In the biblical story of Jacob — after a life of hardship, running away from his brother, then running away from his father-in-law — Jacob is back home, or at least he thinks he is, and he wants to settle down. The Torah shows us that’s when things really start to happen.

Joseph’s brothers thought they were doing the right thing.

The most important idea in this Parashah is the story of the actions of the brothers of Joseph, the children of Jacob. And the amazing thing is they thought they were doing the right thing. They thought Joseph was spiritually a problem, and that he was stopping the revelation of the Light for the other tribes. They thought they had to get rid of him.

First they said, “Let’s kill him.” Then Yehuda said, “Let’s sell him as a slave.” We know Yehuda had the energy of leadership. Kings later came from the line of Yehuda. The brothers agreed with his idea and sold Joseph as a slave.

Yehuda lost his position of leadership.

After all that happened, Yehuda became demoted. After the brothers realized the pain that their father, Jacob, was going through, they realized they had made a mistake with what they had done with Joseph. They said to Yehuda, “Because you told us to sell him, that’s why we will no longer accept you as our leader.”

Rashi, the great commentator, says when the brothers saw the pain they caused Jacob, they said to Yehuda, “You told us to sell him. If you had told us to bring him back and not do anything, we would have listened to you.” Because of this, Yehuda lost his level, his spiritual connection. They were right.

The obvious idea was that the brothers wanted to kill Joseph and Yehuda said let’s sell him as a slave. When they realized their thoughts were wrong, they came back to Yehuda. He should have said, “You wanted to kill him! Why are you are upset at me because I told you to sell him? What about you? You wanted to kill him.”

When a person begins an action that will reveal Light, it is very dangerous not to finish it.

It’s a very important idea for everyone of us at this time, as we begin the revelation of the Light of Chanukah, the Light of miracles in our life. When a person begins an action, it is very dangerous not to finish it.

The Ramban, known as Nachmanides, says that when a person begins by asking for a favor and you say you are going to help, at that moment the beginning of the creation of an angel occurs. So if I follow through with what I said I would help with, the angel grows and becomes strong. The angel becomes a powerful Light and protector that surrounds me.

Everything we do in this world creates an angel.

But what happens if I begin the process but don’t finish it? What I’ve done is to begin the formation of the angel, and now I almost kill him in the beginning of the angel’s life. Every action we do, everything we say — and the Ari speaks about this at length — everything we do in this world creates an angel: our words, our actions, our promises. Once we begin the process of creating an angel, when we stop in the middle, when we don’t complete the action, not only have we not manifested great Light, we’ve created a black hole.

Imagine all the energy that came together to create the angel! But when we stop in the middle, the angel is cut off from his source of Light. We need to have this understanding that everything we do, everything we say, every action we begin, is the process of creating an angel. The greater the promise, the greater the potential of the angel, the greater the darkness created if we stop in the middle of the process.

The brothers said, “We were all bad, we did not begin to create angels. You, Yehuda, you are worse than us. You began the process of creating a powerful angel that would save Joseph, but you stopped in the middle. Instead of taking him to Jacob, you took the easier route. We don’t know what we might have done. Maybe we would have sold you with Yosef. But you began the process and stopped in the middle. You created a tremendous black hole. We who did not start anything good, there was no dark hole to create in the middle. You began the process of saving Yosef and stopped in the middle. You created such a darkness you can no longer retain your level. Therefore you have to go down. You created darkness.

If we stop in the middle we have killed that angel and created darkness.

For every single one of us, we must have this understanding that every action we begin, every promise we make, everything we say we are going to do, begins the creation of an angel. If it’s brought to its completion, it will be there to surround us, to protect us, to help us. But if we stop in the middle, we have killed that angel and we have created darkness.

If we begin an action of revelation of Light and we stop in the middle, then we have created darkness. And that’s why it’s so important to be aware of this. Sometimes it’s better not to start if we are not going to finish. We have to be more careful in what we do. What we begin, we need to be sure we create the angels.

I live in this world, and I don’t see the beginning of the formation of an angel. I don’t see the beginning of the creation. But it’s an idea that we have to begin to view our lives in this way. When we become aware that every action we take, and every word we say begins the creation of an angel, it can change the way we view our lives. It can change what we allow ourselves to say and do. We are not just living in the physical world. We are that direct connection between worlds. Everything we do begins the process of creating an angel. We have to really ingrain in our consciousness that everything we do, every action, every word, creates an angel.