The Ruler Over Himself Sustains the World

1“And Yosef was the ruler; he was the provider to all the people of the land.” The Ramban asks: it is not fitting that the ruler over the land, second only to the king of Egypt, should himself sell each person a se'ah or a tarkav, small measures of grain.¹ We may also ask what his being the ruler has to do with his being the provider who handed out food. After all, a person can give others food without being ruler of the land.

2We must also look into the Midrash on the verse “And they sat down to eat bread”: “The sin of the tribes is remembered forever, and it is a hope for the world. ‘And they sat down to eat bread’: he would feed bread to all who come into the world.”² These words need explaining. Why should the sale of Yosef bring a flow of blessing to the world?

3We can explain this through a well-known teaching of the holy sefarim, the Reishis Chochmah among them.³ The flow of Hashem's abundance comes only when people guard the attribute of Yesod, the sefirah bound up with holiness in matters of the covenant; and if, Heaven forbid, they blemish it, the whole flow of blessing is spoiled. If so, it is a great wonder. Egypt was “the nakedness of the land,”⁴ the source of impurity. How, then, in the years of famine, could food flow from Egypt to the whole world? It was because Yosef HaTzaddik, the guardian of the covenant who kept himself pure, was living in Egypt, and in his merit the whole world was fed. As Chazal said, “The whole world is fed only for the sake of Chanina My son.”⁵ For, as is well known, in the merit of the tzaddik of the generation, “the tzaddik, the foundation of the world,”⁶ the flow of abundance comes down to the world.

4This explains the Midrash's words that Yosef fed all who come into the world. The Midrash comes to answer our question: how could abundance flow from Egypt to the whole world? Its answer is that it was because the tribes sold Yosef to Egypt, and in his merit there was food for the whole world.

5In light of this we can explain the verse “And Yosef was the ruler.” Yosef ruled over himself, over his yetzer hara, as the Hadar Zekeinim writes in a similar vein.⁷ This is in the spirit of Chazal's exposition of the verse “Therefore the rulers say, ‘Come to Cheshbon’”: “‘The rulers’: these are those who rule over their yetzer hara.”⁸ That is why he had the power to be “the provider to all the people of the land,” for in his merit the whole world was fed.

6Why did Yosef have to come to Egypt? The Arizal teaches that the redemption from Egypt was carried out by the Holy One, blessed be He, in His glory and by Himself, “not through an angel and not through a seraph,”⁹ because Egypt's impurity was so great that no angel or seraph could go down there. Had even an angel gone down there, it would have sunk into the impurity of Egypt.¹⁰ If so, how could Israel be redeemed from there at all? For this reason Hashem arranged that Yosef HaTzaddik should go down to Egypt first. With his great holiness he purified “the nakedness of the land” a little. Through this Bnei Yisrael could live in holiness in Egypt and later leave it, all by the power of Yosef's holiness.

7aWe find the same with the miracle of Chanukah. The war with Greece was above all a war over holiness, as we say in Al HaNissim, “and the impure into the hands of the pure.” The Greeks wanted to bring blemishes into the holiness of the Jews. [This is hinted in their decree against milah, circumcision. See also the Megaleh Amukos, who writes that Yosef has the same numerical value as melech Yavan, “king of Greece.”¹¹] They wanted to defile the Jews with this impurity, and through this “to make them forget Your Torah.”¹² For we know that a blemish in Yesod causes the Torah to be forgotten.

7bAs the verse says, “And you shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes,” and right after it, “So that you will remember.”¹³ By guarding the eyes and the thoughts, a person is privileged to remember the Torah. When he blemishes himself and strays after his eyes and his heart, it is the reverse, Heaven forbid: the Torah is forgotten from his heart. This is why the wording is precise: “to make them forget Your Torah,” and not “to make them neglect Your Torah.” What the Greeks wanted above all was to make Israel sin, so that it would come to forget the Torah as a matter of course. But Bnei Yisrael overcame them. They withstood the test and remained “pure.” This does not mean literally that they were pure of the impurity that comes from contact with the dead. It was a time of war, when they killed many, and they were surely defiled by touching the slain. It means that they were pure of the impurity of the sin of blemishing the covenant, and through this they were privileged to stand against the Greeks and restore the light of the Torah to Israel.

8Our prayer is that Hashem help us withstand this test, especially the young. The plain remedy is Torah study, as Chazal said: “I created the yetzer hara, and I created the Torah as its antidote.”¹⁴ Through it we will overcome the yetzer hara. And in this merit may we be privileged, “in those days, at this time,”¹⁵ to see the Redeemer come. Amen, may it be His will.