Divrei Simcha on Parshas Vayigash 5767

What is the most important piece on the Chessboard?

In this week’s parsha, the Torah lists the sons of Yaakov and the sons that his sons have (it probably would have been easier just to write grandsons, but I always do things the hard way). Binyomin comes out as the most successful of the brothers with ten sons while Dan comes out with only one son. Not only that, but Dan’s only son is deaf. Imagine the scene: all of your brothers have more sons than you. You’re stuck with only one child. And not only that, but the one child you have is handicapped. How would you feel?

Let me tell you how Dan felt — he must have felt wonderful! That’s because good things come in small packages. This one son of Dan is Chushim. The story goes that after Yaakov passed away, his sons and grandsons took him to be buried in the Ma’ras Ha’machpala (the cave that his parents and grandparents are buried in). At the cave’s mouth stood Esav saying that no way was Yaakov allowed to go into there. Esav said the plot in there belonged to him. A whole argument ensued with the brothers fighting against Esav. Chushim had no idea what was going on because he was deaf, until finally he turned to one of the others and asked what’s going on. When he heard the whole story, he took his sword and chopped off Esav’s head. Problem solved!

Our Sages tell us that what Chushim did was the correct thing to be done. The question asked is why was Chushim the one to do this? Why didn’t one of the sons of Yaakov do this if it was so correct? The answer given is unbelievable but true. As the brothers were arguing with Esav, they became accustomed to seeing their father not having a proper burial (we can become accustomed to things very quickly). Chushim never got accustomed to it because he did not understand the argument. When he found out the truth, he did what was right. Chushim became the hero because he was deaf.

The Chofetz Chaim points out another very interesting point. Look in Parshas Pinchas (which is right before we enter Eretz Yisrael) and there we have a counting of all of the tribes. The largest tribe is Yehuda. The second largest tribe is Dan. Binyomin is much lower on the list.

Dan only had one child. Binyomin had ten. Sometimes we think that the one that has more is happier, but here we see that more does not guarantee better. From one physically challenged person, everything was changed. Dan has one son, but it could be argued that he was better than ten sons.

Oh yeah, and what’s the most important piece in Chess. For the real experts, it is the Pawn. For some reason, whenever I play, the Pawn is always the one that causes the most problems. The Pawn is always the one piece that stops the game from ending much quicker. Good things come in small packages.

Good Shabbos!
-yes

Questions, comments, good poetry, bad poetry, or if you just wanna say hi: send it to [email protected]. Thanks for reading this!

By Rabbi Yaacov Seltzer
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(305) 652-0186