THIS IS FROM God, that which is wondrous in our eyes” (Tehillim 118:23). I remember the day during Chanukah one year when it all of a sudden occurred to me to turn the verse around and make it a corollary: If something does not seem from God, then it is only because it stopped being wondrous in your eyes. Restore the wonder and fix your spiritual vision.

I have mentioned several times in the past that when Yosef, as Viceroy of Egypt, accused his brothers of being meraglim—spies, it was a coded message.

THERE IS THIS joke about a woman who cried the first time she read the story about Yosef’s kidnapping and how he suffered.

WHICH WAS THE real fight, the one with the “stranger” the night before, or with Eisav the next day?

WHAT A CHANGE of pace. Ya’akov Avinu was forced, due to his mother’s advice to put his life in danger to save the brochos from going to the wrong person (if that is even possible in God’s world), to leave his Torah cocoon for the world of anti-Semites, murderers, and cheats for just about the rest of his life. They certainly took their toll, as a weary and worn out Ya’akov told a wondering Pharaoh: