You know we are very proud of how well we teach our children lessons from the Torah and Jewish sacred texts. Just the other day one of our teachers asked if anyone in the class knew the words to the 23rd Psalm. One girl raised her hand and quoted, “The Lord is my shepherd. That’s all I want.”

In the Torah portion for this Shabbat, Vayeshev we find the heart-rending story of Joseph and his brothers. Now we all know that Joseph had the bad fortune of being his father Jacob’s favorite son (out of 12 mind you), and that his brothers had the bad luck of knowing that Joseph was his favorite.

According to the rabbis, this mysterious person had understood the essence of Joseph’s real quest in life – the challenge to know what he really wants.

You see in the Torah our ancestors understood that from time to time they would come upon a kind of “spirit guide” who would help them regain perspective, focus and commitment to the life and values they were choosing to live.

In our work, in our personal relationships, in our family life with our friends – the task is fundamentally the same. We must forever be answering that spirit question that was put to Joseph on this Shabbat – “What do you want?”

Listen to this Hanukah story from the pages of holocaust history:

Before he could recite the blessing I protested at his waste of food. He looked at me, then the lamp, and finally said, "You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water. But you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope."

The real miracle is that for over 4,000 years we have kept the light flickering and alive. For over 4,000 years in spite of Babylonians and Romans, of Spanish Inquisitions and Crusades, of pogroms and Holocausts, we are still here. A tiny, miniscule, statistically irrelevant people – perhaps one tenth of one percent of the world population – and yet, we are still here.

That’s how we feel as Jews – I guess we’d be missed if we weren’t here. And what of us personally? What do we do to insure that our lives have meaning? That we remember that the most important things in life aren’t things.

Isak Dinesen, in her book OUT OF AFRICA tells the story of a young man from the Kikuyu tribe who worked for her on her farm for three months. Suddenly he announced that he was leaving to go to work for a Muslim man nearby.

So imagine that a Kikuyu tribesman came to lived with you for three months to determine whether to become Jewish; whether to emulate your life; whether to adopt your personal life goals, ambitions and dreams as his or her own.