PARSHA-PIX Parshat Mikeitz

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Parsha Pix
At the top you have the seven fat (and happy) cows and the seven full, healthy stalks of grain.
Right below them are the seven skinny (and unhealthy) cows and stalks. They’re all from Par’o’s dream.
Mickey Mouse, in his famous role as the sorcerer’s apprentice, represents the wizards of Egypt who were unable to satisfactorily interpret Par’o’s dreams.
When the Wine Steward finally told Par’o about Yosef, he (Yosef) was brought up from the dungeon and cleaned up. Tradition tells us that it was Rosh HaShana when Yosef was brought before Par’o – hence, the Shofar.
The Torah tells us that he shaved for the occasion – hence the electric shaver with the Shofar.
The scarab ring represnts the one Par’o gave Yosef when he decided to appoint Yosef “over Egypt”.
20% was part of Yosef’s plan for Par’o, to take that percentage from each producer during the years of plenty, so that there would be enough to go around during the years of famine.
10+1+? was the brothers' answer to Yosef's question about their family. We are 10 brothers, son of one man. One other brother is at home and the other's whereabouts are unknown. (True, but they thought they were lying.)
Botnim (now peanuts but originally pistachio) were part of Yaakov's gift package.
The cup is Yosef's, used to frame Binyamin.
The double sacks is the double portion of money the brothers found returned to their sacks.
The Menora is an obvious reference to Chanuka, although it is instructive to show this picture to the young ones and have them contrast it to their Chanukiya. Some people (and not just youngsters) have an image of the Menora in the Beit HaMikdash looking like our Chanukiya (and vice versa).
In the lower-left is a scene from Megilat Esther, with Haman leading Mordechai through the streets. There are many remarkable similarities between that Megila scene and what was done with Yosef.
There are two new elements in the ParshaPix - they are visual TTriddles.

TTRIDDLES...
are Torah Tidbits-style riddles on Parshat HaShavua (sometimes on the calendar). They are found in the hard-copy of TT scattered throughout, usually at the bottom of different columns. In the electronic versions of TT, they are found all together at the end of the ParshaPix-TTriddles section. Some TTriddles are alsopresentedforcall-insolution on Torah Tidbits Audio (Arutz-7, Thursday night). The best solution set submitted each week (there isn't always a best) wins a double prize a CD from Noam Productions and/or a gift (game, puzzle, book, etc.) from Big Deal

Last issue’s (VAYEISHEV-Chanuka) TTriddles:
[1] The other vowel is on its head...sort of
[2] G-d, the Baker, Menucha, and Bil'am
[3] What is the total number of Chanuka candles (excluding Shamash) a person will light on Rosh Chodesh Tevet this year?
[4] Yaakov? Yehuda's friend? Yosef??
[5] The Akeida and twice in Vayeishev
[6] plus five elements from the Parsha Pix
[7] Two Chanuka WORD challenges for your Chanuka fun: Start with a one-letter word (a or I). Add a letter to form a 2-letter word (letters may be rearranged at each step). Add another letter to form a 3-letter word. Continue until the 8th step until you get MIRACLES. Take the word MIRACLES and using its letters, see how many words you can make from it. E.g. RAM, RILE, CLEAR, etc. In addition to these activities being fun, they also have the flavor of the Chanuka miracle. Enjoy.

And the envelope, please
[1] In Breishit 37:12, the first pasuk of the second Aliya of Vayeishev, has dots above the two letters of the word ET (ALEF-TAV). Dots like these above letters in a Sefer Torah are a scribal tradition and serve like an asterisk to call attention to a meaning other than the straightforward one. In this case, the Torah tells us that Yosef’s brothers went to tend their father’s sheep in Sh’chem. Rashi says that they had more self-serving reasons for going. But that’s besides the point of the TTriddle. The two dots sort of look like a TZEIREI, the other vowel that finds itself under the word ET-EIT. It’s a word, by the way, that appears almost 10,000 times in Tanach, but doesn’t really have a translation into English. It’s sort of a “helper” word for certain grammatical forms.
[2] This TTriddle started in one of the standard ways TTriddles start - by a word or phrase from the sedra that stands out. Then using a computer search of Tanach to find other occurrences of the word or phrase and see if a TTriddle emerges. So we start with the SAR HA’OFIM, the Baker, who got into trouble with Par’o, got himself tossed into prison, where he had a disturbing dream which Yosef interpreted in a more disturbing way. The Torah tells us that when he heard the way Yosef interpreted the Wine Steward’s dream, he asked Yosef to interpret his dream as well. The words in the Torah are: VAYAR SAR HA’OFIM KI TOV PATAR... Hmmm, VAYAR...KI TOV - familiar phrase. From the Torah’s account of Creation. Six times,the Torah says, VAYAR ELOKIM * KI TOV. (Five times just like that, once with ET HA’OR where the asterisk is. Besides G-d, and [L] the Baker, the phrase appears with BIL’AM (who saw that it was good in G-d’s eyes to bless the people of Israel...). The other time is in B’reishit 49:15 - VARAK MENUCHA KI TOV... The pasuk is in Yaakov’s blessing to Yissachar. Menucha in this context refers to a resting place, but the TTriddle sounded better personifying Menucha.
[3] This is not really a TTriddle in the usual meaning of the word - it is a Chanuka riddle. Nonetheless, here it was, and here is its solution. Rosh Chodesh Tevet is two days this year. On Wednesday night, the eve of the first day of Rosh Chodesh, we lit 6 candles. The following night, the eve of the second day of Rosh Chodesh, we lit/light 7 candles. And on Friday,late afternoon, the second day of Rosh Chodesh, we lit/light 8 candles for Shabbat Chanuka. Therefore, this year, we light 21 Chanuka candles on Rosh Chodesh Tevet.
[4] The question marks in this TTriddle refer to the word VAYISH-AL, and he asked. The word appears 23 times in Tanach, but only 4 of those times are in the Torah, all in B’reishit. Yaakov asked the angel he was wrestling with what his name was. In Parshat Vayeishev, Yehuda’s friend the Adulamite (assumedly it was Chira), asks the local people about the woman that Yehuda was sending a goat to. Later in Vayeishev, Yosef asks his fellow prisoners, the Baker and the Wine Steward, why they looked so upset. And in Miketz, Yosef asks (that’s the second question mark after the name Yosef) asks his brothers (they do not yet know he’s Yosef) how they and their elderly father are. (With 23 VAYISH-ALs in Tanach and only 4 in Torah, restricting the scope of the TTriddle to Torah occurrences only makes for a better, neater TTriddle.)
[5] Here, again, a phrase in Vayeishev seemed very significant and familiar, but it turns out that this exact phrase occurs only three times in the whole Torah (and only twice more in the rest of Tanach). Two of those times are in Vayeishev. The other time, it is the opening phrase of Parshat HaAkeida - VAY’HI ACHAR HAD’VARIM HA-EILEH... That made the phrase pretty important, and TTriddle-worthy. And after these things, his master’s (Potifar) wife “raised her eyes” towards Yosef... and And after these things, the Wine Steward and the Baker sinned against their master, king of Egypt (Par’o).
[6] Which brings us to the unexplained new elements in the ParshaPix for Vayeishev. Upper-right, a calendar with the 23rd of the month on top. The specific date is irrelevant; only that it is a date. From there, go to the homonym of date, namely the fruit. From there to the Hebrew, Tamar, and then to the person in the sedra.
VTS (veteran TTriddles solver) DM solved 23 as KAF-GIMEL, which is Rashei Teivot for Kohein Gadol, as in Matityahu. That's a good one too.
[7] KP stands for Kitchen Police, which resulted from a rough association from SAR HATABACHIM, as in POTIFAR, Yosef’s first boss in Egypt.
VTS MM/Bklyn suggested that the soldier on KP traditionally is portrayed peeling potatoes - for latkes, of course. Cute. (Can you tell that DM and M/Bklyn are brothers?)
[8] Then there is the RAKE, which is how the Torah describes the pit into which Yosef was thrown. The BOR was REIK, empty (of water, that is).
[9] Right below the rake is the emblem of the Israeli Prison Authority. Officers at the prisons in Israel wear that emblem, making them something like SAR BEIT HASOHAR. That phrase, by the way, appears in three consecutive p’sukim in Vayeishev. If you look at the p’sukim, the repetition of the phrase seems excessive. And therefore prone to become a TTriddle.
[10] Is the birthday cake for Par’o. Look at it again and notice that it looks like a crown, making it particularly appropriate for Par’o’s birthday.
On the Torah Tidbits website and in the email version of TT, there was a [7] added to the list of TTriddles. The word challenges in [7] were not meant to be TTriddles, but suggestions for Chanuka party fun. We hope some of the TT readers did, in fact, enjoy those challenges.
At the moment, MM/Bklyn is front-runner for the prizes this week. But the week is still young. There might be TTriddles Updates elsewhere.
More TTriddles report (see page 14): RHM and a new solver, Prof. MS submitted very fine sol'n sets. The prof even included solutions to the word challenges. YYW and EB had a fine set too. Apologies to those who tried solving a birthday greeting (which was not a TTriddle).

This week's TTriddles:
[1] K'MACY'S in the sedra
[2] His dreams stay; his dream goes
[3] If not from Erev Rosh HaShana to the Rosh HaShana for the tithe of the animals
[4] Tachanun & Slichot quote whom/what?
[5] Yosef, Aharon, Elazar, David, and whom (and his Chanuka connection)?
[6] plus two elements from the Parsha Pix Puzzle

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