Mashiah ben Rahel and Mashiah ben Leah...?

23 Heshvan 5782

In honor of the yom neshama (anniversary of the passing on) of Rahel Imenu just passed; also for the yom neshama of my uncle, Sam ben Nazira uMoshe, which was 20 Heshvan.

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The videos below, by the twin Ravs Shimon and Mendel Kessin, respectively, have been stewing around in my neshama for the last couple of weeks, and I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts from them.

Rahel Imenu (daughter of Lavan, who was Rivka's brother and Avraham and Sarah's great-nephew) played a large part in Jewish survival by doing several things related to family issues:

• giving up her position as Yaacov Avinu's only wife, which she would have been if she hadn't given her sister Leah the secret codes and arranged for her go first.
• giving up her place in the grave beside her husband, in Hevron, and being buried on the side of a road going out of Eretz Yisrael, so that she could cry for her descendants when they were forced out, and help them in times of trouble, even in our times. We still go to her grave during wartime, and Israeli soldiers have even seen and been helped by her. Here's another story on that.  And yet another.
  
•  by doing all the above, she enabled us to survive galuth. She even passed on this trait to special people in her line of descent, like Esther haMalkah, who gave up her position among the Jewish People in Persia and the other 126 countries in the Persian empire in order to save them from Haman the Agagite (descended from Amalek).
  
• and, by the way, we wouldn't have Yosef haTzaddik, the ancestor of Mashiah ben Yosef, without his mother, Rahel.

So what would hurt if we prayed for the revelation of Mashiah ben Yosef ben Rahel and Mashiah ben David ben Leah? Since we're praying for living people here, we usually identify them by their mother's name. Sephardim often identify passed-on people by their mother's name also.

The True Sacrifice of Rochel Imeinu

The Weapon of Mashiach Ben Yosef

Avraham Avinu and the Imperative to Do the Tikkun

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Thanks to SG for sending the videos.