....our mission....

This past Shabbos was so very beautiful.

First and foremost my most precious wife Lisa had returned from spending the previous two Shabboses in Israel having visited our children Adam and Danielle.

To have reunited with Lisa for Shabbos was magical.

Incredible that Lisa would return home and simultaneously welcome 10 Shabbos guests to our home for all of Shabbos.

What an Ayshet Chayil Lisa is!!

She is truly a bracha!!!

This past erev Shabbos marked exactly seven months since my cancer diagnosis.

Seven of course marks a moment of completion....as in Shabbos, the creation of the world and as we saw in last week's Parsha Vayeitsei, Yaakov Avinu worked seven years for Leah and an additional seven years for Rachel.

As we read the final pasuk in Vayeitsei we see that Yakov has two machanaim....two camps.

These two camps are the children born to Rachel and Leah.

Yakov's mission was to unify his portion....to unify his children and if successful to build the foundation that would become the Children of Israel.

My dearest friend Naphtali Perlberger pointed out that when we delve deeper into Yakov's mission to unify the machanaim...these camps we see the following.

First we remember that Yakov's father YItzchak failed to unify his children and those machanaim....those camps were split and fractured for all time.

We see that the gematria of machanaim is 148....we see that there are 148 pasukim...verses in this parsha Vayeitsei....and we know that Yakov's children, (as for all of us), were his portion....chelki....my portion....also sharing the same gematria of 148.

Wow...but it doesn't end there.

Yakov died at 147 years of age.

So what was the missing 1?

How was Yakov able to fulfill this mission to unify "his portion"...to unify the "camps" that were his children and to truly share the same essence as Machanaim, Vayeitsei and chelki?

How would he accomplish this?

Yakov would do so through the Aleph....the Aleph which is one...the Aleph which is Hashem.

And this is the lesson for all of us.

That only through truly connecting with The Almighty....can we hope to fulfill the mission of our lives and hope to unify all that Hashem dreams for us to be.

B'simcha
michael