Reply The young Menachem Mendel came home from Cheder perturbed by the teaching his Melamed taught him that day. He approaches his grandfather and says; "Zaide, how is it possible that the 17 best years of Father Jacob's life were lived in Egypt - the lowest and most immoral of lands at the time." The young Menachem Mendel grew to be the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad and a great Torah scholar who penned hundreds of thousands of pages of Torah teachings. It thus behooves us to recognize that the question was a profound one and so was the answer his grandfather, the great and saintly Rabbi Schnuer Zalman of Liadi gave him.