The story of VaYehi starts with the scene of Jacob on his deathbed as he calls his sons in order to bless them and reveal to them the prophecy for the end of the days. The Zohar explains that this level of prophecy, hinted by the word VaYehi, was given only to Moses and Jacob.
The Wisdom Kabbalah speaks of five different levels of awareness:
Nefesh, Ruah, Neshama, Haya and Yehida.
Most people are in the level/degree of Nefesh, which includes all of the desires that motivate our body and its senses. This degree divides into an Animal-like Nefesh (our instinct of survival) and the Rational Nefesh (a rational/intellectual motive, curiosity and hunger for knowledge).
Ruah – Spirit, is the second level and it is connected to true spirituality, altruism and selfless love.
Neshama – Soul, the third level is acquired by people that their sharing and imagination is beyond their immediate surroundings of time and space.
Haya – Living Soul is the 4th stage. This is the level of prophecy and unlimited access to the worlds above.
The word “VaYehi” implies on the fourth level of awareness – “Haya.
The fifth one: Yehida, has been accessed only once, on Mt Sinai, when a whole nation experienced the highest level of revelation since The Creation, prophecy and resurrection.
Jacob went to Egypt in order to prepare the ground for the generations to come in order to collect all of the holy Nitsotsot (sparks) lost in the dark forces of Egypt. He knew that Egypt – the most impure place on earth – was the iron furnace for all the great souls that needed to be gathered over there. All of the years of slavery in Egypt were designed so that all of the souls, who did not have their Tikun in the Great Flood, will manage to be corrected and purified (that is why it is said: “… Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river…”). And so, for 400 years, the nation of the Israel has been forged and created in Egypt through pain and agony, until they were ready to get out of there and get the Torah.
Through the thousands of years of its existence the Jewish people managed to get stronger and to make the best out of every trouble it encountered: after the slavery in Egypt came the climax of Mt Sinai revelation; after the destruction of the first temple and exile (586 BCE), the miracle of Purim that eventually ended in the building of the second temple; after the destruction of the second temple (70 CE), the Mishna, Gemara and the Zohar were written; the expulsion from Spain (1492 CE) brought to the golden age of Safed – Kabbalah, the Shulhan Arukh (The Book of Daily Laws) and many more; and in our days, after the holocaust we are in a beginning of a new era of enlightenment, when Kabbalah and The Zohar are spread rapidly around the world.
The Zohar explains that the message of VaYehi is that a true spiritual person knows that the dark places we meet in life are the greatest opportunities for us to grow and create miracles. Jacob managed reaching the highest degree of prophecy against all the odds in Egypt; that means that our darkest moments can be the start for our greatest ones. This is the secret of life and the secret of The Book of Genesis (that VaYehi is its last story) that deals with people’s falls and mistakes and that is the way of the Torah to coach us to have the ability to see in every fall an opportunity to overcome our old nature and to create a new future.
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