Missing the bus – Mikketz
We were waiting at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Like us, someone else wanted the No. 6 bus. He turned to another person and asked whether the 6 had been and gone. The answer taught us two things: that there is usually another bus on the way, and the way to say in Hebrew “You’ve missed the bus!”
This experience came to my mind when I looked at the explanations of a verse in today’s reading, Ki lulei hit’mah’mahnu, ki attah shavnu zeh pa’amayim – “If we had not dawdled we could have come back twice” (Gen. 43:10).
The context is the famine which had led Jacob’s sons to Egypt for corn; after they came home Jacob was reluctant to let them go again (the whole story is far more dramatic than this and needs to be savoured in detail).
One of the Chassidic teachers linked this verse with the High Holydays. Pointing out that the letters of lulei also spell Ellul, he said, “We have two opportunities to come back to God – Ellul and the Yamim Nora’im. Let us not dawdle and waste either of them!” Repentance comes knocking: we should answer the door.
Life too offers us countless opportunities for achievement: we should not dawdle and lose the chance.
