” As the Tzemach Tzedek explains, that is the meaning of “May Hashem add another son for me”: Yosef takes Jews who are in the category of “other” and makes them a “son,” a son of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the work of Yosef HaTzaddik: he takes Jews, lifts them up, and makes them vessels for G-dliness. And this is

22:21 the story of Antoninus. Antoninus was a righteous convert, as the story is told in detail in the Gemara and Midrash: Antoninus was a friend of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, and later became a righteous convert. This, in general, is the work of teshuvah. When the Rebbe sees, when the tzaddik sees, that there is a Jew who, G-d forbid, is distant and cast aside, [unclear], whether materially or in his spiritual service, his soul and his faculties must be drawn toward teshuvah. That is the work of Yosef HaTzaddik, who hid the treasures so that he could bring Jews to the work of teshuvah. That is what Antoninus alludes to. And there is also a Jew who is already on the right path: a Jew who is a tzaddik, or at least a Torah scholar, a Jew who observes Torah and mitzvos, who studies, prays, and serves Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But he needs to reach Chassidus, the inner dimension of Torah, so that he can rise to a higher level and not be satisfied with his service until now. As the Zohar puts it, “Moshiach will come to bring the righteous to teshuvah”: the purpose of Moshiach is for even tzaddikim to experience teshuvah, raising the tzaddik to a much higher level in the service of Hashem. That is the meaning of “bringing the righteous to teshuvah.” This happens through studying Chassidus and the inner dimension of Torah, which reveals the depth

23:40 of Hashem’s boundlessness, so that every Jew knows he must keep rising higher and higher. This is what the third treasure alludes to: the one “hidden away for the righteous in the time to come.” “Hidden away for the righteous in the time to come” does not literally mean that we have to wait until Moshiach comes to receive the treasure. No, it is “for the righteous in the time to come”—the time before the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu. This is the “time to come,” when we stand at the point where Moshiach is about to arrive and must prepare for the time of Moshiach’s revelation. That is why the secrets and [unclear] of the inner dimension of Torah have been revealed by our Rebbeim. Yes, they have been revealed [unclear], and as the sichos explain: “Those who taste it merit life”—we already taste the Shabbos food on Friday. These are the secrets, the teachings of the inner dimension of Torah, revealed in Chassidus, in all the maamarim and in the revelations the Rebbe disclosed. This is what was “hidden away for the righteous in the time to come.” When a Jew studies Chassidus, the inner dimension of Torah, he rises higher and higher and delves deeper and deeper. This prepares him for the greatest moment—the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, the complete Geulah. And all this—why is there a special section in which the Torah tells us how Yosef HaTzaddik, “You who lead Yosef like a flock,” Yosef HaTzaddik is the tzaddik who is

25:02 with us during the time of exile, the time of “You uprooted a vine from Egypt,” as it says in Psalm 80. Then Yosef HaTzaddik comes—“You who lead Yosef like a flock”—and lavishes the treasures and reveals them within every Jew. First, by giving blessings so that every Jew has everything he needs, with material abundance and wealth, like Korach. One can even be as rich as Korach. Then comes the work of teshuvah, represented by Antoninus. And then comes what is “hidden away for the righteous in the time to come”—the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah, the secret of Moshiach. This is the time we are in now, as we move from Kislev into Teves, to stand ready with the [unclear]. Yes, to devote ourselves to lavishing and revealing the treasures, to “Yosef gathered all the money,” and to go on, very soon, to the complete Geulah. Then the true meaning of “their silver and gold with them” will be fulfilled—the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, when there will be true wealth: material wealth and spiritual wealth, with goodness we can see and feel, the true and complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu.