The Lesson of Gratitude

Shlomo hamelech says "Mikol melamedai hiskalty" the pshat is that you must learn from your teachers or mentors but if you look closely at the language being used you can see a slightly different interpretation, "mikol melamedai" meaning every person has something to teach me or rather there's something for me to learn from every person.

In our Parasha we learn a fundamental lesson from Pharaoh himself. The pasuk says "vayomer Pharaoh el amo hine am bnei israel Rav ve Atzum mimenu" (Bnei Israel are growing and  taking over Egypt), how does that make pharaoh so cruel?, when Yosef was alive he turned the entire nation into slaves for pharaoh, he made them move around all the time, they had no freedom, no land, no possessions, yet you had this one nation who emigrated from a different country and was free all over the country and very wealthy while the Egyptians themselves had nothing.

Looking at it from the eyes of Pharaoh and the Egyptians they werent doing anything wrong by doing the right thing for their country and making Bnei Yisrael salves so what is it that makes Pharaoh so cruel? You can easily argue that he just wanted the best for his land.

The "Emet leYaakov" brings this question and he gives an answer which is fundamental for our lives.

Really you can argue that Pharaoh was a great king only seeking the best of his nation, however what makes him a relentless leader is his lack of "hakarat Hatov" (gratitude).

If not for Yosef and Yaakov Avinu the entire Egyptian nation would not last for the 7 years of Hunger. Yosef's wisdom kept Egypt wealthy and thanks to Yaakov the hunger lasted for only 2 years. It's as if Yaakov and Yosef gave the Egyption nation life again yet Pharaoh disregarded the past "Asher lo Yada et Yosef" he didn't "know" Yosef and Rashi says didn't want to know.

We must always have hakarat hatov to our fellows and people who helped us even a little in our life.. A person can be very caring, passionate, great speaker but the lesson from Pharaoh is if you don't have gratitude then it all means nothing.

From here you can understand how much hakarat hatov (gratitude) we must have to our parents that if not for them we wouldn't be here and from the moment we were born they ran their whole life around us.

Look even further, how much gratitude we must give to Hashem Itbarach that give us our life every morning, and not just then but every second we live it's with the mercy of Hashem and who knows if we even deserve all of this chessed.

Let's all learn from Pharaoh what's the wrong thing to do and try to have more Hakarat Hatov to the people around us.