In this week's parsha, Yosef Ha’tzaddik is taken out of jail and brought before the king. Yosef listens to an account of the Pharoah's dreams and replies that he will convey Hashem’s message. Yosef concludes that both dreams have one meaning. There will be seven good years of satiation and then there will be seven bad years of starvation.
If it is only one message, why did Paroah dream two dreams? Additionally, the universal food for satiation is bread and not meat; meat is food of luxury. So why is it that the first dream would be about cows which is luxury and not the necessity of man?
I would suggest that the message of seven cow years illustrates not simply necessities, but rather seven years of luxury. After people living for many years of luxury, they become accustomed to that, and soon the luxury becomes a necessity. When they would be deprived of meat it is like being deprived of bread. Wealth is something that is relative; if all are millionaires, we are all poor. When we are all poor then we are all rich, we all don’t think we are missing something. Today people in the amazon jungle don’t feel poor; they feel this is life.
There is a real life lesson here; my luxury becomes my child’s necessity. When I grew up there were activities that we experienced once in a while, like eating out in a pizza store or fast food joint. It was a big treat. Today, kids eat out frequently in upscale restaurants, sometimes even without their parents. It is considered a normal necessity and we need to budget it into our yeshiva expense. Having a cell phone for a teen is practically a requirement; how else will we know where they are?
The Torah illustrates by Pharaoh’s two dreams that living a life of luxury will in time transform into necessity. The first dream was meat, the luxury they enjoyed which became like a staple of bread indicated in the second dream. By giving our kids many extras we are actually hurting them. The more often we indulge them, the more needs they will develop. In the words of the late Rabbi Hecht; “give your children what you had and not what you didn’t have.” Though we did not have extravagance and luxuries, we received much love. Let us give our kids the love and self-esteem they need to become productive members of society.
