Parshas Vayeishev: The Story Isn’t Over

Yosef’s first dream in the Torah is almost plain:
“We were binding sheaves in the field.”

It feels almost too simple for a dream that will change everything. 
Just a bunch of kids playing and working in the field together.

It’s simple. Quiet. Ordinary.

Which is exactly how most beginnings actually look, happening in quiet places long before we understand where they’re heading.

Soon after, Yaakov sends Yosef to check on his brothers.
Yosef loses his way, and the Torah pauses for a moment:

“A man found him wandering in the field.”

No name. No backstory.
Just someone who notices him and points him toward Dotan.
A tiny moment that ends up moving history forward, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. Especially for Yosef, who ends up getting the short end of the stick.

Then his brothers throw him into a pit;
a place with no water, no answers, no clear way out.
They leave him there to die.

Next, the brothers show Yaakov the torn bloody coat without saying a word.
And Yaakov draws his own devastating conclusion:

“טָרֹף טֹרַף יוֹסֵף”
“He must be gone.”

It wasn’t true.
But he lived inside that belief for twenty-two years.

The brothers had opportunities to change their ways, speak up, or take responsibility, but they didn’t.
Not because it was right, but because sometimes the timing of truth sits in Hashem’s hands, not ours.

It’s a heartbreaking moment, and it sets the tone for the long silence that follows.

Vayeishev holds all of this:
small moments that guide us,
sharp moments that close us,
and long chapters where nothing seems to move,
even though the story is still unfolding underneath.

―

A Shift in My Week

For the past few months, I’ve had a quiet thought:
maybe I should reach out to some old friends,
see where life has been happening since the “good old days”.

Once in a while I did, one message every few weeks,
and it always felt good.

But a few more names came to mind a month ago,
people I haven’t spoken to in what feels like twenty-two years,
and I kept pushing it off.

Then something happened last week.
It made life feel very fragile and very real,
the kind of moment that reminds you the right time is not always something you can wait for.

So I reached out.
A simple message.
And the conversations that followed were steady and familiar,
like parts of my life I didn't realize were still there.
Each one carried its own honesty, its own kind of weight or light.
Just real human presence.

And each encounter softened something in me.
It reminded me how grounding it is to show up for another person or to let them show up for you.

Suddenly the parsha felt closer.

The sheaves that bowed, waiting for their meaning.
The man in the field.
The dark pit.
The torn coat.
The twenty-two years of silence that weren’t an ending at all.

I realized I do something similar.
I assume a chapter is over simply because it’s been quiet for a long time.
Not because something happened, just because nothing happened.

But silence isn’t the same as ending.

And it made me think about Yosef’s pit.
Not only the physical one,
but the moments in our own lives where we feel just as stuck or unsure.
 
―
The Pit, and the “How”

Looking forward to the ending of Yosef’s story, to the way things turn out,
is the classic hindsight is 20/20 moment.
Everything looks clear when you already know the ending, even though nothing felt clear when he was inside it.

If we ever find ourselves in a pit or prison of our own,
stuck, confused, hurt, or overwhelmed,
it doesn’t mean the story is over.

The real question is how to remember that while we’re in it.

Yosef didn’t climb out by understanding the plan.
He didn’t know a caravan was coming
or that being a leader of Egypt would be his future.

He just stayed himself.
He held onto his name, his integrity, his connection to Hashem.
He did the next right thing,
just the next step he could see.

Meaning came later.
Perspective came later.
The arc only connected once the next parsha opens.

That’s true for us too.
We don’t have to know why something is happening.
We just have to stay with our true selves long enough for the story to move again.

―
The Moment Yosef Becomes the Man in the Field

As the parsha nears its ending, it gets a full circle moment.

After everything Yosef has been through,
the brothers, the pit, the sale, the prison
he notices something small about his fellow inmates:

“Yosef came to them in the morning and saw that they were downcast.
And he asked, ‘Why do your faces look troubled today?’”

He saw their pain.
He asked.
He cared.

And that moment, the simple act of noticing another human being,
is what starts the chain that brings him out of prison,
lifts him to greatness,
and eventually reunites him with his family.

The boy who once needed someone to help him in a field
has become the person who notices someone else in theirs.

That’s the quiet turning point of Vayeishev.
We move our story forward by noticing the people around us,
the way someone once noticed us,
or even just the way we wished someone had noticed us.
 
―
The Stories That Wait

The wheat in the field didn’t become bread that day (and bread was somebody else's dream entirely).
But it was already gathered,
already held together,
waiting for its moment.

The unnamed man didn’t know he was changing history
(aside from Chazal saying he was literally a Malach on a mission).

The brothers didn’t know the pit wasn’t the end of Yosef’s chapter.
Yaakov didn’t know the bloody coat was only part of the story.
Yosef didn’t know that interpreting dreams would lead to becoming the viceroy of Egypt.

And most of the time, we don’t really know anything either.

All we can do is the next small thing, the next right thing.
For ourselves. For others. For Hashem.

Even Yud Tes Kislev whispers this truth.
Why didn’t that story happen in the spring or summer?
Why specifically during Parshas Vayeishev (1798 was a kviyus that mirrored this year)?
Because this is the only parsha whose spiritual tone fully holds this kind of darkness with potential, the quiet strength that grows precisely when nothing seems to move.

The Alter Rebbe was held in a prison meant to still him, to smother the light of Chassidus he was bringing into the world.
But he didn't rush past the pain.
He sat with it, with Hashem, with the weight of what was happening.
And the light didn't disappear there.
It gathered strength, quietly and deeply, until the shift came and it emerged stronger than before.

This week feels like it carries the right energy to end the “fifty-three days in prison” or the “twenty-two years in silence” of our own self-created narratives.
It is the last stretch of darkness before the Chanukah lights begin next week.

Dotan means the place of reasoning, getting stuck in the pit where we justify our own stories.
And sometimes the journey back home begins when we stop believing the old explanations we once told ourselves.

If there is something dormant you have been thinking about,
or a forgotten story that never got the opening or ending it needed,
reach out, send a message, reopen a quiet chapter,
and trust that some parts of your life are still waiting to rise.

Keep shining your light.

Good Shabbos,
Berke