Rav Podolsky z"l
At the suspenseful conclusion of our parsha, we find Yosef languishing in an Egyptian dungeon despite his innocence. Not only has he been forced to suffer the past ten years rotting in a pit, now he must be incarcerated for an additional two years for relying excessively on the mercies of Pharaoh's butler (It's always the butler!) [see Rashi]. Because he used the word "remember" twice while asking the butler to remember him, Yosef was penalized with an extra two years (Breishis 40:14).
At the suspenseful conclusion of our parsha, we find Yosef languishing in an Egyptian dungeon despite his innocence. Not only has he been forced to suffer the past ten years rotting in a pit, now he must be incarcerated for an additional two years for relying excessively on the mercies of Pharaoh's butler (It's always the butler!) [see Rashi]. Because he used the word "remember" twice while asking the butler to remember him, Yosef was penalized with an extra two years (Breishis 40:14).
My rebbe, Rav Chaim Pinchus Scheinberg shlit"a, asked: why two years? Why not two days, weeks or months? Is Divine discipline arbitrary, chas v'shalom?
Answered my rebbe, Rav Zeidel Epstein shlit"a (He'aros): A Divinely administered prison sentence is not simply a random punishment to castigate the prisoner for his sin. Rather, it is a means of isolating the prisoner so that he will contemplate why he is there, what he has done wrong, and how he can rectify his actions in future. Were he to remain part of society, he would have great difficulty in focusing his thoughts on past misdeeds. In prison, there is little else to occupy his mind. This provides him with a much-needed opportunity to reflect and to formulate a firm decision to remedy his behavior from now on.
Such a decision must be resolute. A flimsy commitment will wind him right back in the pokey. To devise a genuine decision, twelve months are necessary. This is similar to the halachos of a treifah, an animal that is expected to die within twelve months. If the animal outlives the twelve-month life-expectancy prognosticated by its veterinarian, this is a clear indication that it is not a treifah.
The reason for this is that twelve months incorporate all possible meteorological conditions: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Before twelve months have elapsed, we cannot be sure that this animal will survive under the widest possible range of environmental factors. Only once the animal has successfully weathered an entire year can we be confident that it is healthy and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Similarly, when a person sits in a prison cell for a year and makes a commitment to improve his ways, this is an indication that his decision is strong and healthy. Thus Yosef needed two years for two slips of the tongue.
Interestingly, we find a similar idea in relation to Chanukah. After the Chanukah miracle, our Sages did not immediately establish the eight days as a holiday. Rather, "the following year they established them and made them holy days of praise and thanksgiving (Al HaNissim)." Why did they wait an entire year? Chazal wanted to make sure that they still felt the influence of the miracle and its everlasting nature after the passage of time. Only then could they be sure that it was fit to become a fixture in the calendar, a day on which to reinvigorate ourselves with the special light revealed at that time.
The question is, do we still feel the influence of the days of Chanukah?
