From Darkness Comes Light

"I have everything I need, but I'm still unhappy and depressed," a Jewish matron expressed her emotions to one of the local L.A. Jewish rags obsessed with diets and close-by-parking to the shopping malls.

Throughout Talmudic literature, the Exile of Egypt has been described as the "mother of all exiles." Indeed, the darkness of Egypt, the debauchery and licentiousness of this land where people bowed down to sheep, would not be a major candidate for anything remotely known as spiritual. Yet, our Father Jacob recalls that he was the happiest while there.

Question: how could someone be content living in moral corruption that would make Sin City blush? Answer: from the darkness and mayhem of "life" comes the light of Torah. The first thing Jacob did upon entering Egypt in an attempt to avoid the great famine of those times, was to order his son Yehuda to build a Yeshiva where the brothers and their sons could learn Torah. True happiness, true yiddische "nachas"- this is our only real joy, our connection with Hashem and his Torah. Once the Jewish people have figured this out, then we will be invincible. The longer we fight Hashem and His eternal covenant with us, the longer we will bring needless hardship upon ourselves. This is what our saintly Rabbi Kahane HY"D referred to as those ignoramuses amongst our Jewish leadership being "empty-headed vessels." He further remarked, "there can be no Jewish fist without a Jewish mind."