In this week's Parsha we continue to read about Yosef and his brothers. We can't relate to the high spiritual level that the twelve sons of Yaakov were on and therefore can't fully understand the depth and intentions of their actions. Nevertheless we can still learn many lessons from the entire episode. We see that when Yosef's brother's discovered that the money they had paid for their food was "returned" to their sacks they immediately turned and understood that this was G-d's Providence. They could have blamed or accused each other but we see that they understood it was from Above. In fact, throughout the entire ordeal with Yosef they realized that this was all from G-d.

It is easy for us to go through life and look to blame others or even to credit others (or ourselves). We can learn to attribute success or failure to Divine Providence, of course we must always try and endeavour to succeed, but the outcome of whether we succeed or not isn't in our hands and therefore the actual success or failure can't be attributed to us, assuming we in fact put in the appropriate effort.

We are in the midst of Chanukah when the vastly outnumbered Chashmonain waged war against the mighty Greek army. As we know, the Chashmonaim miraculously defeated the Greek forces. If we would witness such a war today people would attribute the success to some natural cause. Maybe they were more fierce warriors, had better weapons, were more cunning or had a stronger will. We would look for any reason except for attributing the success to Hashem's Hand. But the Chashmonain understood that this was in fact from G-d and that He performs miracles for His People.

May we all be able to take the light from Chanukah and realize that we live a supernatural existence. We are under constant Divine Providence which should make us all praise and thank the One Above!

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah,

Heath