Dear Friends,
I heard a great story about a young Chabad girl who was learning in a non-Chabad school. During a class about the Jewish home, in which the girls are taught what a Jewish home should look like and how to run it properly, the speaker told the girls: “In order to preserve your spiritual level, you must always live among Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews, in a place of Torah. One is influenced by one’s environment, and it is important that your environment be suitable.” To illustrate the matter, he brought an analogy: “If we take a pot containing boiling water out into the cold street, in the end the pot and the water in it will cool off. Even if we are warm Jews, like the water in the pot, the cold street will probably cool us off.”
At this point the Chabad girl got up and said: “I will go out on a Shelichut and I will live, purposely, in a place that is not yet defined as ‘a place of Torah.’”
“And what will you do about the water and the pot cooling off?” asked the speaker.
“I’ll take the fire with me!” answered the girl. “That way, not only will the water always remain hot, but the fire will be able to heat up other pots of cold water as well.”
In our Parasha it says that “Yosef was taken down to Egypt.” The Midrash comments about this: Yosef took the Shechinah (Divine Presence) down to Egypt, as it says, “And Hashem was with Yosef.”
The Rebbe explains that in order to cope with going down to Egypt, which meant a considerable decline in values and spiritual life compared to the Land of Israel and the household of Yaakov, his father, Yosef took Hashem with him – he took the fire with him! And thanks to that, not only did he survive the exile, but he even ruled over it, becoming a king in Egypt.
The Rebbe, who sent his followers to all kinds of “Egypts” all over the world, was saying to his Sheluchim, and really to any Jew, wherever he is (and every Jew has his own personal “Egypt”) the secret of how to cope with the exile: take the fire with you, and it will keep the water hot, and even be able to heat up cold water.
The simple truth is that the fire is with us anyway – it is the soul that is within us. All we have to do is to allow it to give out its heat and light, do away with the exile and bring the Redemption.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski