The moral of the story is ... Weekly Torah portion, "Vallejo"

 Nachum Purer


Having lived seventeen years in Egypt, Jacob feels the approach of death. He takes an oath of Joseph, that he was buried in the family tomb - Mearat a-Machpelah in Hebron. Joseph leads to sick father's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob and his sons, declares them. As a result, Joseph and his descendants receive a double share of the inheritance, instead of his older brother Reuben. Despite the objections of Joseph, Jacob blesses the first of his younger son Ephraim, which will Yehoshua bin Nun, successor Moshe Rabbeinu and the conqueror of Eretz Yisrael. Then Jacob collects all twelve sons, the founders of the tribes of Israel, and gives them dying blessing and farewell. Jacob dies at the age of 147 years. Grand funeral cortege goes from Egypt to Hebron. After the death of his father's brothers are concerned that Yosef will begin to avenge their past. But he calms them and promises to further financial support to them and their families. Before his death, Yosef foretells brothers that Gd will bring their descendants out of Egypt, and requests that the Exodus Jews took with them his remains. Joseph dies at the age of 110 years, and his embalmed body lay in a coffin. Thus concludes the book "Genesis", the first in the Pentateuch.


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"And Gd spoke to Israel in visions of the night ..." (46: 2).

Many tourists come to London in a hurry to visit the house number 221B Baker Street, where once lived the world's most famous detective Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories, this address did not exist. House numbers on Baker Street did not reach such large numbers. Baker Street is gradually lengthened, and only in 1932, the construction company "Abbey National Building 'opened its office at 219-229 Baker Street. Since then, thousands of letters addressed to a fictional character Conan Doyle, settled on the scorer's table, which is full-time engaged only in that answer them to the best of your imagination. In 1990, on the facade of the house was set 221B blue plaque confirms that Sherlock Holmes lived there.

The myth of Sherlock Holmes is not a unique phenomenon. When the hero of the TV series "kill", the relatives hunky actor who performed the role of "the deceased", receive thousands of letters of condolence.

We live in a world where fiction becomes more real than reality itself.

The Mishna "Pirkei Avot" Rabbi Yehuda says: "If someone is on the road, thinking about the Torah, but when he saw a beautiful tree or a beautiful golf interrupts his thoughts, he commits a serious offense."

But what is so terrible to admire the beauty of nature? It is for this must be severely punished?

Let's look at this situation with such a living example. Imagine two Jewish grandparents sitting in the park and watch their grandchildren who play in front of them on the grass. One grandmother says another: "Rebecca, do not jinx it. Your grandchildren are so beautiful! " Another she replied: "That's nothing! Now, if you see them in the photos! .. "

Kabbalistic book "Zohar" teaches that Gd looked into the Torah when He created the world. Torah - is the "grandchildren", and the world - "photography". Torah - the morality and the world - a parable.

Marked us Chanukah symbolizes primarily an ideological clash between the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks believed that the truth - this is the beauty of the beautiful truth. In other words, the moral parable interchangeable.

We Jews, we say that the truth is beautiful, but beauty is not necessarily true. The parable has value only if it is moral. If the parable serves only itself, it inevitably leads to moral decay.

Driving through the streets of any major western city, you are sure of the great success achieved Greeks. On a huge billboard, which occupies an entire wall of an eight-house, shows a handsome man with a sculptured biceps bulging out of his shirt with short sleeves chic style. a wonder of design in a big way on eight floors.

On the origin of Greek art, we read in the Torah: "Gd will expand Japhet, but he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." That's how Noah blessed his eldest son Japhet. However, in this blessing beauty contains important condition: Japhet should "dwell in the tents of Shem."

Japhet name is derived from the same root as "Yaffe" - beautiful. Japhet was the fourth son of Javan. Javan - Hebrew Greece. We Jews - descendants of Shem. The word "shem" in Hebrew means "name". In our holy language is not beauty, as the name defines the essence. In all other languages the name of any probation; by itself it does not define the essence of an object or phenomenon called. It was only in Hebrew, the name expresses the essence of the object or phenomenon and its connection with the spiritual source.

Japhet - beauty and art - is the original parable, which finds its proper place in the scheme of creation, only when lives in "the tents of Shem." Then she reveals the essence reveals itself morality. But when Japhet away from the tents of Torah, when the world is moving away from the essence of the world of Shem, and focuses on himself, then art becomes narcissism, corrupt and corrupting.

In the months of Kislev and Tevet, there were several key events that reflect the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens, between Shem and Yafet. Most memorable event - this, of course, Hanukkah, which begins on 25 Kislev and ends at the beginning of Tevet. But after a few days of this joyous holiday is replaced by the day of the greatest sadness that points to the other side of the relationship between Shem and Yafet.

The eighth day of the month of Tevet came a three day period of spiritual darkness. That day the king Ptolemy, who ruled in Egypt, gathered 72 great Torah scholar, locked each in a separate room and ordered to translate the Torah into Greek.

As a result, the lion, who walked free on terrestrial spaces, was locked in a cage. Thor, map and guide of all things, was shackled foreign language. She became one of the many books. Now the nations of the world could say, "Yes, we know your Torah, does the reading. She should have on a shelf in a university library, in "Philosophy and Religion."

What was the sense that the sages sat in separate rooms without any possibility of contact with each other? The room looks like a tent. When Ptolemy assembled rabbis and put them in separate rooms, which meant that Hashem was in the tent of Japhet. When the Torah was translated into Greek, she had to sit in the halls of the university, in the tent of Japhet, along with many other books.

Essence began to serve the form. The inner world has become a servant to the outside world. World turned upside down, stood on its head.

"And Gd spoke to Israel in visions of the night ..." (46: 2). Among the many threats that faced Judaism is perhaps the closest to the darkness of night - it is a philosophy of the Greeks and their spiritual heirs. The above verse - the only place in the Torah where vision is called "night vision." When Jacob was about to go into Egypt, became the prototype for all future expulsions and persecution suffered by the Jewish people, Gd spoke to him in a "night vision." He thus seemed to informed us that, no matter how dark and gloomy it may seem exile, no matter how rolled the world down an inclined, as it aggressively parable nor usurped morality, eventually everything will fall into place, and the beauty unconditionally obey the Truth .