Times: Shabbat starts on Friday at 8:04 pm and ends on Saturday night at 9:08 pm. The weekly Torah portion is Vayeishev and Shabbat Mevarchim Tevet. Rosh Chodesh is next Shabbat & Sunday. Chanukah starts on Sunday night.
Chanukah in the CBD: Look out for the Chanukah decals displayed all around town! Pillar of Light is on at Fed Square every night of Chanukah. Also check out the East Melbourne Shule events.
Mincha in the CBD: We will seek to resume mincha at L2/430 Lt Collins on summer schedule (1.45pm) once there is demand. Join the the WhatsApp group to stay across the latest details.
Study: The Weekly Shiur continues in hybrid in-person and Zoom, on Wednesday at 1.20pm at Warlows Legal, 2/430 Lt Collins, and the lunch part is back! Current topic: diverting at-risk children to a better life. Details here.
Thought of the Week with thanks to Yehuda Gottlieb. This week’s Torah reading discusses the famous episode of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers. Interestingly, the buyer for Joseph was Potiphar who is commonly known as an Egyptian official who was a ‘sar hatabachim’ – commonly interpreted as the chief butcher. The Targum Onkeles, however, translates this as the chief executioner of Egypt.
Later on in the Parsha when Potiphar suspects Yosef of impropriety with his wife, he decides to put Yosef in jail. If he indeed was the chief executioner then why did he decide to imprison Yosef and not execute him for his sin? This was another miracle done by God.
Rav Joseph B. Solevitchik offers another explanation for why this episode occurred in this manner:
The Torah does not believe in coincidences. The reason that Yosef was bought by Potiphar and survived living in the house of the chief executioner was in order to provide him with a contrast for his life in Egypt, and his life in Canaan in the house of Yakov. It is only by going through the experiences of living in a home such as Potiphar’s, that he could really appreciate the moral and righteous upbringing that he received from his own father. It is this contrast that gave him the strength, morality and fortitude to survive the rest of his time in Egypt.