Parshas Vayeishev: The Epic Tale of Yosef - Dreaming Big, Mastering Self-Control, and Unprecedented Success

And here we go on this week's weekly Parshah podcast. An extraordinary evening here as we celebrate Hanukkah holiday, chag of sorts, and also Parshah's Vyeshiv. And this week it's a special podcast because we dive deep and we seek to unearth the practices of someone that accomplished great things and how we too can mimic them For the success that we all endeavor to accomplish. And Without further ado, I present to you, to kick things off with a question who was the most successful person in history, the individual to accomplish the greatest things? Here lies. Rest in peace, mister successful. Who would you choose? If you could only pick one? Which individual flourished Even greater than everyone else? Maybe you'll say Well, noah, if we take it all the way back, he probably was the most successful since he saved the entire human race. Perhaps you'll argue for Abraham. After all, he is the Avhamon. Go him. He spread monotheism, the father of the nations. He discovered a sham. Maybe he is the most accomplished, most successful man in history. Or maybe you'll argue for Moshe Rabbeinu. He did accomplish a great deal in his life. One of the notches in his belt would be seeing a burning bush Taking God's nation out of Egypt, splitting the sea and leading the Jewish people through 40 years in the wilderness, dealing with quite the Bevy of issues. Maybe Moshe Rabbeinu, supremely humble, the great leader? Maybe you'll want to take it down a notch. We'll say Yahushua. He actually led the conquest of Eretz Yisrael. He've read anything through nach, you'll see Yahushua was quite the accomplished character. Nah, maybe it's David Amellach. David Amellach, the great Jewish monarch, one of the close, intimate lovers of with Haqqadish Baruchu, the great composer of Tehillim, who is the most successful person? Who have ever graced Kha'ish Baruchu's beautiful green earth? And it's the beginning of gracious. Who would you choose? I may argue that more recent heroes have accomplished a great deal as well, for they have been further from Harsinai with less clarity. They didn't get to see the base Hamigdash or fire and smoke on the top of Mount Sinai. So maybe let's argue for Ravina and Ravashi and Rabbeinu Hakkados, who authored Mishnah and Gemura, situated for Rambamus. Samarit codified all of the entire Torah. Maybe Rashi or the Vilna Gown? Who is the most successful? But, ladies and gentlemen, our Parshah, parshah's Vayeshav, puts an end to the debate. It's a game set match, because the Torah crowns one person as the most successful individual in history, and his name was Yosef. Yosef was called Ishmatzliyach. He was the man of success. He had the chocolate touch, the gold touch, no matter the habitat, the situation, from the bottom of pits to rotting at the bottom of prisons and foreign countries, to sitting in the palace of a foreign leader in a gross, immoral country with many issues still, no matter the time and place, no matter the habitat. Yosef is crowned as the Ishmatzliyach More successful, or at least he earned the nickname of the successful man over anyone else. So everybody wants success. We all want to accomplish great things. That's the most common denominator through all humans. Now, we all want different things, but everybody wants success. Everybody wants to prove victorious. So what can we learn from the Ishmatzliyach? What steps did he take that launched him up to the place that he reached that? The Torah testified about him that he is the man of success and as we approach this topic, it's noteworthy to pick out just some of his great accomplishments. Among his accomplishments is please welcome Mr Rabbi Yosef Azadek, who climbed the corporate ladder of Egypt from jail to Viceroy, a master interpreter of dreams, yaakov's favorite son. He is the Merkava, the chariot for the Saphira of Hode, whatever that means, but it sounds exciting. The bachar, the first born, was taken from Ruvane and eventually granted to Yosef. So he is the bachar. Yosef the dreamer is also called and described by Pirkei Derebi Eliezer to have Rukh Akodesh, divine inspiration, from his very youth until old age. And all of this topped off with some unprecedented self-control when he yelled Vayimuin and ran away from the clutches of Ashes by Tifar Not much, or not too shabby for a day's work. So how do you do it all? What can we learn from the man Yosef, that we call him Yosef Azadek, that the Torah crowns him as the man of success? Well, it's three things, at least I reckon. From the basic reading of the text, we are taught three main points about his life, things that we can bring into our lives. And number one at the very beginning of the parashah, parashah Vayeshev were introduced by Yahalom, yosef, chalom and Joseph had a dream. You know the story. There's a dream about a second dream, about some bushels. He was a dreamer. I have a dream, he said he just kicked out of the house for it. But I don't know if it's by coincidence that success starts with great dreams. It starts with large ambitions, wild ambitions, standing in the middle of a holy family and being the center of it all, an eagerness for success. Chalomos people are scared to dream. Not Yosef His dreams they were about greatness, they were prophetic dreams but by Yachalom Yosef Chalom that kicks it all off. This has been seen in great individuals, that people that are crazy enough to dream up that they can change the world often are the crazy ones that end up actually changing the world. But it all starts with large ambitions. Be a dreamer. The great Panavicharov was a big fan of this line. If hoped I'm dreaming A very sloughnished, but I am not sleeping. He manifested Panavich Yashiva when it was barely enough for a minion of Yashiva Bachar in Eretz, yisrael at the time, built that beautiful building, wrote the plans for it himself. He was a great dreamer. That's where it starts. Esh Matzliach begins with Vayachalom Yosef Chalom. He dreamt a dream, and I have a dream. He dreamt so much, he cared so much, and even when he was going to find the brothers, the Shvatim, to go check up on them, the brothers snickered and said to each other hey, here comes the dreamer boy, the master of dreams has come. So step one, be a big dreamer, become the master of dreams. But it's more than that. And we're told of a second thing, of Yosef's youth, his stepping stones to greatness. We're told an interesting line that Yosef was the who-nar, he was a yut, was an adolescent, he was a nar young. It has a lot of different interpretations. A nar and or naira in Gamara terms, is a female between the ages of 12 and 12 and a half. Nar, definitely kind of its youth, but the red-dark and peeling apart etymologically the word nar says that the word really is a root. The shayrish is the same as that of hisororus being awakened. People that are young have these childlike bubbleiness, they have this youthful exuberance. That's when they're ambitious. It was Josef, he was the Nair. You find that kids they say I want to walk on the moon, I want to be an astronaut. And when people grow up, after they've left the stage of Nairus youth, when the world is there for the taking, that door closes, never to be opened again. A bit more plateaued, a bit more tolerant of average success, they've lost the stage of Nairus. Not Josef, he is the Hunar, he's a dreamer, but he's goes about it with like a hop in his step. He's peppy, running places, accomplishing things, excited about life. It sounds with a hissoary, hissoary way of action. When people get old. That same kid who dreamt that he wants to be a firefighter or an astronaut and walk on the moon is okay, watching the evening news and selling insurance. They've lost the Nairus, the childlike drive Perhaps we say the kind of ignorant bliss of I don't care, this is what I want and I'm going to do it. So that's the second thing that we find by Josef. He was a Nair, he was young, energetic and lastly, perhaps the most crucial, to top these attributes off of dreaming of great things and going about it like a child with an excitement, is the medjus that, tells us, begins with the question why was it that Josef merited to be the viceroy of Egypt? You don't get to be a king without some sort of squsim. You don't get to run the world power of Egypt and sustain the entire world with food without some sort of hajmen. In that it has the medjush, based on the Pasek and Kohela and Perches. The king's word has shiltone. King speaks of shiltone. The medjush says is that for a person to be a king they must be a shiltone, which means to be someone who grabs the reins of his life, a shoilate, an owner, a self-control. Medjush says that that person is someone who becomes king. Joseph epitomized self-control and discipline and many instances, but perhaps with Asia's potifar most notably, and therefore the shiltone, the one who grabs the reins of his life with discipline, he becomes the disciplined one. To run a country, it takes discipline. You're shiltate on yourself, so you'll be shiltate on the rest of the world, shiltate on all of Egypt, seems. That's the recipe, that's what we're told. To become successful begins with dreams, where you step up to add a little bit of youthful excitement to the recipe. And not to be forgotten, the necessity of discipline, because unchecked youthfulness, not knowing when to turn it off, not knowing how to think through things and go about it methodically, with preparation and with a certain mature assiduousness, well then you could go too far and your nervous will just turn into childlike foolishness. So just be immature. So that's it. The recipe for success is to be a Baal Chalomos, big goals, and Yosef told us you gotta be a Nair. You don't take no for an answer. You say I want to walk on the moon. You would energize, you live inspired. But you most definitely have to have this discipline that, no matter how many times Asha's Paitifar made her advances, and for the mature audience, if you look at the measures, it seems there were quite a bit of advances, day after day, with different temptations presenting herself to Yosef. It was no, no, no, vayimoyay, with the Chalcheles, that not now, not later, not tomorrow, not in the next world. I don't want to be with you, I don't want to see you, I don't want to touch you, vayimoyay, no, never, not today. Stop, get out of my face, vayimoyay, that type of shlita to be shoelied on yourself that earns a shlita on all of Egypt. So what is your goal? What do you seek to accomplish in life? And in order to accomplish that thing that you're thinking of, it's going to take a great amount of work and you'll probably have to do it in every single habitat, no matter where life takes you, like Yosef. So perhaps we should follow this plan Dream big, pump the dreams up, shoot for the moon, until people start saying and snickering oh, he's got another one of those crazy ideas. Again, here comes the dreamer boy. And then chase it down with a freshness, with a hop in your step, be dynamic about it and top it off with some discipline. No, but to stop, but to pivot, but to rethink, to go about it patiently, with a certain amount of composure, restraint and self mastery. These three are the shlita dvaram that success is aimed on, amir tashem, if we follow Yosef's lead, no matter where life takes us, no matter what our goals are, if we dream big and go about it like with a youthful exuberance and excitement, with some discipline, amir tashem, we too will be successful, like Yosef Azadek, the great ish maatsliah.