The Wealth of Nations

ESSAY: The Wealth of Nations
Why the coin in your pocket holds a piece of your soul

INSIGHTS: Few and Deficient
Are 130 years “few”? Is a righteous, achievement-filled life “deficient”? Jacob thought so

A TELLING STORY: Smorgasbord
When a spiritual high soon dissipates to a pedestrian disappointment, it’s time to take a look at the prices on the menu

The Wealth of Nations

And the entire world came to Egypt to Joseph to buy food, for the famine was severe in all lands...

And Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan (and all the gold and silver in the world[1]) for the food that they purchased; and Joseph brought the money to the house of Pharaoh.

Genesis 41:57, 47:14

For several weeks now, we have been following the story of Joseph: his sale into slavery, his imprisonment, his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, and his appointment as viceroy of Egypt; his management of Egypt’s crops in the seven years of plenty; his control of the entire food supply in the region in the years of hunger that followed, so that the wealth of Egypt and the surrounding lands was concentrated in his hands; his brothers’ journey to Egypt to purchase grain, the accusations he leveled against them, and his detention of Simon and then Benjamin.

This week, in the Torah portion of Vayigash (Genesis 44-4:18-47:27), comes the climax: Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers. They are speechless with shock and remorse, but he calms them and urges them to hurry back to Canaan and bring their father to Egypt. Father and son have an emotional reunion after 22 years of separation. Jacob and his household—seventy souls in all—settle in Egypt.

In Vayigash we are also told why all this came to pass. Joseph tells his brothers: “It is not you who have sent me here, but G-d.... Hurry and ascend[2] to my father, and say to him: So said your son, Joseph: ‘G-d has set me lord over all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You will settle in the land of Goshen[3] and be near to me—you, your children and your children’s children, and your sheep and cattle, and all your possessions.’”[4]

In other words, all this was engineered by G-d in order that the Children of Israel should settle in Egypt.

Was there no other way to bring Jacob to Egypt? The Talmud explains: “Jacob might have had to be brought down to Egypt in chains, but he merited that [it should come about as described by the prophet:] ‘I[5] shall draw them with human cords, with ropes of love.…’”[6] The Midrash offers the following parable: “There was a cow that needed to be placed in a yoke that did not allow herself to be yoked. What did they do? They took her calf from her and led it to the place that they wanted her to plow. The calf began to bleat. When the cow heard her calf bleating, she went, in spite of herself, for the sake of her calf. In the same way, G-d wanted to fulfill the decree [of the Egyptian galut], so He contrived all these things so that [Jacob and his family] should come down to Egypt.”[7] “G-d said: ‘My firstborn child I shall take down [to Egypt] in disgrace? ... I shall lead his son before him, and he will follow, in spite of himself.’”[8]

This explains why Joseph was made ruler of Egypt—so that Jacob’s descent there should not be as an exile in chains, but as the father of the most powerful man in the land. But why did Joseph’s rise to power come about the way it did? Why the seven years of plenty, the years[9] of hunger that followed, and the concentration of all the gold and silver in the world in Egypt—events that affected the lives of millions of people?

In the writings of our sages, the word “Egypt” is a synonym for the very phenomenon of galut (exile).[10] For although the Egyptian galut lasted only 210 years (our present galut, in contrast, is in its 1,930th year), it was the most significant of the four galuyot[11] experienced by the Jewish people. Egypt was the “smelting pit” that forged the descendants of Jacob into a nation. It was the father and prototype of all subsequent exiles, containing the seeds of every Jewish experience under foreign rule.

One of the curious things about the Egyptian galut is the importance attached to the material wealth that the Jewish people carried out of Egypt. In the covenant G-d made with Abraham, the Egyptian galut is described as follows: “Know thee that your children shall be strangers in a foreign land, [where] they will be enslaved and tortured ... and afterwards they will go out with great wealth.”

The “great wealth” promised to Abraham is a recurrent theme in the account of the Exodus—to the extent that one gets the impression that this was the purpose of Israel’s stay in Egypt. In G-d’s very first communication to Moses, when He revealed Himself to him in the burning bush and charged him with the mission of taking the Jewish people out of Egypt, He makes sure to include the promise that “when you go, you will not go empty-handed. Every woman shall ask from her neighbor, and from her that dwells in her house, vessels of gold and vessels of silver and garments ... and you shall drain Egypt [of its wealth].”[12] During the plague of darkness, when the entire land of Egypt was plunged in a darkness so thick that the Egyptians could not budge from their places, the Jewish people—whom the plague did not affect—were able to move about freely inside the Egyptians’ homes; this was in order that they should be able to take an “inventory” of the wealth of Egypt, so that the Egyptians could not deny the existence of any valuable objects the Jews asked for when they left Egypt.[13] Prior to the Exodus, G-d again says to Moses: “Please, speak into the ears of the people, that each man ask his [Egyptian] fellow, and each woman her fellow, for vessels of silver and gold.” G-d is literally begging the Children of Israel to take the wealth of Egypt!

The Talmud explains that the Jewish people were disinclined to hold up their exit from Egypt in order to gather its wealth. “To what is this comparable? To a man who is locked up in prison and is told: ‘Tomorrow you shall be freed from prison and given a lot of money.’ Says he: ‘I beg you, free me today, and I ask for nothing more.’” So G-d had to beseech them: “Please! Ask the Egyptians for gold and silver vessels, so that the Righteous One (Abraham) should not say: He fulfilled that ‘They will be enslaved and tortured,’ but He did not fulfill ‘and afterwards they will go out with great wealth.’”[14] But would not Abraham have also been prepared to forgo the promise of “great wealth” to hasten the redemption of his children?

The Talmud states that “The people of Israel were exiled amongst the nations only so that converts may be added to them.”[15] On the most basic level, this is a reference to the many non-Jews who, in the course of the centuries of our dispersion, have come in contact with the Jewish people and have been inspired to convert to Judaism. But Chassidic teaching explains that the Talmud is also referring to “souls” of a different sort that are transformed and elevated in the course of our exiles: the “sparks of holiness” contained within the physical creation.[16]

Every object, force and phenomenon in existence has a spark of G-dliness within it: a spark that embodies its function within His overall purpose for creation and G-d’s desire that it exist, and a pinpoint of divinity that constitutes its “soul”—its spiritual content and design.  When man utilizes something to serve his Creator, he penetrates its shell of mundanity, revealing and realizing its divine essence. It is to this end that we have been scattered across six continents: so that we may come in contact with the sparks of holiness that await redemption in every corner of the globe.

Every soul has its own “sparks,” which actually form an integral part of itself—no soul is complete until it has redeemed those sparks related to its being. Thus a person moves through life, impelled from place to place and from occupation to occupation by seemingly random forces; but everything is by divine providence, which guides every man to those possessions and opportunities whose essence is intimately connected with his.

(These consist of two general types, alluded to in the verse, “Every woman shall ask from her neighbor and from her that dwells in her house, vessels of gold and vessels of silver.” Every soul has permanent “dwellers in her house”—constant, routine involvements, dictated by its natural talents and inclinations. It also has “neighbors” or casual acquaintances—the “chance encounters” of life, in which it comes in fleeting contact with something, unintentionally, or even unwillingly. Both of these, however, must be exploited as a source of “gold” and “silver.” The very fact that a certain resource or opportunity has presented itself to a person indicates that it constitutes part of his mission in life; that it is the purpose of his galut or subjugation to that particular corner of the material world. It is he, and he alone, who can redeem the spark it contains by utilizing it toward a G-dly end.[17])

Thus the Torah relates how Jacob risked his life to retrieve some “small jugs” he had left behind after crossing the Yabbok River upon his return to the Holy Land.[18] “The righteous,” remarks the Talmud, “value their possessions more than their bodies.”[19] For they recognize the divine potential in every bit of matter, and see in each of their possessions a component of their own spiritual integrity.

The Egyptian galut was the father and prototype of all galuyot. It was a highly concentrated period of history, in which the foundations were laid for all that was to unfold in subsequent centuries. The Kabbalists tell us that the material world contains 288 general “sparks” (each of which includes innumerable offshoots and particles); of these, 202 were taken out of Egypt,[20] redeemed and elevated when the Jewish people carried off its wealth, leaving it “like a silo emptied of its grain and a pond emptied of its fish.”[21] (This means that the thirty-three centuries of Jewish history that followed, with all the trials and tribulations they contained, represent the effort to redeem the remaining 86 “sparks”!) It was to set the stage for this mass redemption that Joseph concentrated the wealth of all surrounding nations in Egypt.

The lesson in this to each and every one of us is that we must recognize our G-d-given opportunities and resources as integral to our mission in life. One might be inclined to escape galut by enclosing himself in a cocoon of spirituality, devoting his days and nights to Torah study and prayer. But instead of escaping galut, he is only deepening his entrenchment within it, having abandoned his sparks of holiness—limbs of his own soul—in the wasteland of unrefined materiality.

It is only by meeting the challenges that divine providence sends our way, by utilizing every bit of material “gold” and “silver” toward a G-dly end, that we extricate these sparks from their galut, achieve a personal redemption, and hasten the universal redemption when “the great shofar shall be sounded, and the lost shall come from the lands of plenty, and the forsaken from the lands of stricture, and they shall bow to G-d on the Holy Mountain in Jerusalem.”[22]

Based on an address by the Rebbe,  Passover 5721 (1961)[23]

Few and Deficient

And Pharaoh asked Jacob: “How many are the years of your life?” And Jacob replied to Pharaoh: “The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty. Few and deficient have been the years of my life, and they have not attained the days of the lives of my fathers...”

Most of us are satisfied with reasonable aspirations: develop your mind, make ends meet, live in peace with your neighbors. But every so often we encounter one of those rare individuals (not a perfectionist, just holy) who cannot relish his meal as long as someone, somewhere, remains hungry; who, if there is ignorance in the world, feels his own wisdom deficient; who, if there is discord anywhere in the universe, cannot be at peace with himself.

Such a man was Jacob. Of the three founding fathers of the Jewish nation, only Jacob’s names (“Jacob” and “Israel”) are synonymous with “The Jewish People.” For Jacob lived not an individual’s life, nor were his an individual’s struggles and aspirations. His earthly life and deeds were but the beginnings of the thirty-five century saga of Israel.

Our sages describe how, after twenty-two years of exile and strife, “Jacob wished to settle in tranquility. But then there descended upon him the trouble of Joseph.”[24] Why, indeed, was his wish denied him? Surely the 99-year-old Jacob, who emerged from all his trials with his righteousness and integrity intact,[25] deserved his yearned-for respite? Does not the Psalmist promise that “[G-d] does the will of those who fear Him”?[26]

But for Jacob, a personal peace was inseparable from a general state of harmony in G-d's world. What Jacob sought was not some peace and quiet in his individual life, but the ultimate peace: the  union of spirit and substance, the infusion of meaning into matter. To Jacob, “settling down” was nothing less than the ultimate redemption through Moshiach.

An initial, immediate granting of Jacob’s request for a struggle-free existence would have resulted in a lesser tranquility, in a harmony more limited in depth and scope than what could be attained only through the painful events of Joseph’s sale and the subsequent exile of the nation of Israel. A peaceful settling down in the Holy Land would be confined to a harmony within Jacob’s most immediate environment; elements outside of this sacred domain would remain excluded, hostile and undeveloped.

Thus, the “trouble of Joseph” that befell Jacob was actually the next step in the realization of the peace he desired. Joseph’s descent into Egypt—the lowliest and most debased of cultures[27]—and his rise from slavery to become ruler and master of the land, enabled Jacob and his family to extend their influence even to this most vile of environments. In a more universal sense, Joseph’s descent into Egypt commenced the Egyptian galut, the prototype and forerunner of all subsequent exiles of Israel. And it is in the arena of galut where Israel’s global-historical calling is realized.

So Jacob, standing before Pharaoh more than five centuries years after G-d had set the human lifespan at “one hundred and twenty years,”[28] describes his 130 achievement-filled years as “few and deficient.” Though formidable in number, they are wanting in content, for their efforts still await realization. “They have not attained the days of the lives of my fathers,” said Jacob. My grandfather Abraham “grew old, he came into his days”[29]—at the close of his life his days were full, ripe with the fruit of his labors. Isaac, too, lived a fulfilled life, the life of a “perfect offering.”[30] But unlike my fathers, who closed their cycle of achievement in their physical lifetimes, mine is but an opening chapter in a process that spans history.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Chanukah 5752

Smorgasbord

A man once came to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (The “Besht,” 1698-1760, founder of the Chassidic movement) and poured out his heart:

“Rebbe!” he cried, “I don’t understand what is happening to me. A while ago, I decided to dedicate myself to the service of the Almighty, and I immediately found myself invigorated with spiritual life: when I prayed, my soul soared in ecstasy; when I studied Torah, the gates of wisdom opened before me; when I did a mitzvah, I was suffused with a wonderful joy. But soon after, I lost it all. My prayers are dry. When I try to study, I stare for hours at the page without comprehending a word. My deeds have become mechanical and devoid of meaning. Rebbe, what happened?”

“Let me tell you a story,” said the Besht. “A man once entered a shop in which all types of delicacies were displayed. He noticed that people were partaking of the food free of charge, with the consent and encouragement of the shopkeeper. So he decided that he, too, should take advantage of the shopkeeper’s generosity. After sampling each dish on the counter, he served himself a generous helping of a particularly appealing food.

“Wait a minute, my friend,” objected the shopkeeper, “that would be 50 kopeks.”

“But I don’t understand,” said the surprised ‘customer.’ “Why are you suddenly demanding payment? Up until now, you allowed me to eat for free!”

“Only because it is in my interest that people sample my wares,” replied the shopkeeper, “so that they may learn how desirable they are. But after you have already tasted them and have appreciated their worth, it’s time to start paying for your pleasure.”

“Nothing worthwhile in life is free of charge,” concluded the Besht, “particularly in matters of the spirit. The sublime pleasures of divine service can be acquired only with the currency of perseverance and toil. Nevertheless, the Almighty offers a free ‘taste’ of His intimacy to all who seek Him with a true heart. But once one has sampled these heavenly wares, it’s time to get to work….”

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber