Miketz
R. Bachya ibn Pakuda on Parashat Miketz, read on Shabbat Miketz · After Chanukah — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
Va'yehi miketz sh'natayim yamim — 'and it was at the end of two years of days,' Yosef sat in an Egyptian prison. He had asked the cupbearer to remember him. The cupbearer forgot. For two more years he sat. And then, suddenly, he was rushed from the dungeon, washed, dressed, brought before Pharaoh. The release came all at once, after years of waiting that must have felt endless. Bachya, in Shaar HaBitachon, returns to Yosef's prison years as a teaching about the texture of trust. Bitachon is what keeps the interior of a person intact during the years that look only like waiting. The release, when it comes, often comes suddenly. But the work of trust is what keeps you a person worth releasing.
Where in our shared life are we currently in a 'waiting' that feels long — for a clarity, an answer, a change that hasn't come yet?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.