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Parshat Vayeishev
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Connecting to the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

"וישלחהו מעמק חברון" 

“Master of the Universe! Fulfill my requests for the good... and remember me... for a long life to study Your Torah... and  to comprehend the depths of its secrets...” (Prayer on Opening the Ark on Yomim Noraim)

The Torah has depths, depths of depths, depths beyond infinity... Similarly, the ‘Cave of Machpela’ has depths, as can be simply seen, being a cave in the earth, but yet has depths yet greater as being the channel of souls to the Upper World - the Garden of Eden, and has yet greater depths as being threshold of the Holy Presence, a depth beyond infinity...

Our Sages explain our title quote of this week’s parsha as hinting to the ‘deep ‘advice’/secret’ by which Yosef was sent from his father Yakov, which led ultimately to the Exile of Egypt and the Exodus thereafter. This ‘deep secret’ on a semi-superficial level refers to the pre-destined decree, mentioned to Avraham, that his descendants will be slaves in a ‘foreign Land’ for many years. Delving a bit deeper, our Sages say that this decree was rooted at certain mistakes that Avraham made in comparison to his saintly level, such as making garrison of Torah scholars in his battle to save Lot, or a lack of faith befitting his saintly level, or the like.

Going deeper, we find sources to the idea that the Exile of Egypt is rooted so far back as to Primordial Adam. According to the Arizal, evil spirits caused Adam to form human-like spirits which centered their energy in Egypt, thereby corrupting this land greatly. Therefore, the especially good offspring of Adam, who took form as the People of Israel, were sent to Egypt to correct this matter and revive the sparks of holiness of Adam that had been left corrupted in Egypt. Only after a few hundred years of spiritual work, reviving these sparks and returning them to their Godly source, were the People rendered ready to leave Egypt to return to the Holy Land, so befitting their true Godly nature.

On a superficial level it seems that the sources to the Exile of Egypt conflict each other, for if one matter is the reason to a matter, then how can something else be the reason to the same matter? However, when we delve more deeply we find that just as an electric circuit has at its source a city’s general power generator, and at a particular house a power-board, and in a particular room an on-off switch, so too there are reasons to matters that do not become manifested till an intermediate reason happens, so on and so forth. In this way the ‘electric’-living power of Adam and our Avot continue to penetrate to this day. The living essence of our Patriarchs, praying for their descendants constantly as brought in oursources, is so potent that it is brought even in halachic sources.

Generally speaking, it is forbidden to pray a set prayer of the Amida or its like in the cemetery, for doing so is considered ‘mocking the dead’ of the cemetery who are unable to pray. Nevertheless, many poskim note that Maaras HaMachpela, although it is the burial place of Adam and our Patriarchs, is an exception to this rule (even more than Rachel’s Tomb or Rashbi’s Tomb). Maaras HaMachpela, the poskim determine based on the teachings of our Sages, is not a place of the dead - it is the place of our living ancestors to whom praying is no mocking gesture, for they themselves are in constant prayer for their descendants.

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #98: 

"We had been married for four years without children. Last Purim we went to a Purim banquet in Kiryat Arba where the men learned Torah, while the women together said the entire book of Tehilim on our behalf. B"h my wife is pregnant now, and her due date b"h is Purim..." (DK)

Sources: Sota 10a, Shaar Hkavanot Pesah, Mikrai Kodesh Rosh HaShana ch. 2, (7)

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