Beneath my Dignity | Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer

Yosef was young very handsome abandoned all alone constantly enticed and tempted. What gave him the strength to maintain his Kedushah, the moral purity in the most decadent place on earth, in the hardest time of his life? The Mishnah in Pirkei Avos says, The conventional Pshat, Rashi, Rambam, Meiri, Bartenura, is Make for yourself a Rav. We have judgment that's clouded. We don't have objectivity. We need a Rav in our lives for counsel, guidance, advice. Make for yourself a Rav. Comes the חיד”א and says something astounding. It doesn't mean make for yourself a Rav. עשה לך רב means Make yourself into a Rav. What does this mean? This means that when a person, he says, is confronted by moral challenge, spiritual danger, and he's about to look, he's about to fall, he says: Me? I can't. I'm a Rav. I'm a Gadol. Es past nisht. I can't do that. It's beneath my dignity. עשה לך רב Make yourself into a Rav. This is what Yosef’s secret was. Just as when he was relentlessly pursued and seduced by Eishes Potiphar, what does he say? I'm a Gadol. I can't do this. A Gadol, a Rav, to do this sin? No way. And that's why the very first statement that Yaakov Avinu makes when he hears that his son is alive, רב! He says: Now I know how he did it. Because he was a Rav, because he was a Gadol, because he understood his stature, because he understood his greatness, his Gadlus. When you're faced with a Vayimaen moment, Should I? Shouldn't I? No one will tell. You’re alone. Remember, You're not Stam. You're not average. You're certainly not mediocre. You’re not ordinary, you're extraordinary. You are a Rav. You are a Gadol. And you will not give in, because you are great.