Our Torah parshah, Miketz, brings us to an auspicious time when Joseph is released from his confinement in prison. He is immediately brought before Pharaoh and asked to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. This release from imprisonment is so sudden and so surprising, that it turns the whole view of Joseph’s life around, lifting him out from all his challenges into the absolute light of becoming the governor of Egypt.

This sudden surprise can remind us that whenever we go through any challenges, without knowing what the outcome will be, we need to trust that there is an overall plan that will eventually benefit us, even though it’s beyond our usual awareness.

In fact, the stories in the Torah unfold to show us how Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, each overcame their many challenges, and ultimately entered into a more peaceful way of being.

In Joseph’s case, it looked like there was no way out for him, and yet the end of his troubles turned into a whole new beginning. The Komarno Rebbe explains that God is in the beginning and in the end. He encourages us to realize that whenever we think we’re at the end, it’s not really the end … there’s already the possibility of a whole new beginning.

As we face anti-semitism and anti-zionism, and all the other violence and suffering that exists in so many places right now, we need to remember that everything is given to us by the higher wisdom of the creative universe. May this secular new year bring us a heartfelt, uplifting time, when we can visibly start to see a more enlightened new beginning of real peace in the world.