Israeli and Jewish groups are a superb way to give participants a feeling for the pulse of the world's Jewish population. Those groups are sometimes quite edifying.

One of these groups, Tisch, is is a place for subscribers to post a Dvar Torah for the coming week.

One subscriber submitted the following message. The name is not posted in order to protect the guilty.

If I understand the message correctly, it presents the greatest call for preserving and staying in the Galut. It is also a selective positing of the facts, in order to justify the existence of the Galut.

My comments are inserted in brackets:

"...Parshat Mikketz is the story of Yosef, and his story is also a victory over assimilation. Yosef was deep amidst a foreign culture. He acquired an Egyptian name, wife [not according to the commentaries], appearance [Really?], high position; on the outside, he appeared to be completely assimilated. [Does this mean that we are allowed to change our name and clothes in order to achieve a certain goal? Not according to Jewish tradition].

"After all, he saved the Egyptian people and way of life from elimination by starvation! But we know that he never forgot the lessons learned in his Father's house, and he maintained his Jewish values and identity, and resisted assimilation by passing on his values to his sons. We bless our sons to be like Ephraim and Menasheh, the first Jews born and raised in Galut, and the first ones to do so and remain Jews. [Do I understand that we are to bless our sons to be like those who were raised in Galut? Is the author equating the "blessing" of Galut with the blessing of Ephraim and Menasheh?]"

It is interesting how the facts can be adapted in order to achieve just about any conclusion. In this case, we are given to understand that the Torah promotes life in the Diaspora. It's the perfect representation of the Golus mentality.

Amazing.