Parashat Vayeshev | Rabbi Becca Weintraub | December 13, 2025

Shabbat shalom to everyone.

>> No matter when you came this morning,

I'm really moved today. Sometimes um you

just feel the through your body and

today is one of those for me. So I feel

very blessed to be on the journey

together this morning of the tila and

the gratitude of what it is to be able

to sit and pray together. that that in

and of itself is such a gift and a

blessing that we have the ability to do

that. Um, so Shabbat shalom. Again,

it's hard not to read and watch the

testimonies of the hostages who have

returned. I find it very hard. I know I

think actually for some it's easier to

just ignore it. And I completely

understand that also. And particularly

over the past 24 48 hours, I for me

before Shabbat, I found myself stuck and

haunted by the harrowing propaganda

videos released of the beautiful six.

This was Hirs Goldberg Poland, Carmel

Got, Eden, Shalami, Almog, Sarusi, Ori

Danino, and also Alex Lobonav.

In these videos, they're lighting Kaneka

candles together just two years ago deep

in the tunnels of Gaza.

It's painfully clear that these videos

were staged.

There are snacks that are all around and

their stiff body language.

They have physical wounds that you can

see

and their forced smiles which they have

after 80 days in captivity. And again,

this was December of 2023,

which means that they had eight more

months still ahead of them in captivity

until the moment that these terrorists

murdered them upon hearing the IDF

approaching.

And yet in the depths of these tunnels,

in the pit of the earth, these six along

with hundreds of others found a spark

and kindled it. They kindled it for

themselves and they kindled it for one

another. And when we watch these videos,

even with all of the agony and all of

the doubt that they evoke, it also

reminds us that light can and does exist

even in absolute darkness.

In our para, Vayesv,

Yoseph, the beloved son of Yakov, is

taken by his jealous brothers and thrown

into a pit. a pit which is dark.

It says that they took him

to they threw him into the pit

rake in that this boar was empty and

there wasn't any water that was in it.

And Rashi famously asks this question

since the Torah says that it's empty. It

says rake. Why is it that then it needs

to repeat and say mim that there wasn't

any water that was inside? And he

answers and saysimbo.

We know there wasn't any water there.

But this is actually telling us that

there were nikashim that there were

these snakes and there were these

scorpions that were there. So it wasn't

actually fully empty. It actually had

something in it. It just wasn't

something positive. It was something

scary and dangerous.

And Rashi draws this often Rashi takes

his commentary from other places in our

tradition. And it happens that Rashi

takes this one from the Gamarra in

Shabbat 22a which is the page or the

doth of the garra where he takes it

from. And remarkably this is in the

middle of a discussion on the Kaneka

candles.

The Torah Tamima, another commentary

notices this juxtaposition and suggests

that it connects Joseph and his story to

the teaching of the Gamarra, which this

teaching that it's teaching us about.

It's very detailed. The Gamarra often

likes to give us details. How do we

light the Kaneka candles? Where can we

light them? And this is a part of a

conversation that says you can't li

light them too high up because then

nobody else would see them. And it talks

about you can't light anything over 20

ammote. Although living in New York

City, it's a little different because we

can see each other's candles from the

windows. But in that time, you don't

want it to be too high. And the Torah

Tamima says that this teaches us that

Yseph's pit, it takes it back to the pit

and says that the pit that Yseph was

sitting in was actually 20 ammode about

30 feet deep. that the brothers, it was

so deep that they potentially didn't see

scorpions and they didn't know how

dangerous it was down there because some

of them did want to kill him and others

didn't want to kill him. And it further

links the story. The Torah Tamima says

that the Hasmonians,

they were the descendants, the I would

say enemy in the Kaneka story. They're

the descendants of Levy and that tribe

and they become the fact that then in

the Kaneka story we fight back against

them. It becomes a tikun or kind of a

revision of what happened to Joseph in

the pit generations before. So the

kanukia is connected to this pit and

this darkness that Yseph is sitting in

and becomes actually the repair for this

story generations later.

But as I read it, I was wondering what

actually happened to Ysef in his pit

when he was in there. I think it was

actually from the videos of the hostages

that made me wonder more and more. What

was Yseph's experience really like down

there? What did he do with his time

there? Was there any light?

The Midrashim are always a wonderful and

beautiful place where we get

possibility. And so some say that Joseph

prayed that he sang. He sang psalms to

himself. Some say that he wept and he

begged his brothers, "Please, can you

hear me? Can you let me out of here?"

Others say that he reflected on his

dreams either in a way of saying,"I know

that this is going to happen or

potentially, I know that I dreamt this

dream that I'm supposed to be something

great, but will that ever happen from

this dark place down here?"

And then there's the myth or a story

that tells us that

when Yseph was in the pit,

he had the primordial light, this

orhagan news, this hidden light that was

with him. And this is a story that we

actually explored uh a couple of years

ago during the Yamim Norim. And it's a

beautiful legend that we have in our

tradition. And it includes Yoseph in

this moment in the pit. God created the

world and at the moment of creating the

world we know ye there was light and

this was a sacred light that was drawn

down in a time of chaos in toou vavohu

in complete darkness and when Adam and

Eve ate from the tree they lost this

light and then God felt as though it was

necessary to hide it away for those who

are righteous and put it someplace else

put it in the world to come but God

preserved a trace of this light, a tiny

bit of this light in a small glowing

stone and they call it the toar

passed down through Adam from Adam to

Seth to Noah to Abraham to Isaac to

Jacob and then finally the stone makes

its way to Yoseph. And it says in this

midrashic tradition that Ysef was gifted

both the konet pim both this beautiful

coat and also a necklace that had the

tohar this stone on it. But he didn't

know what it was nor did his brothers.

And so when the brothers stripped him of

his coat when they were putting him in

the pit they didn't realize that this

amulet was so significant. And Yseph

enters the pit naked, surrounded by

these snakes and these scorpions. And

there, in a terrifying darkness, the

amulet begins to glow. He's wearing this

beautiful necklace of this primordial

light and it kept him alive. And the

tradition even goes on to say that later

in Egypt, the legend tells us that it's

the stone that allowed him to see the

future and to understand the dreams of

the baker and of the the um butler who

was in there with him and that it's even

the stone that they bury him with. And

when Moshe goes to retrieve Yseph's

coffin much much later when leaving

Egypt he finds this stone this amulet

and it is later hung in the tabernacle

as the neramid and then it's put above

every single ark that we have also that

this is this beautiful primordial light

that we hold on to throughout all time

in this myth. The light that sustains

Joseph in the pit is not ordinary fire.

It's the first light, the very light of

creation.

And when we light Hanukkah candles, we

stand in the literal darkest days of the

year and the metaphorical darkness of

our times.

When we strike the match, when we hear

the whisper again, yor,

let there be light.

The Kadush Levy connects the Kaneka

candles to this light of creation in

another way. He teaches that the mitzvah

of lighting Kaneka candles is supposed

to be done between the time that the sun

is setting and between the time that

people disappear or they're walking from

the marketplace. The disappearing of the

feet or the regal.

He connects this to representing the

fading of our habitual

certainty that the world runs only on

ordinary natural forces. So he plays

with the language there. Reguel meaning

foot, hair gel also means the ordinary

or things that are normal. And he says,

"Part of why we have to light at this

specific time, to bring the light in at

this moment, is because we want to push

on this idea that everything has to be

ordinary, that natural forces just are

the way that things always are." And he

says, "The candles teach us that hidden

miracles shimmer beneath the surface,

that the world is constantly being

recreated." Yehi or we should hear this

over and over again every moment by a

God who insists who still insists on

light over chaos and darkness from that

very moment of creation. A God who still

demands light over darkness and chaos.

In a statement that was released

alongside the videos that came out of

these beautiful six, the hostages and

missing families forum, they wrote,

"Hamas filled these videos as filmed

these videos as propaganda, but the

humanity of the beautiful six shines

through this footage. The entire world

must see our loved ones in these

moments. Their unity,

their strength, humanity, even in the

darkest times.

It's difficult to read this sentence and

it's also very clarifying.

Even in the tunnels after months in

captivity, something essential in them

remained intact.

Not the miracle that their families and

all of us had prayed for, which would be

the miracle we've seen when others are

returning home. We wish so much. I think

the pain of these videos is that we also

know what happened to them just months

later.

But another kind of miracle, the simple,

stubborn persistence of human dignity

that refuses to disappear even in the

midst of pure evil and stifling

darkness.

Joseph's story reminds us that darkness

and confinement, they're not new to our

people. We know that to our history, nor

to human history at all. And still the

Torah insists that we endure.

What survives the pit is not the cruelty

that put him in there. It's not the

cruelty of his brothers, but it's his

capacity to hold on to purpose, to

memory, to whatever faint light is

available to him. To the possibility

that even in deep darkness, a person can

begin in some small and unseen ways to

recreate the world. to prepare for the

emergence of an orhadash, a new light.

And this orhadash, this light that we

hope for, it's not just a metaphor. It's

our commitment and it's the

actualization of Torah as Jews and as

human beings to create conditions where

dignity, justice, and life can flourish

even in dark times. It's our commitment

to this to recognizing that toou vabu is

not the way of the world. It's this ore.

It's this light. As we begin Kaneka and

we light our candles tomorrow night,

we're not reenacting a triumph of some

sort. And we're also I can't stand here

and say that we're banishing darkness

once and for all. I do wish that was

possible, but we know it's not. What

we're doing is we're marking the

presence and we're celebrating the

presence of light in places that should

not have any.

We're reminding ourselves that our task

is not to manufacture this light or this

hope, but to guard the light to keep the

flame alive for ourselves, for one

another, and for the next generation.

so that we might yet be worthy of and

swiftly merit the radiance of this new

light that we so desperately pray for

each and every morning. Shabbat shalom.