Seven days with the Chernobyler Maggid

The verse is Bereishit (Genesis) 37:3: "And Yisrael loved Yosef more than all his sons, for he was a son of his old age, and he made him a ketonet passim," the special coat. The Me'or Einayim quotes its first words and goes on to other things. He reads the rest of the verse in the last lines of the teaching.

The Gemara (the Talmud, Pesachim 54a) quotes a teaching that seven things were created before the world, and the Torah is the first on the list. It learns this from the verse "Hashem [God] made me as the beginning of His way" (Mishlei, Proverbs, 8:22).

The Me'or Einayim has one short teaching on Parshat Vayeshev. In the text on Sefaria (an online library of Jewish texts) it is five paragraphs long. This week's seven days follow it in his order. From the verse he turns to why the world was created, then to a Mishnah (a teaching from the first written code of the Oral Torah) about servants and reward, then to how a world with limits can exist, then to why the Torah has stories in it at all, then to the Exodus from Egypt. Only then does he read the verse.

The saying he starts from is quoted by Rashi, the classic commentator, on the first verse of the Torah, as the reading of the Sages: the world was created for the sake of the Torah, which is called "the beginning [reishit] of His way" (Mishlei, Proverbs, 8:22), and for the sake of Israel, who are called "the beginning of His harvest" (Yirmiyahu, Jeremiah, 2:3). The Me'or Einayim returns to the two halves of the saying in the third paragraph. He writes both "the world" and "the worlds." In Kabbalah (the hidden teachings of the Torah) the creation has many levels, and each is called a world. That note is ours.

"Israel sustain their Father in Heaven" is in the Zohar (the classic of Kabbalah) on the Torah portion Vayikra (3:7b), which quotes it as something already taught: "we have learned." The Zohar says it there about the offerings. "Delight in Hashem" is the language of Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 58:14, "Then you will delight in Hashem." "Darling child" is yeled sha'ashuim, words said through the prophet about the people of Ephraim, in Yirmiyahu 31:19 (31:20 in many editions, Sefaria's among them).

The Mishnah is Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 1:3. It is the saying of Antigonus of Socho, who received the tradition from Shimon the Righteous, and it ends: "and let the fear of Heaven be upon you."

Note his words about the reward of the World to Come: it "will be afterward." What he says the service should not be is service for the sake of it.

This is not from the Me'or Einayim's teaching. The Rambam (Maimonides), in his Laws of Repentance (10:5), calls learning Torah in order to receive a reward "not for its own sake," and quotes a saying of the Sages about it. The saying is in the Gemara (the Talmud, Pesachim 50b), where Rav Yehudah says in the name of Rav: a person should always occupy himself with Torah and mitzvot even not for their own sake, because out of doing them not for their own sake he comes to do them for their own sake.

"As was said" points back to the second paragraph, where the main good is the delight Israel take in doing the mitzvot (commandments). The verse about clothing is Tehillim (Psalms) 104:1: "…Hashem my God, You are very great; You have clothed Yourself in glory and majesty." The saying about the Torah and Israel is quoted by Rashi, the classic commentator, on Bereishit (Genesis) 1:1.

His word is tzimtzem, "He contracted." The idea it names, tzimtzum, is a large subject in Kabbalah (the hidden teachings of the Torah). The Me'or Einayim gives it here in one line.

The fourth paragraph opens with a question: the Torah should have begun with its mitzvot. Why was it clothed in stories? That is the next step.

The Torah, he writes, should have begun with its mitzvot. And he asks:

Rashi, the classic commentator, opens his commentary on the Torah with a question close to this one, in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak: the Torah needed to begin only from "This month shall be for you" (Shemot, Exodus, 12:2), the first mitzvah that Israel was commanded. Rashi gives a different answer there. The Me'or Einayim answers from the mitzvah to tell of the Exodus, and from the saying about the talk of Torah scholars.

The saying is in the Gemara (the Talmud, Avodah Zarah 19b) in the name of Rav: even the everyday talk of Torah scholars needs study. It is learned from a verse about the person whose desire is in Hashem's Torah. He is like a tree that gives its fruit in its season, "and whose leaf does not wither" (Tehillim, Psalms, 1:3). Nearly the same saying is in Sukkah 21b. "The righteous walk in them" is from Hoshea (Hosea) 14:10: "…for the ways of Hashem are straight, and the righteous walk in them…"

He goes on: they are then attached to Hashem, and their talk is truly Torah. The lines that follow are in "Read it in his words," above.

The line is in the passage "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt," near the start of the Haggadah: "Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us elders, all of us knowing the Torah, it would be a mitzvah upon us to tell of the Exodus from Egypt."

In halachah (Jewish law) the Exodus is in any case mentioned every day and every night, in the Shema (the daily declaration that begins "Hear, Israel"). The Mishnah (the first written code of the Oral Torah, Berachot 1:5) gives Ben Zoma's reading of the verse "so that you remember the day you left the land of Egypt all the days of your life" (Devarim, Deuteronomy, 16:3): "the days of your life" are the days, and "all" adds the nights. The Haggadah quotes this Mishnah a few lines after "whoever tells more." The Me'or Einayim's "always" is wider: "when one speaks of anything."

Mitzrayim is written mem, tzadi, resh, yud, mem. The first three letters spell meitzar, a border or a narrow place, and the last two spell yam, sea. "The sea of true wisdom" is his phrase.

The name Yisrael Sabba, "Israel the Elder," is found in the Zohar in a number of places. One of them is its reading of the verse "Hear, Israel," in the Torah portion Vayakhel. Yosef was named for adding: "She called his name Yosef, saying: May Hashem add [yosef] another son for me" (Bereishit, Genesis, 30:24).

Targum Onkelos is the classic Aramaic translation of the Torah. On Bereishit 37:3 it translates "a son of his old age" as bar chakim, "a wise son." "All of them are sifted in wisdom" is an Aramaic line that later books quote in these words. It goes back to the Zohar on the Torah portion Pekudei (2:254b), which speaks there of sifting "from within thought."

At the start he asked what way this verse shows. The last paragraph begins, "And this is 'Yisrael loved Yosef,'" and closes with "and understand" and a blessing. The steps between were these. The world was created so that Hashem could do good to His creatures. The main good is the delight Israel take in doing the mitzvot (commandments), at the time they are done. A world with limits came to be by means of the Torah. The Torah itself was clothed in stories. The everyday talk of tzaddikim is truly Torah, and raises souls. And so it is a mitzvah to tell of the Exodus always.

The Friday night Kiddush mentions the going out of Egypt. In the Gemara (the Talmud, Pesachim 117b), Rav Acha bar Yaakov says that it must be mentioned, and the Torah ties Shabbat to the Exodus in Devarim (Deuteronomy) 5:15. This connection is ours, not the Me'or Einayim's.

The card describes a table. It does not rule on what may be said at one. The Sages learn from a verse (Yeshayahu, Isaiah, 58:13) that a person's speech on Shabbat should not be like his speech on a weekday (Shabbat 113a-b), and the Shulchan Aruch (the standard code of Jewish law), Orach Chaim 307:1, sets out what that covers. What it means for your own table is a question for your rav (rabbi).