Hello!

Hello
With all the anti-Semitism going on, here is a great joke.

Sometime in the 1970s a shipment of meat arrives in a town in the Soviet Union. The townspeople line up at the town store to wait to be given their rations.
After about an hour, a man comes out of the store and announces, “Comrades, I’m sorry to tell you, but there isn’t enough meat for everyone, so the Jews have to leave.” The Jews in the line leave grumbling.
About an hour later, the man comes out of the store and announces, “Comrades, I’m sorry to tell you this, but there isn’t enough meat for everyone, so anyone who is not a member of the Communist party will have to leave.” More grumbling as the non-Party members depart.
Another hour goes by and the man comes out of the store again and announces, “Comrades, I’m sorry to tell you this, but there isn’t enough meat for everyone in the line, so anyone who wasn’t a member of the Party before 1956 has to leave.” More grumbling as all the younger Party members leave.
A few old people remain in the line.Another hour goes by. It’s now getting dark and it’s cold. The same man comes out of the store and announces, “Comrades, I’m sorry to tell you this, but there isn’t any meat. Go home.”
One old lady in the line turns to her neighbor and says, “See? It’s like I told you. The Jews always get the best treatment!”

***
“How are you? Why do you look so sad?”
What a simple question – so typical, asked millions of times daily, often as mere lip-service. Yet when one man, four thousand years ago, posed just that question to two prisoners, he saved the whole world from starvation.
Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob, a Hebrew loner in a pagan land. His mother passed away while he was still a small child, and he was raised by his father who loved him very much. His brothers, who saw the great affection their father had for Joseph, were jealous, and they decided to rid themselves of this nuisance. To make matters worse, Joseph felt compelled to relate to his brothers the dreams he had had about him ruling over them, and thus, their hatred grew stronger.
And so it came to pass that one time, when Joseph went to check on his brothers who were gazing their sheep, they seized the opportunity and plotted to kill him. At the last minute, one of the brothers intervened, and he was instead sold as a slave to Midianite businessmen who were traveling to Egypt. The seventeen-year-old child was taken down to Egypt where he served as a slave in the house of one of the ministers of the Egyptian empire. Then, falsely accused by his mistress, he was thrown into prison, his future uncertain. Joseph was all alone, abandoned, forlorn.
*
When one analyzes Joseph’s situation, one does not need a PhD in psychology to assess that Joseph would be depressed at best, and, at worst, suicidal.With such a life, so many problems, how could one smile? All life offered him was problems and more problems, issues and more issues, slap after slap. For such a person to inquire about another’s life and take notice of the sadness of his fellow totally negates all logic.

But Joseph teaches us something powerful. He didn’t allow himself to fall in depression, knowing that whatever G-d does is for the good. He retained his cheery attitude and demeanor, and, moreover, when he saw he saw Pharaoh’s two ministers looking down, he approached them to ask, “Why do you look so sad?”
They told him of their dreams, and Joseph interpreted the dreams to their satisfaction.
*
Years later, when Pharaoh had strange dreams and no one was able to interpret them, the minister remembered Joseph. Joseph was brought before the king, and he interpreted the dreams as signifying the seven years of plenty and seven years of hunger that would change live in Egypt and throughout the world. Impressed by Joseph’s wisdom, Pharaoh appointed him to be his second in command and placed him in charge of saving the country from starvation. As Egypt was the only country that, due to Joseph’s wise policies, stored produce during the years of plenty, the whole world was saved through him when the famine struck.
*
Just think: with one ‘Hello,’ you can save the entire world – literally!
Now, how do you feel?