Jayda Sacks – Year 8

Charlotte Lyons – Year 9

Parashat Miketz

Boker Tov,

I am Charlotte and this is Jayda and we are going to tell you about this week’s parashah-Miketz.

In last week’s parashah – Yoseph’s brothers were jealous of him because he was Ya’akov’s favoured child and so they sold him into slavery where he ended up working for Potiphar, Pharaoh’s minister. When Yoseph refused the advances of Potiphar’s wife he ended up in jail, even though he was innocent. 

As our Parashah opens, Yoseph has been sitting in prison for 12 years. He is thirty years old and the time has finally come for him to fulfil his destiny. So God fills Pharaoh’s sleepy head with two strange dreams. When no one was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, the wine butler remembered Yoseph and told Pharaoh how he had successfully interpreted his dreams, and so Pharaoh sent for Yoseph to do the same for him.

In his first dream, 7 fat cows emerged from the Nile River and then 7 thin cows emerged from the Nile River and ate the fat cows – how’s that for metabolism! Pharaoh then had a second dream where 7 ears of robust grain were consumed by 7 ears of thin grain.

Yoseph explains that for seven years Egypt will have plenty to eat. The land will produce more grain and corn than ever before. But once the seven years are up, the feeding frenzy will be followed by famine. Seven fat cows and stalks mean seven fat years. Seven skinny cows and stalks mean seven famine years.

As a result of learning the meaning of these dreams, Pharaoh took a fifth of Egypt’s harvest during the seven good years and stored up the grain for the bad years so that the country would not be ruined by famine.

Pharaoh was so grateful and appreciative towards Yoseph, for saving Egypt, that he makes him second in command of Egypt and in charge of all the land.  He gives him the Egyptian name of Zaphnat-Paneiach and an Egyptian wife named Asnat. Yoseph has 2 sons – Menasheh and Ephrayim. Yoseph has quickly gone from a thirty year old jailbird to king pin.

The 7 years of famine began but Egypt had food. The famine was severe in all the world so many foreigners came to Egypt to buy grain as well. Ten of Yoseph’s brothers, except for Benjamin, came to Egypt for grain. As Yoseph had been in jail for so long, and now looked like royalty, his brothers did not recognise him. Yoseph used this to his advantage and interrogated them. They confessed to him, while thinking he was a stranger, all about how they had sold him.

Now Yoseph knows that his brothers truly regret selling him. But he feels he needs to keep the masquerade going just a little longer. So he throws the whole lot of them in jail. Three days later, Yoseph lets his brothers out of prison. He fills their sacks with grain and sends them off to feed their families in Cana’an.

What we learn from Yoseph’s story is that we don’t know what God has in store for us until it happens. Yoseph’s day in jail began the same as every other day for the past 12 years and yet, by the end of that day, he was released from jail and had become second in command after Pharaoh. This couldn’t have happened if Yoseph was not prepared and ready for the success God eventually granted him.

This teaches us that often in life, we must persevere and stay resilient through the tough times to be rewarded with the good times. Whether your “tough time” is getting a poor mark in an examination, losing your soccer game or having an argument with a friend, remember that patience is key and the situation will get better with time. We will end on this quote that sums up this week’s parashah “you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”