Depressing title for an article? Stay with me for a second and we'll turn this one around. Shabbos guests. Girls on a Birthright trip to Israel. One describes her visit to the Nazi death camps. Ovens. One exhibit shook her to the core. Not an oven used to burn Jews, a different kind of oven. It was an oven used by Jews in the camp to make…matzah!
Jews in the concentration camps made matzah? Yes. Not all, some. Some sat in a succah. There were even some who lit candles on Chanukah. Where? How? In the nooks and crannies of their bunks, in holes they secretly dug in the ground. The young lady then said why this oven "got her." She grew up hating Pesach. Eight days straight of hard and dry matzah. Then she saw this. In the middle of death, starvation, and hostility was the unbreakable Jewish spirit. It was Pesach. It was their mitzvah. She never complained about matzah again.
This is the eternal message of Parshas Yayeishev. Ya'akov requests tranquility and learns that this is not what Hashem desires (Rashi). We prefer quick, easy, and tasty. Hashem knows that the true measure of a person is how he performs when challenged. There were Jews in the death camps that got that message. Do we?