The Blessing of Yosef

Translated by Aaron Yoseph

Even in exile in Egypt-like darkness, we have a way to stay strong through whatever we go through, we have a spark of light – that “Hashem is with me here.” This is Tikkun HaBrit – correction of the holy covenant, which means maintaining personal holiness. What is Tikkun HaBrit? Who’s even sinned? Who needs to fix anything?!! Today everyone is a Tzaddik. Especially an old person – he’s forgotten all about this, for thirty years already! What do we need to fix? Isn’t this just for crazy people?! But we should know that when there is no Tikkun HaBrit, then a person doesn’t know what it means to be close to Hashem – to look at the inner spiritual essence of each thing, to remember – to remember Hashem and not to forget about the World to Come. The power to remember these things, and to come into this World to Come, this future world – this is what’s called the “blessing of Yosef”, which is Tikkun HaBrit. When we have Tikkun HaBrit then there is an eagle who comes to elevate our minds, as Rebbe Nachman says in Torah 29, and then a person becomes completely different.

The Tzaddikim who know how to sanctify themselves more and more, also know how to look deeper and deeper into the inner essence of things. This is the aspect of Yosef, and Kedushas HaBrit – keeping ourselves holy. From here we draw more and more strength to elevate ourselves and to look at the inner essence of each thing. In these days of Shovevim, we want to merit drawing down this blessing of Yosef – this is what we want, to draw onto ourselves blessings from Yosef HaTzaddik.

When a person starts to draw this blessing onto himself, he starts to taste how good Hashem is – he tastes how good it is to be close to Hashem. He tastes how good it is to think about Hashem and about the inner spiritual essence of things, how good it is to be close to Hashem. What happens then? Then he begins to understand that he needs to have Tikkun HaBrit, and then he understands what he needs to fix. Then there is the other side to this. Someone knows that he needs to fix things, but he thinks that it’s impossible to fix what he needs to. And some people think that there are more descents in store for them along the way. They ask, “How am I correcting things here? How is it even possible to correct everything?! What can I do? The Arizal says that I need to fast forty days during the Shovevim!! How can we possibly achieve these corrections?!!!”

My friends, the main Tikkun HaBrit is a blessing, a brachah, that we receive from Yosef HaTsaddik. In short – by coming close to the Rebbe. To receive a few drops of sense. One day he’s broken and depressed, one day the Yetzer Hora kills him. Why? Because he has no sense. You kill yourself, you don’t know how to get out of the mess you find yourself in. This is the time – in these days we correct these things. Hashem says to us, “What do you need to fast and afflict yourself for? I’ll fix everything for you, in all that you go through.” We are thrown into a state of constricted consciousness – whatever sense we have is taken away – this is our correction. We’re in a very dark place, and right here we do something completely original – we bring Hashem into this world, into this darkness. And we don’t get annoyed or complain and ask, “Why aren’t things going well for me?!” We know that we are making up for Adam HaRishon – this is the biggest secret in the world. That we know that in this itself that we want to be close to Hashem, and in our fighting against depression and against behaving without thinking; in our efforts to encourage and enliven ourselves, right in the times when we just can’t encourage and enliven ourselves, and we don’t succeed, but we keep on wanting, and we keep on trying, then, even if we don’t succeed, but since we’ve done our best to make ourselves happy – we achieve the correction perfectly.

This is the principal meaning of ‘looking at the sense in each thing’ – that we should know that there is nothing but Hashem, and even if we fell and got carried away with our cravings, we should understand that, whatever we did, “I said a brocho. I’m still a Yid. I am still good. I do behave correctly. For one moment I  distracted myself from the evil, and that’s success.” That’s it. Of course, the more you can look at the sense, the better. This is coming out of Egypt. And we get the strength to do so by listening to our Rebbe Nachman, and doing what he tells us to do.

The descent into Egypt represented the times we are thrown to a place where we can’t see the inner essence of anything. Our job is to make a new start – to not get angry, and not get pulled after anger or thoughts of heresy. We have to try to make ourselves happy, and try to pray – these are the corrections of the Shovevim. Do you understand what the tikkun is? Let’s say there are two people, and they’re both depressed, but one of them encourages himself every quarter of an hour – “Hashem for sure loves me.” This gives him enough strength to pray, so he prays as well. When the depression gets really heavy, he tells himself that he obviously deserves it for one reason or another, and that it’s serving as an atonement for his sins. It’s nothing. He closes his eyes and accepts it with love, with no complaints. He has no doubts – “For sure Hashem is with me. This is how Hashem runs the world. Even when there’s no income, this is also for the good. There’s no problem. Hashem is watching over me. He’ll provide for me. He will send everything in the right time – there’s no question about it.” This is a person’s correction at a time of constricted consciousness.

Wherever we are, we’re still Hashem’s children. And Hashem is with us; all we have to do is to want to be with Him.