Making Lemonade from Lemons

So Rabbi, another week of Madlik disruptive Torah. I reference resolutions, New Year’s resolutions. I think we can acknowledge New Years. mean, the Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah says there are four New Years. One of the New Years is about kings because that’s when they sign a document in the first year of the king. We’ve always recognized secular New Years.

Adam Mintz (01:18.344)
I like New Year’s. think marking time is really important.

Geoffrey Stern (01:24.677)
So, so as a result, this is a mark, whether it’s arbitrary, secular or otherwise. And as I said, people do make some resolutions. So I guess we can almost consider this the Madlik New Year Resolution, how-to podcast. How to keep your New Year’s resolutions even when you inevitably fail or stumble. So as I said, we are in Genesis 45 and all of a sudden the story of Joseph and his

brothers, the dreams, the selling into slavery comes to a climax. Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants and he cried out, have everyone withdraw from me. So there was no one else when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. His sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dumbfounded were they on account of him.

Geoffrey Stern (02:33.347)
Then Joseph says to his brothers, come forward to me,

Geoffrey Stern (02:54.3)
It is now two years that there has been famine in the land and there are still five years to come in which there shall be no yield from tilling. God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to serve your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not you who sent me here, but God who has made me a father to Pharaoh, Lord of all his household and ruler over the whole

So Rabbi, I’m almost a little confused. On the one hand, Joseph is the aggrieved party here and he’s clearly emotional. He sends out the foreigners, the outsiders. This is a family affair. This is a deeply personal event. And then he changes gear and he’s all over his brothers in terms of, don’t take it so hard. Don’t be afraid.

But this was all God’s will, almost trying to decompress the situation before it even plays out.

Adam Mintz (04:04.834)
You know, right, except in the power dynamic here, Joseph has all the power. So even though he is clearly in a way deferential to his brothers, you know, don’t worry, don’t worry, but he’s the king of Egypt. He’s the viceroy of Egypt and the brothers are petrified. So in a way he, he kind of lessens that, that power dynamic, but we should never forget that he’s the viceroy.

and their foreigners who could go to jail or have their heads cut off in one second.

Geoffrey Stern (04:39.338)
It’s true.

I must say, and I don’t know, I think I saw on the side of my eye commentaries that talked about the rarity of Bechi, of crying. This is deeply emotional for him, and as I said before, very personal. Nivhalti I was dumbfounded is the translation that we heard. the brothers are just, the breath is taken over.

away from them. They are absolutely surprised and dismayed. Then as I said, he tells them, sold me. He said, is for a reason that we came down here. And he says, there’s a reason that you sold me. I have to remind us that when we read earlier in the story in Genesis 40, when Joseph was explaining what

it happened to him to Pharaoh, to the baker, to his master. It was very important to him that he wasn’t characterized as a slave, but similarly I don’t think he wanted to or was publicly share that his brothers sold him into slavery. Kind of embarrassing when your own family pawns you off. So in Genesis 40-15 he says,

I was stolen. He puts the blame on others. But here it’s a very personal matter. He’s told all the foreigners to leave the room and he can be a straight shooter. And as you say, he does have all the power, but he also pulls no punches with them. Kind of very interesting. And I’ll just quote a little bit from what Everett Fox says at this point. He says that you have to, there are two

Geoffrey Stern (06:40.428)
issues going on here. Number one, it’s a personal story and number two, it’s already intertwined with a national story and that’s why he talks about a greater mission, a greater vantage point, that we’re all part of a story that’s bigger than us. But in a sense, he’s also saying that there are two parts here. One is what you did to me and one is God’s plan. He says three times

Fox points out, shalachty, that God sent me. You know, if I was deeply religious, I would say this is a story about providential control. Don’t worry what you did. You think you had free will. You were part of somebody else’s script. But I think in another sense, what we can say is he’s trying to help them deal with it by saying, yes, it was totally your fault.

consciously, but maybe there’s some better good that come out of it. How do you read it?

Adam Mintz (07:45.513)
So you can definitely read it that way. Every week Hadar sends out a dvar Torah. This year it’s by an extremely talented teacher in Hadar. name is Tali Adler. Her read on this, Geoffrey, is the following. She says, when the brothers come to Joseph basically begging for their life, Joseph realizes that the dreams that he had had

that the brothers would all come bowing down before him, basically have been fulfilled. So Joseph now has a slightly different role. He is the leader of the brothers. That was really the issue, right? Means he got the, he got the, you know, the coat, the multicolored coat, but the brothers didn’t like him. He was vying for power, for leadership. And finally he has it. Now that he has it, he can kind of be nice to them.

But underlying the whole thing is that Joseph realizes that those dreams actually came true. That’s the way she reads this story.

Geoffrey Stern (08:51.934)
I mean, I get that part in terms of what’s going on in Joseph’s head. And what that is an explanation maybe of is what struck me with the text this year is that we’re not spending a lot of time on delving into what’s going on to Joseph’s head. We’re spending a lot of time going on what’s going on in the brother’s head or at least what Joseph perceives is going on in the brother’s head. So Rashi, when they were amazed at his presence, Nivhalu mipanav,

out of shame. So again, Rashi and the commentaries are not worried about Joseph, maybe exactly for the reason you just mentioned. This is a kind of an exclamation point or an end of parentheses for Joseph. He had the dream and it’s been fulfilled. But it actually is the beginning of a whole new moment, a new start, a fresh start for his brothers. And they’re going through shame. The chizkuni says, niv-hal-ti.

Adam Mintz (09:32.63)
You

you

Geoffrey Stern (09:51.74)
They were frightened.

dreadfully frightened. And that’s why I kind of talked about this as a timely pasha because it teaches all of us what the three degrees are after one sins. One becomes ashamed, one becomes frightened if you will. They were now afraid of what the past would do to them, what Joseph would do to them. The Bereshit Rabotai says,

putting words into Joseph’s mouth. It says,

What he’s talking about is literally what happens after sin and he does something amazing, Adam, is he goes to Adam and he says, when Adam sinned, you know, we talk about the pan-ultimate sin, it was Adam’s sin, it was decreed that he would be distressed with his food. If you remember after Adam sinned, it says, because you did as your wife said and ate of the tree about which I commanded, you shall not

The word that it uses is the same word. And so what he’s saying is that after every sin, there is this sense of overwhelming effect of what you have done and how it will impact your life. And he’s actually drawing a

Geoffrey Stern (11:54.02)
a comparison, a contrast with what happened to Adam because what happened as a result of Adam’s sin is it tormented him the rest of his life. It tormented mankind for the rest of their lives. And he’s giving his brothers, Joseph is giving his brothers in a sense a kind of free pass here. But I love the fact that he connects one sin to the other and he connects the fact that as a result of sinning and failing and backsliding, you worry

the second it’s revealed to you and you’re looking in the mirror how this impacts you going forward. Joseph is bending over backwards already to say look forward. There’s two years behind us, there’s five more to go, we’re in a famine, you’re here for a reason. It’s kind of fascinating if you think in terms of the mechanics of sin and redemption or rehabilitation.

Adam Mintz (12:53.154)
So of course the rabbis are going to see it that way, but we want to see it in a human way. What about the fact that what Joseph really wants is to see his father? And so therefore if he’s tough with the brothers, puts them in jail, criticizes them, they’re going to run home and they’re going to say, Jacob, we got to stay away from this guy. This guy is dangerous. But the fact that he befriends them, they can go back to Jacob and say, hey,

It seems like everything is okay. It seems like we made up that we’ve been reconciled. So there’s a lot, again, you called it exactly right. The commentators seem to be concerned about what’s going on in the brother’s mind. But actually I’m much more concerned about what’s going on in Joseph’s.

Geoffrey Stern (13:41.834)
absolutely love it. And it’s not only that you’re concerned what goes on in Joseph’s mind, you’re making the case that he’s not free of this yet. This ain’t finished for him. And how they react and how they maneuver and extricate themselves from the situation that they’re in will still affect him. Because if he doesn’t give them self-esteem,

If he doesn’t, I’m starting to get a little feedback here.

Hello. If he doesn’t…

Geoffrey Stern (14:24.677)
if he doesn’t extricate them from this situation, they’re going to be useless to him. They won’t be able to bring back his world and bring him back to his father. So I love that you’ve connected the sinner with the victim with the victimizer and you’re saying that neither one can get on with their lives if the other doesn’t figure the way to maneuver out of this.

Adam Mintz (14:52.903)
Now in next week’s parasha, after Jacob dies, the brothers seem to make up a story that Jacob said that Joseph should forgive the brothers and they should live happily ever after. So what you see from there is that the brothers don’t really trust Joseph even to the very end. They think that Joseph still holds a grudge. So whatever Joseph is trying to do,

The brothers understand that the anger is so deep-seated that it just doesn’t disappear just like.

Geoffrey Stern (15:27.827)
So we have in recent weeks…

Adam Mintz (15:36.35)
I don’t hear any buzz. Nothing.

Geoffrey Stern (15:38.215)
You don’t hear a problem.

Geoffrey Stern (15:43.53)
Let’s just see.

Okay, I’ll keep talking. So in previous weeks, we’ve talked about the crooked shall be made straight and I was all about I love this verse that in the future we’re gonna be able to do things straight. So if I had to put myself on a side, I would say let’s be Yashar. Let’s be like Israel. Let’s not be like Yaakov who is crooked. But now we’re gonna I’m gonna have to eat my words because what one of the commentaries is saying

is that actually the fact that the brothers sinned and that Joseph got there in a roundabout way, that actually is how we get to the end in the proper way. So the Midrash Lekach Tov says, quoting Proverbs, a road may seem right to a man, but in the end, it is a road to death.

Remember what Joseph said to them. Joseph said, you think that you brought only bad? The truth is you brought us life. He says, God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. He says,

Geoffrey Stern (17:14.184)
And what the Lekach Tov is playing on is that life comes by growing, by moving in the crooked way, not the straight path. And he quotes Proverbs 14-12, that a road may seem right to a man,

But that can also be the road to death and in a sense what he’s putting into Joseph’s mouth is another explanation of why this had to happen. It’s not providential, but this is the way of the world. You have to stumble. You have to backtrack. You have to go in a crooked way to get life. And he quotes further Proverbs 14 23,

loss. If this was easy, it wouldn’t work out. There has to be toil and there has to be tears. And a verse that he doesn’t bring that I think of is the beautiful verse in Psalms, that he who sows in tears shall reap in the song of joy. If you remember, that’s what Begin said on the lawn of the White House when

Adam Mintz (18:34.766)
That’s right. That’s right. I mean, that’s the most beautiful verse of all. We say it every single Shabbos.

Geoffrey Stern (18:35.115)
and he made peace with Sadat.

Geoffrey Stern (18:44.68)
Yeah, the idea is what he’s trying to do is not simply say to them, this is providential. He’s trying to say we all had to go through this. Even if I factor in what you were saying, Rabbi, that Joseph needs them as much as they need him, it has to be this way.

He’s saying, do not be distressed. Do not be atsuv is to be sad in your hearts, because this is what had to happen.

Adam Mintz (19:20.897)
Now the other thing about the rabbis is that the rabbis have a tendency to always want to make things right, right? To make things easy. So the reconciliation is in the rabbi’s best interest. But you know, in real life, people don’t quite reconcile as easily as the rabbis may want us.

Geoffrey Stern (19:45.93)
I guess I agree with you, but I guess I also will say that the rabbis are forced to struggle with the text. Because even though the text has these two polarities, on the one hand you sinned.

But on the other hand, there’s a deeper, bigger picture here. The text is also trying to reconcile that. And Joseph is trying to reconcile that in their minds as well. The commentary, Midrash Shekhal Tov, uses an amazing word. He uses, he says,

First of all, he says that God created the cure when he created the sickness. And you did a terrible deed, but in the deed itself was part of the cure. And then he says that this was, he calls a roundabout fashion. He uses the word Gilgul.

Normally when we talk about Gilgul, we’re almost talking about reincarnation of the soul. What comes around goes around. What he’s using Gilgul is it’s a roundabout fashion. And it’s only through the way that God created this world through these roundabout fashions that we get to the end. And I guess what struck me is that normally I would say this is just an amazing message.

for us in general about how the arc of history moves forward. But because Joseph is giving this lesson to his brothers who are going through this traumatic kind of soul searching, what it does is it teaches us all personally how we go through backsliding, how we go through failure. And at the end of the day, for a religion like any other

Geoffrey Stern (21:54.14)
religion that says you can’t do this and you can’t do that, it’s got to deal with the other side of it. What happens after the fact when you’ve done it?

Adam Mintz (22:03.583)
Yeah, I mean, that’s really smart and that’s really good. And that is there are two sides of sin and generally the Torah tells you don’t do this. The Torah has 613 mitzvot. Do this and don’t do that. But here we have a situation where they did it already. What happens when they sin? Now, obviously there are sin stories in the Torah. There’s a story right back to the time of Adam, like you said.

and the story of the golden calf and the story of the spies. You know, there are plenty of sin stories, but you’re right. This is a certain type of story which is different than the Torah, which just tells you don’t do it, and they assume you’re gonna listen to what the Torah says.

Geoffrey Stern (22:48.18)
And so it adds another level, this old question of when bad things happen. How do you deal with that?

So I could have gone in the direction of the Hasidim. I happened to go in the direction of the Mussarniks I went to a Mussar Yeshiva and some of their writings talk about what happens after you sin. What is the biggest challenge, the biggest milestone that you have to overcome? the source that I looked up, which quoted my Rebbe, which we’ll get to in a second, because this was a very big deal with him, it says,

main Yates Ahura, the main evil inclination, the main, I guess, opportunity for failure is to get one to despair after the sin. In fact, the word Averah is noted in “Avar” past. Since after one’s sins, the evil inclination gets one to think of his past sins coming, causing him to despair.

So it’s bad enough that you sin, Rabbi, but then the after effects of sinning is, I like to say the best example is you steal once and now the Yetzer Hora turns to you and he goes, you’re obviously a ganef

Adam Mintz (24:08.135)
Right?

Geoffrey Stern (24:08.135)
You’re obviously a thief. This wasn’t a one-off. I want you to dwell further on your sin. And it’s an amazing, I think, psychological insight that the last thing that you want to do is dwell on your sin, because then the sin will never go away.

Adam Mintz (24:28.185)
Right, I mean that’s again, that’s what the rabbis want. That’s what how Teshuvah works. Teshuvah means that you need to look forward, not look backwards. Don’t dwell on what you did wrong, but think about how you can do better in the future. It’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern (24:43.411)
But I would venture to guess that most people would say, Teshuva is exactly not what you just said. But that’s the truth. That’s the way.

Adam Mintz (24:50.479)
Right, but clearly they’re making that point here.

Geoffrey Stern (24:55.624)
They are. And they quote the Gemora in Yoma, which says, that the thoughts about the sin are worse than the sin. And they bring amazing examples. They go, which tastes better, the steak or the smell of the steak afterwards from the barbecue? Which feels hotter, the hot summer night or the last hot summer night of summer where you

can’t take it anymore. It’s a beautiful metaphor, but what they’re trying to say is you have to get out of the ripple effect of that first sin. And that’s going to be a bigger challenge than sinning in the first place.

Adam Mintz (25:43.374)
It’s the psychology of sin. It’s what makes you sin and it’s how you feel after you sin. Right? That’s fantastic that they’re worried about the psychology of sin.

Geoffrey Stern (25:56.916)
So I went to a yeshiva called Beer Yaakov and the head of the yeshiva, the mashgiach, the spiritual leader, was a guy named Rav Moshe, or Shlomo Wolbe and he went saddest down and says, do you feel bad after you sin? And you know, everybody said they wanted to say, yeah, I feel very contrite. I pound my heart. And he says, well, who do you think you are Moshe Rabbeinu? Who the hell do you think you are to be sad about sin? Who were you before you sinned?

He was some great pious tzadik but he really dwelt on this thought. And in his writings, he literally talks about, get over it, move on.

And that’s this concept of aver, to move on and to not dwell in the past. It’s a fascinating, counterintuitive way of thinking about sin, that the most important thing is to move on. And I think that’s what Joseph is doing here. And I think you’re right, Rabbi, why he’s doing it might be for ulterior motives. He might want to see his dad, but nonetheless, he’s giving very smart,

we call Joseph is a very smart advisor. he’s giving some really, really good advice. And so I named the episode, Making Lemonade Out of Lemons. And I actually went on Wikipedia and I looked up where that phrase came from.

And what Wikipedia says is there might’ve been a writer named Hubert who said it many years before, but every one of us knows it from Dale Carnegie. And Dale Carnegie wrote a book called, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. And Dale Carnegie said he heard it from a good friend of his named Julius Rosenwald. Now Julius Rosenwald was one of the founders of Sears Roebuck.

Geoffrey Stern (28:00.282)
And after he made his fortune, he became friends with another founder, the founder of Goldman Sachs. And together, they met a guy named Booker T. Washington.

And Woles Wold had two goals in his philanthropic life. One was to go against antisemitism, but the other, he says, what I want to do is try to cure the things that seem wrong. And not only did he focus on antisemitism, but he saw as a Jew that the effect of slavery on the black man,

was something that a Jew could understand better than anything else. And he set up literally, this was before integration, so the black man went to their own schools. He literally created 5,000 schools to give the ex-slaves the possibility of studying and learning.

And I once heard Dumasani Washington, our friend who was on our podcast, and he made us recognize that what happened in that generation of illiterate people becoming literate in one generation had never been done before.

Adam Mintz (29:14.251)
Right.

Geoffrey Stern (29:28.411)
And that is to their credit and it’s to the credit of Booker T. Washington and to everyone help them in that vision and in that epic struggle. But again, it reminded me of what Joseph’s advice was to his brothers, which is to move on and to recognize what can you gain from the present situation? And I think this whole concept of move

moving from where they were. At first they sold their brother and now they’re confronted with it. And then being able to move forward is moving from grievance and victimization in the terms of Joseph and moving towards building a new life for themselves and doing what Joseph said is now we have an opportunity because I’m here, I can help you and I can help Egypt in a brand new way.

So he really was, in a sense, saying the same message, which is we can salvage this situation. We can not only salvage it, but we can make something, a future possible that wasn’t possible before. Had I not been sold, I wouldn’t be here for you. I just thought it was an amazing opportunity to look at the personal dynamics and the national dynamics of this moment.

when they realized that what they had done was wrong on the one hand, and the opportunity, or I would say the potential of succumbing to grievance and succumbing to victimhood, and the alternative to that, which was to harness the moment and to make lemonade from lemons and to make something better of themselves, a future for the people,

and ultimately the redemption.

Adam Mintz (31:30.429)
And that’s this moment because next week Jacob dies and all of his sons are around him, including Joseph. And that’s the idea of the Jewish people, right? That’s B’nai Yisrael, the children of Israel is that moment. So exactly what you said, it’s the ability to reconcile, to look past the grievances in the victimhood to be able to reconcile. it’s a good question. I think we kind of leave this week looking for next week to wonder

Was the reconciliation as genuine and as authentic as we’d like it to be, or maybe not so?

Geoffrey Stern (32:06.627)
Okay, so stay tuned for another week of Madlik Disruptive Torah Shabbat Shalom to everybody and just remember whatever your resolutions are you might stumble once or twice but if you harness that you’ll be a better person because of it. So Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year.

Adam Mintz (32:22.812)
Thank you, Geoffrey.