The Chicken or the Egg or the Chicken…. – Parshat Miketz

This age-old question has at times fascinated me and at times bored me. Similar questions about cause and effect also intrigued me as welll as turned me off.

So it was with particular interest that I heard a short lecture about the end of Yosef's imprisonment that reminded me of this question. I had until recently understood that due to Paroh's dreams of the cows and the grain, Yosef was called up from prison and his life was suddenly transformed and he became viceroy to the king.1 In fact, says Rabbi Adler in the name of the Bais Halevi, we need to take a better look at the process here.2 Chazal, in the previous chapter, take Yoseph to task for having asked the Minister of Drinks to relay his story to Paroh.3 Yosef received as punishment for that action another 2 years in jail. Then this week's parsha starts by telling us, "and it was at the end of two years."4 The time had come for Yosef to get out of jail and so Paroh had a dream – and this set off the events that led to Yosef's rise to power.

In other words, it wasn't because of the dreams that Yosef got out. It was because it was time to get out of jail that Paroh had these dreams which led to Yosef's release from jail.

We often try to understand things that happen to us and what leads to what. We look forwards and backwards trying to make sense of our lives and events that transpire. Sometimes we are lucky and figure it out. Often we are left standing shaking our heads in disbelief as we try to figure things out.

It can be events of little or great significance.

Stuff happens. Why? Is the order in which things happened important? Is the timing crucial?

I had a trying last 24 hours due to lots of little things happening in my life but the confluence of those events created a certain level of stress, which I felt challenged to channel back into some kind of noetic understanding.

Cause? Effect? I don’t always know. The struggle to find the answer to that question is part of my responsibility to myself to help make my own life more meaningful.

Notes

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

  1. Bereishit 41
  2. His 3-minute class can be found here: https://www.yutorah.org/sidebar/lecture.cfm/912671/rabbi-elchanan-adler/the-beis-halevi-on-mikeitz-the-causes-and-effects-in-life/
  3. Bereishit 40:23
  4. ibid. 41:1

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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