"I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?" Genesis (45:3)

Friedrich Nietzsche, the favored philosopher of the Nazis wrote, "G-d is dead." The fable goes that Nietzsche was so proud of his slogan that he had it engraved on his tombstone: "G-d is dead - Nietzsche.". Later, some wag came along and neatly engraved underneath: "Nietzsche is dead - G-d."

Wrongly reported as having passed away, Mark Twain, the great American writer and wit was eulogized in all the newspapers. In the June 2, 1897 edition of the New York Journal, a very-much-alive Twain wrote, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

We live in a time where all of us are being tested. The test is very simple. Do we believe that G-d is dead - or have the reports of His demise been greatly exaggerated?

You can look at world events as evidence that there is No-one in charge, that the world is a rudderless boat slowly circling into a miasma of destruction. Or you can see everything as a test of our faithfulness to G-d and His Torah.

In Hebrew there is no word for "faith." Judaism is not a religion based on blind faith. The Hebrew term usually mistranslated as "faith" is emuna. Emuna does not mean "faith." It means "faithfulness." Faithfulness to our unbroken chain which leads back generation to generation all the way to Sinai and the Exodus. Faithfulness to G-d.

An Englishman once said to me, "I envy you. The reason I'm a Christian is that fifteen hundred years ago some missionary turned up in a row boat on the beach in Kent and persuaded my ancestors that there was more to life than painting themselves blue and bashing each other over the head.

"You are the great-great-great grandson of someone who actually stood at Sinai, who actually experienced the Exodus. It's part of your family history."

Our job is to stay faithful to G-d in spite of the world crumbling around our heads; not for one moment must we doubt that He is there and running the show. One day, very soon, everything will be revealed. In a flash.

From the moment the brothers came to Egypt to buy food, they encountered one disaster after another. The brothers asked each other "Why is G-d doing this to us?"

With three small words "I am Yosef," all the brothers' questions were answered. In a flash, the purpose of all the heartache of the previous twenty-two years became blindingly clear.

So too in the very near future, when the world hears the three words "I am Hashem," all the heartbreaks of history will be solved in an instant, when we see that our Father is very much alive.

Based on Chafetz Chaim
Compiled by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

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