WHY 210 YEARS? That’s what my chavrusa asked me recently. He understood why there had to be slavery, especially kabbalistically. He just hadn’t seen any explanation for the length of the exile, and wanted one.

THE AVOS, THE Gemora says, were called Yesharim, the Upright Ones, and that they were. Few, if any other peoples, have such illustrious ancestors who created the foundation of their nation on such Godly principles. In their time, there weren’t many people of God, and the few that were around did create nations.

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.