Along these lines, one may wonder: what did Jacob’s bedchamber look like when the brothers came to receive their final blessings—and curses? () I have found numerous artistic renderings, but two in particular caught my attention because of how differently they paint the scene.

One is a miniature by the 15^th��century manuscript illuminator Francois le Barbier, also known as Maître Francois. He depicts the sons kneeling solemnly before Jacob. The sons are ranged on both sides of the bed, dressed in identical clothing. However, on one side there are four sons attired in a dark, monochrome fashion. There are also four sons on the other side; two dressed in red, one in green, and the fourth in a dull purple. As opposed to the monochrome sons, whose gazes are modestly directed downward, two of the more colorfully dressed sons look toward Jacob with glances of supplication; one of the others is looking towards one of his brothers. The face of the fourth is hidden. As for Jacob, he reclines with his right hand raised in the iconic Christian gesture of blessing—index and middle fingers (and presumably thumb as well, though it is obscured) raised. Words literally scroll forth from his mouth, containing the request that he be buried in the cave of Mahpelah in Hebron.

It is hard for me to infer the significance of the differences in clothing and expression. Are the sons in colorful attire Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah? Is Joseph the brother dressed in purple? No matter who is who, the scene is presented as a decorous one. Though the glance of the brother looking at his sibling may be anxious, as a whole the sons seem ready to accept whatever words issue from Jacob’s mouth, good or bad.

Very different is the engraving by Gerard Hoet in the 1728 volume��Figures de la Bible. Here we are in a riotous marketplace. Jacob’s space is invaded by a horde of competing petitioners. One son has his head down upon the bed, his forearms raised and hands clasped in supplication. Others look toward Jacob in entreaty. One seems to be reasoning—or arguing—with his father. Another stands far from Jacob, leaning—or rather sagging—against the wall; his facial expression and body posture bespeak defeat and despair. There are even some women in the background and a disgruntled nurse in the foreground, obviously annoyed at being hindered in her ministrations. And in the midst of it all is Jacob. He sits upright; his right hand is open and extended, a gesture that seems to be a plea for order and quiet.

The first depiction likely presents the scene as Jacob might have imagined it: “I will bless or curse each of my sons as is his due. Each will understand that my words are fitting and will accept them unquestioningly. I will then die in peace, be mourned by my sons, and be buried with my fathers.” The second depiction likely reflects more accurately how the sons would have experienced their last moments with their father. Some fear what will come; some await it eagerly. Some yearn for paternal compassion; some await blessing as their due. Some are hopeless and turn away despondent and angry. And all of them know that there are many others in the room, vying with each other for the limited attentions and affections of an old and dying man.

Those of us who are parents often think that we know our children and what is best for them. We see ourselves apportioning appropriate measures of praise and criticism to each of them—appropriate because we know them and what they need. And surely, we imagine, they all know that we love them equally and that there is no need for them to feel in competition with one another for our affections.

And then we remember that we, too, are children. Some of us may remember parental criticism that we felt was hurtful and undeserved. Some of us might recall how a father’s praise of one child can feel like an act of criticism or denigration for another. We may recollect that when great love and attention are showered upon one sibling, another may wonder how much love is left for her. And some of us might remember a sense of how much there is that our parents don’t know—or, perhaps, never did understand—about us.

Le Barbier’s depiction is an attractive but false one; Hoet’s is dispiriting but truer to life. The world of children and parents is not neat and ordered. Love and jealousy live side by side; insight and ignorance dwell together. Whatever blessings parents seek to give their children, let them be given with humility and sensitivity, both toward them and toward any siblings who are looking on—and they are always looking on.

This commentary was originally published in 2017.

                    הָאֱ־לֹהִים אֲשֶׁר הִתְהַלְּכוּ אֲבֹתַי לְפָנָיו אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק
הָאֱ־לֹהִים הָרֹעֶה אֹתִי מֵעוֹדִי עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה:
הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגֹּאֵל אֹתִי מִכָּל־רָע
יְבָרֵךְ אֶת־הַנְּעָרִים

The God before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, were steadfast,
The God who guided me from the beginning of my life until today,
The malakh who saved me from all misfortune—
He should bless these lads.
(Gen. 48.15b–16)

The second of these verses is often sung aloud in when children have their aliyah on Simhat Torah and by some parents at bedtime each night. That melody has made these words familiar to many, but their meaning is not clear. Who, exactly, does Jacob call upon to bless the lads?

The four lines that begin Jacob’s blessing form a single sentence. The first three lines consist of noun phrases (“the God before whom . . . ,” “the God who . . . ,” and “the malakh who . . . ”), and the fourth finally provides a verb (“bless”), which, in Hebrew, contains its own pronoun (“he”). To whom does this pronoun refer? Two nouns precede the verb: “God” and then “malakh,” which literally means “messenger, someone on a mission.” Almost always, the malakh is a heavenly messenger—in other words, an , a semidivine being on . So we might follow by rendering this word in verse 16 as “angel” and regarding it as the subject of the verb “bless.” But in that case, what is the noun “God” doing in the first two lines? (Grammatically, the verb is singular, so God and God’s messenger cannot both serve as its subject.) And why does Jacob hope the angel will do the work of blessing the lads rather than God?

One attempt to answer this question appears in the commentary of Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160–1236). Radak explains that Jacob first mentions God, the ultimate source of redemption, in verse 15 and then proceeds to the angel who actually delivers God’s blessing:

          אמר על עצמו הא־להים שהטיב עמי מעודי. ואמר אחר כן המלאך, לפי שמעשה הא־ל הוא על ידי אמצעים והמלאכים הם שלוחים מהא־ל לעבדיו לשומרם ולהטיב מעשיהם…לפיכך אמר הגואל אותי מכל רע כי שלחו לי לגאלי מכל רע ולברכני, כן יברך את הנערים.

He [Jacob] said about himself that God had assisted him from the beginning of his life. Then he mentions the angel, because an action of God is carried out by intermediaries. The angels are messengers sent by God to His servants to guard them and to make them successful . . . Therefore he says, “T��� angel who saved me from all misfortune,” meaning, “He sent him to me to redeem me from all misfortune and to bless me. So, too, he should bless these lads.”

Another answer is found in the commentary of Ovadiah Seforno (c. 1475–1549): Jacob expresses the hope that the angel would bless his grandsons in the event that they were unworthy of receiving blessings directly from God. Like Radak, Seforno attempts to link the blessing to God while regarding the angel as the actual subject of the verb in line 4.

The commentary of Ramban (Moshe ben Nachman, 1194–c. 1270) moves in a completely different direction. His interpretation will seem surprising, perhaps even shocking, to some readers, but he does the best job of accounting for the grammar and poetic structure of our biblical passage. The first two lines in Jacob’s statement parallel each other: they contain the same subject, “God,” followed by a description of the personal relationship between God and Jacob’s family. The third line continues the parallel structure: “T��� malakh who saved me” matches “T��� God who guided me.” What we find here, then, are three parallel lines couched in a deliberately repetitive style common in biblical poetry. The repetition suggests that “God” in the first line, “God” in the second line, and “malakh” in the third line refer to the same individual. “God” and “malakh” are two terms for a single subject who blesses the lads in the fourth line. This parallelism seems to underlie Ramban’s explanation of the term malakh:

          המלאך הגואל הוא העונה אותו בעת צרתו, ושאמר לו: אנכי הא־ל בית א־ל (בראשית לא:יג), והוא שנאמר עליו: כי שמי בקרבו (שמות כג:כא).

“T��� malakh who saved me from all misfortune” refers to the one who answered Jacob at the time of his misfortune, saying to him, ‘I am the God Bethel’ (Gen. 31.13). Concerning Him it was said, “[I shall send a malakh in front of you to guard you on the journey . . . Obey Him . . . ] For My identity is within Him” (Exod. 23.20–21).

The first of the two verses Ramban quotes refers to an earlier passage in Genesis where God answered Jacob at a place called Bethel, which is both a geographic name and a divine name in ancient Hebrew and related languages (Gen. 28.10–19). In other words, the malakh Jacob mentions in our parashah is not a messenger of God. He is God! The same is true of the malakh in the passage from Exodus that Ramban cites. The reason the Israelites should obey the malakh there is because the malakh shares God’s identity or name.

These are not the only verses where malakh denotes God rather than an angel. The term refers to a small-scale manifestation of God’s presence elsewhere in the Torah[1], as well as in some passages from Nevi’im and Ketuvim. In these texts, the malakh is God, but not all of God—an approachable, user-friendly side of God. Narratives that use the term malakh this way, typically tell us that a malakh appeared to a human character.[2] As they describe the dialogue between them, however, they simply state, “God said” or “the LORD said,” not “the malakh said,” because all these terms refer to the same being. The word malakh used in this sense resembles the word avatara in Sanskrit: both designate a phenomenon that makes a transcendent, heavenly deity perceptible within our world. In the passages I’ve discussed, “avatar” would be a much better translation of malakh than “angel.” To be sure, in most biblical texts the term does mean “angel, heavenly messenger.” Texts that use malakh to mean “avatar” are the exception, but they do crop up throughout the Bible.

Another name some Israelites used for this small-scale manifestation was “Bethel.” We already saw this term in Genesis 31.13, which Ramban quoted in his commentary to Genesis 48.16. This name also appears in Hosea 12.5:[3]

       בַּבֶּטֶן עָקַב אֶת־אָחִיו
:וּבְאוֹנוֹ שָׂרָה אֶת־אֱ־לֹהִים
וַיָּשַׂר אֶל־מַלְאָךְ וַיֻּכָל
בָּכָה וַיִּתְחַנֶּן־לוֹ
בֵּית־אֵ־ל יִמְצָאֶנּוּ
:וְשָׁם יְדַבֵּר עִמָּנוּ
:וַי־הוָה אֱ־לֹהֵי הַצְּבָאוֹת יְ־הוָה זִכְרוֹ

In the womb [Jacob] cheated his brother,
And as a grown man he wrestled with God.
He wrestled with a malakh and endured,
He cried and pleaded with Him,
It was Bethel who met him.
There He spoke with us—
It was Yhwh, the God hosts! Yhwh is His name.  
(Hos. 12.4–6)

These verses present a series of identifications: First, the malakh with whom Jacob wrestled when he returned to Canaan (Gen. 32.25–33) is identical with Bethel, the deity who appeared to Jacob when he fled Canaan years earlier (Gen. 28.10–19; cf. 31.13). Second, Bethel (i.e., the malakh) is none other than Yhwh, the God of Israel.

These texts show that God does not always appear to humanity as the overwhelming and commanding Presence that displayed itself on Mount Sinai. God sometimes appears on a scale more easily accessible to human beings, as the malakh or Bethel. This form of God is less dangerous to humans than the full-fledged divine manifestation known from Sinai. This does not mean the malakh causes no fear at all. The Torah tells us that when Moses first saw the malakh, he found its tremendous mystery fascinating yet frightening (Exod. 3.2–6). Still, this user-friendly manifestation results from divine grace. The great biblical scholar Moshe Greenberg taught that what allows for dialogue between God and humanity is “God’s willingness to adjust himself to the capacities of men, to take into consideration and make concessions to human frailty.”[4]

The idea that God enters the cosmos in diverse forms and to varying degrees without compromising God’s oneness is not limited to the biblical concept of malakh as avatar. It reappears much later in Jewish mysticism, most famously in the kabbalistic doctrine of the sefirot, ten manifestations of God within the universe (as opposed to ein sof, the unknowable essence of God outside the universe). Descriptions of the sefirot seem to imply they enjoy a degree of individual existence. Yet they never attain the level of independent beings, and kabbalistic texts warn against praying to them as if they were distinct deities. Many modern Jews have regarded kabbalah as a revisionary transformation of biblical and rabbinic monotheism proposed by religious radicals from the medieval era. Jacob’s brief blessing to his grandsons demonstrates the opposite is the case: the understanding of God’s unity as encompassing what appears to us as multiplicity has deep roots in Jewish tradition that go back to the Bible itself. This week’s parashah helps show that kabbalistic thinkers were the most authentic sort of religious innovators: as much as they created something new, they restored something ancient[5].

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

[1] Notably, this is always in verses that we modern biblical scholars identify as coming from the according to . The P and D strands, however, reject the concept of divine presence underlying the idea of an avatar.

[2] See, for example, Genesis 18–19, Exodus 3, and Judges 6.

[3] The haftarah containing this verse, Hosea 11.7–12.12, for Parashat Vayetzei, others for Vayishlah, is not employed by most Conservative synagogues.

[4] Greenberg, a Hebrew University professor and recipient of the State of Israel’s highest civilian award, was a 91�첥 graduate. See Greenberg’s Understanding Exodus [New York: 91�첥, 1969], 94; on the malakh, see also 70.

[5] חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם (Lamentations 5:21b)

And he blessed Joseph, saying,
May the God in whose ways walked
My fathers Abraham and Isaac,
God who has been my shepherd
Of old to this day
The Angel redeeming me
From all evil—

Bless the lads

And call my name upon them
And the names of
My fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they grow as
Fishlike multitudes
In the land.

(48:16)

Just as God protected Jacob from physical harm and granted him many children, Jacob asks that “the lads” (not Joseph directly) be blessed and wax in number like fish. Verbs from the Hebrew root “ד. ג. ה” usually mean “to fish”, i.e., to take fish from the water. But here, with poetic license, this verb illustrates the idea of being like fish, swift and numerous in reproduction. Structurally, the poem places Jacob’s fathers both before and after the moment when the blessing is transferred, but also places God in the first paragraph as the active subject. Appositionally, Jacob’s descendants become like fish in the final concluding lines, the passive recipients of the requested Divine blessing.

But most interestingly, God is described as “T��� Angel redeeming me from all evil.” To me, this seems like demotion of the Divine role bordering on heresy, with its focus on the instrumental power of God to ward and protect rather than God as the object of our  devotion and service. Jacob seems audacious and bold, calling on God—as an angelic protector—to prevent harm from coming to his children so that they may produce countless schools of Israelite offspring.

Yet Jacob’s invocation of heaven’s protection, while spiritually daring, is not as heretical as it may at first seem. My argument derives from an ancient Rabbinic ritual that remains in Jewish religious practice, birkat hagomel, a blessing recited publicly in synagogue by those who have recently survived danger: “Blessed are you, ADONAI, Ruler of the universe who grants good things to those deserving punishment.”�� In a bold-faced admission, we Jews regularly assert our unworthiness as candidates for Divine protection. In truth, we say, we deserve to have perished in whatever recent crises we faced. Yet, somehow, perhaps because of the merit earned by our ancestors, God has instead chosen to ward off the jeopardy we face and prevent harm from coming to the children of Israel. This idea—that those who have faced danger should publicly say a blessing of thanksgiving for undeserved Divine protection—has its origin in another poetic text, a psalm from which we have been quoting of late to appeal for the swift release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th:

Let them praise ADONAI for this lovingkindness,
For granting these wonders to human beings.

(Psalm 107, refrain at v. 8, 15, 21, and 31)

The liturgical resonance with birkat hagomel (and its attendant demand for Divine prophylaxis) is unmistakable to the initiated ear. The Talmud expresses the requirement for birkat hagomel this way:

Rav Judah said in the name of Rav: Four classes of people must offer thanksgiving: Those who go down to the sea, those who journey in the wilderness, the invalid who recovers, and the prisoner who has been set free.

(B. Berakhot 54b)

The four categories are directly taken from four narratives presented in Psalm 107. In each of these four cases the undeserving subject—whether lost in the wild, held captive, deathly ill, or in crisis at sea—calls out to God in their distress and lovingkindness and wonders follow on from heaven saving them. Between each of these narratives we hear the refrain at v. 8, 15, 21, and 31 exhorting these survivors to praise the God of Israel “. . . for this lovingkindness, / For granting these wonders to human beings.”

Calling out to God for protection is far from heretical in either the eyes of the Psalmist or the Sages of the Talmud. They seem unconcerned that we may change the Divine plan when we entreat the Divine will. However, the idea of an angelic God who grants good things and lovingkindness to some individuals while denying others does trouble my modern sense of what constitutes Divine justice. When I hear birkat hagomel my mind recalls a passage in Primo Levi’s 1959 book If This Is a Man (also published in English as Survival in Auschwitz) describing the aftermath of a selektion, the survivors now back in their bunkroom:��

��Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen. Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas-chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking anymore? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again? If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.

Do such abominations in modernity wipe out the legitimacy of propitiatory prayer? Does God now spit with disgust on our small prayers of thanksgiving when we (intuitively, I think) reach out with praise for our perception of lovingkindness and wonders?

Amazingly, the Talmud already seems to consider a similar question in Tractate Rosh Hashanah (17b) the Talmud asks what value crying out to God can have if all judgment is determined at the High Holidays. If the Divine mind is made up at Yom Kippur, how can our prayers for protection have any effect at other times of the year? Isn’t such a prayer illegitimate, a waste of breath when our fates are already set? The Talmud turns to a set of odd graphical signs commonly written in Bible manuscripts of the day next to the portion of Psalm 107 that deals with those lost at sea (and still written in printed Hebrew bibles and ). A series of backwards Hebrew letters Nun appear at the start of each of these verses, as illustrated in the following image of a tenth-century Bible manuscript.

These signs may have had their origins in marking a piece of a text that was moved from its original location. But the Talmud uses these signs to solve another problem of dislocation: When we are alone, as individuals, we cannot change our set fates. But when we come together in community, we are no longer alone and powerless before the great sea of our troubles. When we come together, the Talmud claims these backwards letters indicate, we have a greater voice. We become numerous and powerful (like fish, can we say?) and the great sea is not the realm of our troubles, but the living waters of our lives, our home and even the light and length of our days. So we ask for Divine protection while pursuing our safety as a community and a nation in as many ways as we are able. Am yisrael hai.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

A look at the relationships between fathers and sons in Genesis as a whole reveals a progression: with each subsequent patriarch, the relations between fathers and sons improve. Abraham did not bless his sons at all; Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, but separately. Only with Jacob are sons gathered and blessed together (and not only sons, but even the grandsons, Ephraim and Menashe, too!). This progression is the perfect prelude to the unification required to be called a nation. The sequence from Genesis to Exodus reminds us that strong families are the backbone of a strong people.

The description of Jacob’s sons in Vayehi highlights their diversity. But the differences between Joseph and Judah in particular sealed for each one a place and purpose in the greater narrative of Israel’s peoplehood. Joseph, irrefutably Jacob’s favorite son, is exemplary on the moral front and pious in every way. As a young man alone in a strange land, he resists temptation and rejects his sexual urges brought on by the advances of Potiphar’s wife. His moral compass is too strong. Judah, on the other hand, is a moral failure. He readily hires a harlot whom he later discovers to be his daughter-in-law! He is out of control, directed by instinct and not by the right intuition.

Joseph, when finally meeting up with his brothers after years of suffering from their original treacherous deed to abandon him, forgives, forgets, and lovingly embraces his brothers. When we think back to that original act against Joseph, how did Judah behave? True, he opposed murdering Joseph; however, he did not suggest freeing him. His words were telling: “Mah betza ki naharog et ahinu?”—“what profit will we gain by killing our brother?” (Gen. 37:26). Let’s sell him instead [!], he offers, his words ringing vulgarly of materialism.  

For Joseph, piety and the righteous path were seemingly a part of his genetic make-up. Judah, to put it bluntly, had problems. Like so many of us observe from our own parenting experience, some kids just always make the mark and others—as hard as it is to admit—disappoint. We should never overlook, however, when our children strive and improve. Judah puts forth great effort to overcome his character deficiencies. In both instances—after hiring the harlot and selling his brother—Judah admits guilt, repents, and strives to transcend the limits of his inclinations.

As we know, the Israelite kings are descended from Judah. On his deathbed, despite all of the difficulties with Judah, Jacob saw the leadership potential in Judah and blessed him with the line of kingship. And this, even though without a shadow of a doubt Joseph was his favorite. I would like to suggest that the potential for leadership Jacob saw was based on Judah’s humanity. The best leaders are the people who not only conceptually grasp the frailties of the human experience, but who also experience them. Jacob’s calculus was that a personality such as his son Judah, who had sunk to the depths of immoral and uncompassionate behavior, who had wrestled and now repented and returned—was better equipped to lead. As Maimonides reminds us in the Laws of Repentance: “those who repent stand on a higher level than those who are completely righteous. For, those who repent have applied a higher degree of control.” To Jacob, Judah the son and the sinner had now surpassed his initial limitations and was fit for leadership. Joseph, the primordial tzaddik, by virtue of his moral perfection, was not.

Ironically, the same traits of purity and righteousness, trust and humility, that encouraged Pharoah to appoint Joseph to be his right-hand man, struck Jacob as weaknesses when considering the future kingship of Israel. Indeed, Jacob insightfully observed that the qualities required of the assistant are never the same as those demanded of the manager.  

Jacob’s wisdom is telling. The end of the book of Genesis is about the beginnings of how we learn to live together. The family provides the unit in which we strive and struggle, grow and grieve. The biblical family dynamics, presenting constant challenges, can still speak to us when we step back and take a close look at our own families. Jacob’s lessons for parents remain important. Encourage and embrace the diversity amongst your children. Learn to appreciate the inherent differences in each of them. Respect the decisions children make that may not entirely square with your own values. As a parent, learn to be flexible and capitalize on the important qualities that each child has and can help them contribute to the world. Joseph certainly played a crucial role in the developing narrative of the family and the people Israel. Jacob, in his eternal wisdom, however, also saw the potential in Judah, a son he could have written off because of real concerns about his character and ability. Jacob teaches us to look deeper and be more open—to nurture, encourage, and trust. By blessing Judah with the line of kingship, Jacob reminds us what parenting can really be.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

“Before his death your father left this instruction:��So��shall you say to Joseph, ‘Forgive, I urge you, the offense and guilt of your brothers who treated you so harshly.’ Therefore, please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father.”��

(Genesis 50:16–17)��

According to the brothers’ message, before Jacob died, he had asked his sons to tell Joseph to forgive them. But had he really done this? Jacob spends the majority of this parashah blessing his sons and giving them instructions for what to do after his death. Yet nowhere in the narrative of Jacob’s preparations for his death does the Torah say anything about this particular request. It seems that this may be yet another episode in the relationship between Joseph and his brothers in which the siblings are being less than transparent with each other. In fact, according to the Babylonian Talmud (Yevamot 65b), this is an instance of outright lying on the brothers’ part. Yet the Talmud also tells us that this is a circumstance in which lying is acceptable, perhaps even a good thing, because it is done in order to keep the family peace.  

It is certainly true that the brothers’ message is effective; Joseph is moved to tears and reassures his brothers that he wishes them no harm and will protect them and their descendants. But one is left wondering if dissembling, and specifically presenting their own wishes in the guise of their dead father’s, was really the best tactic for the brothers to take. 

Rashi, drawing on the Talmud’s language, also emphasizes that the brothers’ lie was in order to preserve peace. Yet he offers a more critical take on their behavior. Rashi explains that Jacob would never have said such a thing to Joseph’s brothers because he loved Joseph and believed in his goodness; Jacob would surely not have been concerned that his beloved son might stoop so low as to take revenge on his brothers. Thus, Rashi implies, by framing their concern as if it were Jacob’s, the brothers falsely implicate their father in their own feelings of fear, guilt, and suspicion regarding Joseph. Rashi’s comments help us see that the brothers are essentially using triangulation—drawing a third party into a relationship issue—in order to resolve their conflict with Joseph. Triangulation invariably makes things worse for all parties involved, and even though in this case one of the parties is dead, he is still being unfairly misrepresented by his sons. 

Seforno, on the other hand, has a much more charitable read of the brothers’ behavior—perhaps even more charitable than the Talmud’s defense of them for lying to maintain peace. Seforno, who agrees with Rashi that Jacob would never have suspected Joseph of plotting revenge, explains the passage as follows: “He commanded that they should say to Joseph: ‘Your father commanded us that we should say this to you, of our own accord and not on his behalf, because he had no concerns about you at all. But he agreed that if we were afraid, we should say to you these words.’” According to Seforno, even though Jacob wouldn’t have suspected Joseph, he could still have authorized his sons to convey his wishes that they reconcile out of empathy for their worry—as long as the brothers were clear that the concern was not coming from Jacob himself (which, Seforno implies, the brothers are conveying to Joseph by telling him all this). In this case, the brothers wouldn’t have been lying, and they wouldn’t have been representing their father’s wishes as their own. Instead, they would have admitted to their own fears, and explained that their father had encouraged them to make their fears known to their brother.  

The book of Bereishit is full of stories of our ancestors and their family members behaving poorly toward one another, and so many of these tales are cautionary ones as opposed to models for behavior. Yet perhaps in this specific instance, we can see the brothers in this passage as Seforno does and take this episode in an otherwise troubled family as an example for how to make things right: on the brothers’ part, taking responsibility for their own wishes and concerns toward others and stating them directly; on Jacob’s part, encouraging his family members to be open with each other and reminding them to speak only on their own behalf; and on Joseph’s part, continuing to forgive. Finally, at the end of Bereishit, our ancestors find all of the elements that they need to keep the family peace. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). &�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and lived there until I was nine years old, at which point my family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. After three years in Florida, we moved to Overland Park, Kansas, where I had my bar mitzvah and completed middle school and high school. Following high school, I moved again to go to college in Boston. Ask someone who knows me well where I’m from and they will likely answer Kansas. To this day, I root for Kansas City sports teams and maintain an affinity for all things Midwest. Though the number of years I lived in Kansas City is less than my time in Charleston or in my current home, New York, my Kansas experiences and connections shaped me in ways that my other homes did not.

Parashat Vayehi opens with an invitation to recognize that Jacob’s sojourn in Egypt was not insignificant, even if he lived in Egypt for only a small fraction of his entire lifespan. “And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years; so the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years” (Gen. 47:28). What is the text trying to impart to us with the distinction between the 17 years he lived in Egypt and the total 147?

Vayehi begins in a way that is unique among the weekly parshiyot: between every two other parshiyot in the Torah we can see a break—either a parashah petuhah, an “open” line break, or a parashah setumah, a “closed” extended mid-line space. Vayehi is the exception: it begins without any clear demarcation of the end of the parashah that comes before it, Vayiggash.

Rashi’s very first comment on Vayehi addresses this, explaining that the difficulties of the Israelite slavery began when Jacob passed away. Rashi points out that the totally closed nature of the text, with no extra space, shows that “the hearts and eyes of Israel were closed because of the misery of the bondage which [Egypt] began to impose upon them.” Rashi wants us to take note of the continuation of the story of the people of Israel even in Jacob’s death. I’m reminded of my wife’s late bubbie who was fond of saying: “I try to live every day with my eyes wide open.” It’s as if Rashi wants us to read the text with our eyes wide open, finding meaning in every detail, despite the closing of the hearts and eyes of the people of Israel.  

Hizkuni (Hezekiah bar Manoah), a 13th-century French rabbi and Bible commentator, gives further reasoning for understanding Vayehi as inextricably interwoven with what preceded it in Vayiggash. Jacob’s provisional move to Egypt due to economic pressure and famine turned out to be anything but temporary. Once Jacob arrived in Egypt and was re-united with Joseph, the previous anguish and trouble of his life were closed.

Therefore, the later commentator Keli Yakar notes, immediately after telling us that Jacob lived in Egypt for seventeen years the text says, “T��� years of Jacob’s life were 147” (Gen. 47:28). It is almost as if these final years were so good to Jacob and his family that the past was forgotten and it was as if his whole life had been enjoyable. He may have intended his time in Egypt to be short-lived, but in the end it was more than a blip of his life. Jacob’s family took root in the land and prospered.

Hizkuni further suggests that “all the years of Jacob until he settled in Egypt could not truly be described as חיים—life—seeing that they were all clouded by different kinds of anguish”. It was only during his last 17 years in Egypt that his mind was at rest and not beset by worries of one kind or another. According to Hizkuni, this verse was inserted in the Torah as a compliment to Joseph, who was the cause of Jacob’s last years being happy ones. During those years he repaid his father who had sustained him for the first 17 years of his life, by providing for him during the last 17 years of Jacob’s life.

As someone who has moved around, there are times when I am nostalgic for past experiences. I am at times compelled to try to piece things together and see how one place I lived, or one life experience, can directly link to another. I see the merit of each place and aspire to enjoy it to the fullest. Part of moving and settling in new places means determining what to keep with you and to leave behind. It means remembering your background while also paying attention to the present and the future.

As such, my Midwestern association contributes to who I am as a person and as a rabbi. When I first lived in New York following college, I would periodically visit my parents in Kansas, and on my return flight to NYC I used to feel a little anxious about the pace of life I would reencounter. Nowadays, more than ten years later, while my time in Kansas City has had a lasting impact on me, I am accustomed to the New York way of life.

Jacob’s story shows us that life is fluid, and it can change course at any time. How we manage the changes and the people around us is one way to determine a life well-lived. The “closed opening” of Vayehi reminds us of the need to pay attention because, as the saying goes, “life is in the details.”

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

She made a list of whom she wanted to see: her children and their spouses; her grandchildren; nieces and nephews and cousins; friends from long ago, and those of more recent vintage. Pilgrimages to her bedside began from near and far, and those who couldn’t come in person gained an audience by video conference or by phone.

In the ensuing days and weeks, she held court for hours at a time. Rather than exhaust her, each encounter seemed to renew her strength. She told each person how much she loved them. And she also shared her perspective on their lives—recounting each person’s strengths, forgiving moments of failure, and often being quite direct in her “advice” (i.e. critique) for life going forward.

Watching or hearing reports about her final interactions with each of the people she cherished gave me a new appreciation for the deathbed scene that unfolds in this week’s parashah. It’s a portion I’m familiar with since it was also my bar mitzvah portion, ironically focusing on the death of my namesake, our ancestor, Jacob, as he “blesses” each of his 12 sons.

Some of Jacob’s poetic phrases do indeed seem like blessings:

“T��� scepter shall not depart from Judah; 
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet” (Gen. 49:10)

“Dan shall govern his people; 
As one of the tribes of Israel” (v. 16);

“Asher’s bread shall be rich; 
And he shall yield royal dainties” (v. 20);

“T��� blessings of your father, 
Surpass the blessings of my ancestors; 
To the utmost bounds of the eternal hills, 
May they rest on the head of Joseph.” (v. 26)

But for some of the other sons, his words seem decidedly less of “blessing character”:

“Simeon and Levi are a pair; 
Their weapons are tools of lawlessness” (v. 5);

“Issachar is a strong-boned ass, 
Crouching among the sheepfolds 
. . . 
He bent his shoulder to the burden, 
And became a toiling serf (v. 14).”

Ouch!

I am always struck by Jacob’s differentiated appraisal of each of his children. There is still some bias as the children of his favored wife, Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin unsurprisingly receive positive accolades. But there is also honesty—Simeon and Levi are indeed violent in their treatment of the princes and people of Shekhem (34:25-29), and in the Torah’s earlier account Reuben disrespected his father in ways Jacob is clearly still not quite ready to forgive (49:4 and see 35:22).

But as a deathbed message for his children, what moves Jacob to go beyond simple statements of love, and include such challenging appraisals of character in these final moments? With his poetry, Jacob draws a line between the character traits of each of his sons, and the fate of the tribes which would emanate from them in future generations. Many commentaries wonder if Jacob is expressing a fatalistic sense that later success or failure is dependent upon the character of an earlier generation. Or is he offering critique in the hope that his words might allow for his sons to change, and even alter the character of the future tribes of Israel?

Often in the Torah there is a relationship between the stories in Genesis and the laws of later books. If his goal was to build self-awareness among his children and change their behavior, I think about the statement in Leviticus: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. [You shall surely] reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him.” (19:17) In putting these phrases together, the Torah implies that reproof should be motivated by love and caring, and not by hatred. The Rabbis teach that this is extraordinarily hard to accomplish, leading many of the Sages to claim that in their generation there was no one able to accept reproof nor give it effectively ().

Can we see Jacob’s “blessings” as based on this kind of love? The truth is, my mother didn’t wait until her deathbed to offer advice (and critique) freely. I can’t say I always appreciated my mother’s direct appraisals, and I always wondered at how her friends valued her frank “guidance,” even when it seemed hard to hear, and even came back for more. But I came to understand that we all did so because we knew it came from a place of deep love and respect. Perhaps the Rabbis’ indictment of their generation’s inability to offer critique was not so much about their own character, but in the lack of loving relationship among colleagues.

Finally, we might come to understand Jacob’s varied “blessings” less as “praise versus critique” and more as simply an appreciation of the diverse characteristics of family. Later in her life, my mother began to give divrei Torah at her synagogue. In a  (composed when she was well past the age of 80 and including a terrific story about renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman), she compared the diverse characterization of the sons to the soloist and the various musicians in an orchestra as they play a concerto. Speaking of those with many gifts, and others with deficits, she concluded that as he lay dying, Jacob, “Bade his children and the nation to come to make music with everything they have and, when that is not possible, with whatever they have left. And it must be a united and collaborative and integrated music of life and passion and soul. This is what we must continue to do.”

Indeed, as just one example, the Torah later subsumes the violence and passion of the Levites into holy service in the Tabernacle and later the Temple in Jerusalem. The Torah insists that even our more challenging qualities can be redirected to holiness and service. Perhaps Jacob’s words to his children were less about each individual, and more about appreciating the diversity of their traits, and the need to still bring them together as one family, creating harmony rather than dissonance.

Over the course of a few weeks in the tender care of hospice, my mother’s desire to speak to each of her dear ones was fulfilled, and she passed peacefully. For myself, I continue to take her words of both praise and critique to heart. And as I move through a year of saying kaddish for my mother, I’m coming to learn that blessings, and the act of blessing, come in many and sometimes unexpected forms.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The question of life and legacy pertains also to Jacob’s 12 sons as they are summoned to their father’s deathbed to hear his final testament. This is not a Hollywood ending with soaring violins and tearful embraces. Jacob is a tough man, and his assessments of the boys are frank and often cutting. He addresses each in turn—how did they live, and what will be the consequences of their deeds?

The same question of life-judgment is especially keen regarding the enigmatic figure of Joseph. Jacob lavishes his favorite son with covenantal blessings (Gen. 49:22–26), calling Joseph a great man, “the elect of his brothers.” Still, Jacob’s blessing contains obscure images of Joseph, who is also described as a “wild ass.” How, in the end, does Jacob regard this son and sometime stranger, a man who has been beloved and despised, enslaved and enriched, magnanimous and vindictive? Joseph has been both dutiful and subversive toward his father. Who, in the final reckoning, is Joseph? How did he live and what is his legacy?

The Rabbis are of two minds about Joseph. In the Talmud (BT Sotah 13a), Rav Yehudah cites Rav in criticizing Joseph for allowing his own father to be humbled before him. This refers to the occasions (five times in chapters 43–44) in which the brothers address the still-disguised Joseph and refer to Jacob as “your servant, our father.” According to Rav Yehudah, Joseph should somehow have corrected his brother’s description of their father as “your servant,” even if it meant blowing his cover. As a result, Joseph had to suffer the indignity of requesting that his brothers “take my bones up with you” when they leave Egypt.

Rabbi Samuel Eliezer ben Rabbi Judah Halevi Edels (known as “the Maharshah,” Poland, 1555–1632) explains that according to the Talmud, the father contributes the bones to his child (because they are white, like semen), thus explaining Joseph’s curious statement. If so, then Joseph was really saying, “Because I did not honor our father properly, take his contribution, my bones, away with you.” Perhaps, but it is simple enough to feel the pathos of Joseph’s plea to have his desiccated remains transported to his unhappy homeland several centuries hence. Moreover, this verse hardly captures the enormity of Joseph’s 20-year silence and the torment he visited upon his father by imprisoning Simeon and then demanding that Benjamin be brought to him in Egypt. Is Joseph a good guy or not? How did he live?

On the same page of Talmud, Rav Yehudah cites Rav again (or perhaps this time it is Rabbi Hama citing Rabbi Hanina) to tell us that, furthermore, Joseph died before his brothers did because he “conducted himself with arrogance” (see the parallel statement in BT Berakhot 55a). What does this mean? It is undeniable that Joseph was a commanding figure, but can you blame him? Wasn’t his forceful personality the key to saving Egypt and thereby his own family? And didn’t Joseph’s dreams teach him to expect obeisance from others, especially from his family?

This tradition of ascribing arrogance to Joseph is opposed by another rabbinic tradition claiming that despite his power, Joseph retained his sense of humility. In Midrash Shemot Rabbah (1:7) the Rabbis claim that Joseph thought of himself as the least of the sons, both when he was a slave and also when he had ascended to power in Egypt.

Furthermore, the Rabbis give Joseph the superlative title of “the Saint” (Yosef Hatzaddik). Whether it is for resisting Potiphar’s wife and then crediting God for his ability to interpret dreams, or for his ramified rescue plan for Egypt and his great concern for the physical and even spiritual welfare of his family—in all of these ways Joseph earns the respect of the Rabbis.

I would add another point of admiration for Joseph: in all of his great deeds, he acts alone. To borrow from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s famous title, Joseph is a “lonely man of faith.” With whom can he share his faith in God or take counsel? With the brothers who nearly murdered him and then sold him into slavery? With his wife, the daughter of the priest of On? With Pharaoh? Yet for all his isolation, Joseph is never shaken from his abiding faith in God or from his dedication to moral conduct. Joseph does not receive prophecies from God in the same way as his ancestors did. His knowledge of God is the product of dreams and introspection. It is not family, society, or even prophecy that establishes Joseph as a servant of God—he himself must invent his religious persona, and in this he is both extraordinary and accessible.

Joseph is understandable to modern readers because we too function in a seductive society in which our Jewish identity is either hidden or at least partitioned from our more universal identity. Many of us are blessed with supportive families, and few of us suffer the trials of Joseph, but all of us can relate to the demand that we invent our own individual relationship with God. The book of Genesis, the story of Creation, ends with a form of creation that we each undertake—the creation of a lifestory.

For us, too, the title of the final parashah is a question and a challenge: Vayehi. When our own story is over, when we are spoken of in the past tense, how will others say that we lived? Like Joseph, we will present our heirs with a bundle of contradictions—which of our qualities and deeds will be deemed most significant and representative of the whole? What will have been our distinctive contribution, and what spiritual legacy will we bequeath to others? These are the questions that hovered over the heads of our ancestors, and these are our questions too. As we complete the first book of the Torah, we pray for strength to move through its five stages, growing with our ancestors in merit and in the knowledge of God’s path to holiness.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).