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Harav Hagaon Yitzchok Caplan Shlita

Filling Our Days

Parshas Vayigash

Harav Hagaon Yitzchok Caplan shlita

When Yosef HaTzaddik reveals himself to his brothers, he tells them to bring their father Yaakov Avinu down to Mitzrayim. When Yaakov arrives, Yosef accompanies him to Pharaoh, who asks him how old he is: כַּמָּה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֶּיךָ. Yaakov gives a somewhat vague answer: יְמֵי שְׁנֵי מְגוּרַי שְׁלֹשִׁים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי וְלֹא הִשִּׂיגוּ אֶת יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי אֲבֹתַי בִּימֵי מְגוּרֵיהֶם.

In these pesukim, Pharaoh asks Yaakov how many are the years of chayecha (your life) and Yaakov responds that the years of megurai (my dwellings) were 130. He adds that the years of chayai were few and difficult, and they did not reach the years of the chayei of his parents in the days of megureihem. Basically, he starts with chayai, continues with megurai, then goes back to chayai, and ends with megurai. What is the difference between chayai and megurai? What was Yaakov saying here?

This question was already addressed by the Sforno, and Rav Wolbe gives the following explanation. He says that there is life, and then there is life. There is living, and then there is living.

“If you want to know,” Yaakov Avinu told Pharaoh, “how many days I walked the earth, it has been 130 years. But if you are asking me how many years I feel that I really lived, the answer is, מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי. My lifetime does not feel like 130 years, and I did not reach the number of years that my father and grandfather lived.”

Yaakov was expressing that for Avraham Avinu and Yitzchak Avinu, the number of years they walked the earth was the number of years they lived. They lived their lives to the fullest, but he did not feel that his life was lived to the fullest.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

The end of the parshah recounts what happened during the years of the famine. It says that after the first year the Egyptians already had no food, and they started selling their livestock, their land, and their very selves to Yosef. Yosef gave them grain so that they would be able to plant, and when they received it they told him, הֶחֱיִתָנוּ: By giving us food, you gave us life. That is what a non-Jew is. As long as he has food, that is life. He needs nothing more than that — eat, drink, and be merry.

But for Yaakov Avinu, life was more than that. We find that after his granddaughter told him that Yosef was still alive, the Torah says, וַתְּחִי רוּחַ יַעֲקֹב אֲבִיהֶם — Yaakov’s spirit began living again. Rashi explains that the Shechinah returned to him, after having left him for the 22 years that Yosef was gone. Now that he learned that Yosef was alive, the Shechinah returned to him.

In essence, then, Yaakov Avinu was telling Pharaoh: “I did not live my life to the fullest, because although perhaps I walked the earth for 130 years, I did not have the Shechinah with me all those years. For 22 years it was missing, and therefore I did not live those years to the fullest.” Every day actually counted as a day in Yaakov’s life, as we will see from the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh. He felt, however, that his days could have been fuller, had he experienced hashra’as haShechinah on a daily basis.

They tell the story of a man who chanced upon a graveyard. When he looked at the tombstones, he saw one that said that the person buried beneath it had lived for eight years and three days. Another person had lived for twelve years and nineteen days. A third had lived for six years, while another had lived for thirteen years. Beside him was a person who had lived for four years.

Later, he met one of the local residents and asked him, “Is this whole graveyard full of children?”

“No,” the man replied. “In this graveyard the tombstones are written differently than in a regular graveyard. Here they record how many years the person actually utilized his life. Out of the 80, 90, or 100 years that he was given, how many years did he actually live? How many years was his life lived to the fullest? Unfortunately, in many cases it might be just a few years.”

The Gemara in Berachos relates that when the Romans banned learning or teaching Torah, Papus ben Yehudah found R’ Akiva teaching Torah publicly. He said to him, “R’ Akiva, are you not afraid that the Romans are going to catch you?”

R’ Akiva answered with the mashal of a fox that, while walking along the riverbank, looks into the river and sees that the fish are swimming to and fro in a frenzy. “What are you so worried about?” he asks them. They answer, “Someone here is trying to catch us. He’s putting out a net to trap us, and we’re scared.”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” says the fox. “Why don’t you come up and live with me outside the water, where you’ll be safe from the nets?”

“You’re the fox they say is the wisest of all the animals?” the fish retort. “You seem to be quite foolish. If in the water — the place where we can live — we are scared, then if we would leave the water for a place where we cannot live, how much more worried should we be that we will die!”

R’ Akiva then turned to Papus ben Yehuda and explained, “The same is true of us. The Torah is our life: כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ וְאֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ. If we are frightened when we are learning Torah, how much more fearful should we be if we are not learning Torah!”

The Dance of Death

Rav Gifter gives a beautiful explanation of this exchange. Why, he wonders, did R’ Akiva deem it necessary to offer this mashal? He could simply have said, “You’re asking me why I’m teaching Torah? Because it says כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ וְאֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ — this is your life!” Why did he feel a need to illustrate this idea with the mashal of the fish and the fox?

He explains that when you take a fish out of the water, the fish starts flapping around. An onlooker who would see the fish and would not understand why it is jumping might think the fish is having a great time — “Look, it’s dancing, it’s the happiest creature!” But someone who knows what’s really happening understands that this is not a dance of life; it’s a dance of death. The fish is making a last-ditch effort to get back into the water, and it’s flapping around because it knows that it is about to die.

Often, says Rav Gifter, we look around and we see non-Jews who look like they’re having a great time. They’re flying, they’re dancing, they’re enjoying themselves — or so it seems. But that’s not real life. It’s a dance of death, because it doesn’t bring them anywhere and doesn’t give them anything.

But a Yid has a way to fill up his life. How do we ensure that we really live?

In next week’s parshah the Torah says, וַיִּקְרְבוּ יְמֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לָמוּת — Yaakov’s days were drawing close to his passing. The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh cites from the Zohar that every person is granted a certain number of days to live, and every day has its own mission. A person’s job is to fill his days.

Yaakov Avinu filled every single day of his life, so when it was time for him to pass away, all his days came together, because each one had been utilized to the fullest. Even though he was missing the Shechinah for some of those years, he still used each day to the fullest in the situation he was in.

In a similar vein, Chazal tell us in Shemos Rabbah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu says to Klal Yisrael, “I gave you the Torah so that you should be involved in it day in and day out — שתהיו עוסקים בה יום יום,” as the passuk says, אַשְׁרֵי אָדָם שֹׁמֵעַ לִי לִשְׁקֹד עַל דַּלְתֹתַי יוֹם יוֹם. “By your life,” Hashem swears, “I will give you food from the heavens day in and day out, middah k’neged middah,” as it says about the mann, וְיָצָא הָעָם וְלָקְטוּ דְּבַר יוֹם בְּיוֹמוֹ.

Rav Wolbe derives a remarkable insight from here. We see that a person’s mission in life is not necessarily to learn or finish Shas. Rather, a person’s mission is שתהיו עוסקים בה יום יום. The Torah was given to us to learn day in and day out, and a person’s job in this world is to fill his days with Torah.

Do we have to finish the Torah? There is no way to finish the Torah. So what can we do? We can use every day to its fullest: שתהיו עוסקים בה יום יום.

That is a person’s job. Each person is given days, and each person is meant to fill those days with Torah, avodah, and gemilus chassadim. The Chofetz Chaim mentions that there is a hanhagah tovah not to go to sleep each day before doing a chessed. Certainly, we daven every day, and a person should make sure that he learns every day.

No day is dependent on the day before it. Every day is a new day, a new mission, and our job is to fill each and every day. There is no looking back at what was yesterday or two weeks ago. Maybe those days could have been better, but today does not depend on what was yesterday.

Each day carries its own tafkid — וְאוֹתִי יוֹם יוֹם יִדְרֹשׁוּן — and it is so easy and accessible to fill it with Torah, avodah and gemilus chassadim.

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