Miketz

‎‎Exactly two years after the release of the Chamberlain of Cupbearers, Pharaoh had a dream.  ‎ויהי מקץ שנתים ימים ופרעה חלם , it happened at the end of two years to the day: Pharaoh was dreaming.  ‎The end of Yosef's imprisonment & the dream of Pharaoh seem to be two separate entities except that they happened at the same time. So why does the posuk connect them?    

The Bais HaLevi explains that everything that happens has a cause & effect; the effect is the result of the cause . It takes great intellect to discern what is the cause & what is the effect. For example, if a person invests his money in a certain endeavor & makes a huge profit, one would think that the reason he made a lot of money was because he made a good investment. However, that's a great mistake.  It's not the investment that made him wealthy; rather it was decreed in heaven that this person become wealthy.  Since that was decreed on him, heaven will lead him to the correct investment, to make sure the decree comes about. Therefore, the fact is the opposite of what people think; it's not the deal that's the cause & the wealth that is the effect; rather, it's the wealth that was decreed upon him in heaven that's the cause & the deal is the effect to make it happen. 

So, too, by Yosef.  The time for him to get out of jail was decreed on him in heaven, so Pharaoh had to dream. It’s not that Pharaoh had a dream & Yosef was the only one who could help him. Rather, because it was time for Yosef to get out, Pharaoh had to dream. When it's the time for something to occur, Hashem makes sure that whatever needs to happen, will happen. ‎Now the posuk makes sense: ויהי מקץ שנתים ימים ,it was at the end of two years that Yosef had to remain in prison, therefore now was the time, ופרעה חלם‏ , Pharaoh had to dream.

I heard a st‎ory that was told by Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro about a man who lost his entire family in the Holocaust. After the war, he wanted nothing to do with Judaism so he changed his name & moved to Alabama. By chance, he married a Jewish girl & they had two sons. When his oldest son, Jeffrey, turned thirteen,  he wasn't going to make a Bar Mitzva but decided to honor the day by taking his son to the mall & letting him pick out whatever he wanted. They go to the big electronics store in the mall, looking for the perfect gift when Jeffrey spotted something in the antique store across the mall & couldn't take his eyes off of it. He was mesmerized.  He told his father that he didn't want anything from the electronics store but he wanted to go across to the antique store. They went across where the boy pointed to an old wooden menorah. The father couldn't believe it!  He said, “I'm letting you get anything you want in the whole mall & this is what you want?” The boy was insistent so the father asked the owner how much for the menorah? The man replied, “sorry that's not for sale”. The father said, “what do you mean? This is a store I want to buy it. How much?” The owner said, “listen, I just heard the story behind that menorah. It was constructed during the war by a man who took months to build it out of pieces of wood he found & put together.  The menorah survived but the man didn't. This is going to be a collector’s item. I can't sell it.” Now Jeffrey wouldn't let up so his father offered more & more money until the owner agreed to sell. 

Jeffrey was so excited. He took the Menorah up to his room & he played with it every day. One day, they hear a crash from upstairs, run upstairs & see the Menorah on the floor in pieces. The father gets angry at his son saying, “how could you be so careless. I paid a lot of money for that!?” Then, seeing how hurt his son was, he offered to help him put it back together. As they were putting the pieces back, the father saw a piece of paper wedged inside. When he pulled it out & he read it, tears welled up in his eyes.  When he finished, he fainted!  

‎After they revived him, he said, “let me read you this letter. It was written in Yiddish. It said,

‎whoever finds this menorah, should know that I constructed it not knowing if I would ever get to light it. In all probability, I won't. If providence puts this into your hand, you, who are reading this letter, promise me that you will light it for me & my family; all of those that gave their lives for Hashem. 

The man looked up at his family with tears in his eyes & in a choked up voice said, “the letter is signed by my father.” The family was shocked but recognized the Divine Providence & came back to religion. Would one think out that, of all the places in the world, the Menorah ended up in a remote mall in Alabama by chance?  Hashem wanted them back & caused his father's Menorah to turn up in that mall in Alabama. We must recognize that Hashem is controlling everything. All that happens to us is part of the divine plan & when something is meant for us, there is nothing in the world that will stop it from happening. Conversely, if it's not meant for us, nothing we do will make it happen. We must put our trust in Hashem & He will do what's best for us!