Drash Vayechi 5767: Family

Genesis 47:28-50:26

Seventeen years after Jacob moved to Egypt, he becomes ill and close to death. He first blesses Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, though oddly changing the birth order around. Later, he blesses, if not prophesizes about all of his sons not by their merit. Jacob dies, is carried back to Canaan, and then the brothers fret Joseph will finally exact revenge. But Joseph tells them once again it was God who did all this and there is nothing to worry about. Fifty four years later, Joseph makes his brother promise that when they or their descendants leave Egypt they will take his bones with them. Joseph lives to see three generations and then at 110, dies ending the book of Genesis.

At the center piece of this week’s portion is the “blessing” Jacob gives his sons. Yet as is clear very early, this is far from a happy blessing, and often comes near to a curse, Take the blessings for Reuben, Levi, and Simeon:

3. Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power; 4. Unstable as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father’s bed; then defiled you it; he went up to my couch. 5. Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty are their swords. 6. O my soul, do not come into their council; to their assembly, let my honor not be united; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their wanton will they lamed an ox. 7. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

Other brothers get different blessings with Judah and Joseph getting some of the best. Yet what is interesting is the comment made by Jacob about Joseph:

22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall; 23. The archers fiercely attacked him, and shot at him, and hated him; 24. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel;

This comment brings in an interesting debate: how much did Jacob know of the incident with his brothers? How much did he figure out, and how much was he told. Midrash says it was not his brothers, but other in the camp of Jacob who attacked him, yet the plainer meaning sits there: the “archers” are his brothers. The same Midrash makes another interesting comment about what kind of “arrow”:

[Also, to those] who cast at him words cruel as an arrow (hez): Sharp arrows of the mighty (Ps. CXX, 4). Why does he compare them to an arrow rather than to any other weapon? All other weapons smite from close quarters, whereas this smites from the distance. Even so is slander, for it is spoken in Rome and kills in Syria.

Before the brothers were using physical violence, there was the verbal violence of slander, which can hurt even from far away, and following up on the rest of Psalm 120:4, can indeed burn internally for a long time. Yet Joseph, even after his father dies, does not show anger at his brothers.

The blessing of Jacob takes on a form more like prophecy than of blessing, yet in that prophecy, there is an odd thing that did not occur in previous blessings of sons. It describes the person first then gives a consequence of that personality trait. For Joseph and Judah “the lion’s cub,” it is good news, for some other not so good. Significantly, there is that difference in each, that even from the same father you get twelve (eleven if you count Simeon and Levi together) different prophecies about twelve very different children.

I have been thinking a lot about children. Over the last week of December, I spent a lot of time with children whether I wanted to or not. As a family my parents my sister and her family all went to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. Yet it was a very family oriented resort, to accommodate all the little ones in our family. It was all families, with lots of little ones running around and screaming whining and yelling of “MOM WATCH THIS!” And I’m not talking my family – I’m talking everyone, everywhere. And while that’s what kids do when they are in their single digit years, it’s not the environment for a single man days from turning 41. All this while trying to get through some rather heavy books on the history of Jewish Poland, every lead on his research invariably and very literally killed off in the Shoah for a final he HAS to get done very soon.

It was, to say the least not the best vacation. But it was a thoughtful introspective one, and one I’m glad I was on. Jacob, I’m sure tried to raise his sons right, yet as we know, he preferred Rachel’s sons to the others. Even though Judah and Reuben had the same parents they turned out very differently. I wonder what it was like to have that many sons running around when they were young, I have a feeling it was a lot like that resort. With four mothers, it’s likely many were pregnant at the same time, and many were of the same age. All those kids at that resort, no matter where they came from, will grow up and be who they are, though hopefully guided by their parents in some good sane directions to turn their lives. Yet as Jacob blesses his adult sons, we realize that people are different and will follow their own path. While looking out over the bay, watching pelicans and palm trees, being by the pool or having dinner with my family, I thought about that a lot.

Post-holocaust a question which had an obvious answer before was challenged. Does the Torah keep the Jews or do the Jews keep the Torah? Put another way; is it Jewish bodies or Jewish souls that make up the Jewish people? Is populating the world with children born to Jewish parents the best way to keep the Jewish people alive, or is making sure all the mitzvoth are performed by those that are here? Or as I tend to struggle with the question: If you had a choice between Torah Study and procreation, which would you pick? Watching the beautiful sunsets, punctuated by crying kids who are bored looking at the sun boiling away into the ocean, or the sounds of electronic games overwhelming the sound of the waves breaking, before each of these beautiful chances for blessing Hashem, no matter what the faith of those children, I wondered that most of all.

While we are now at the end of the book of Genesis, it is interesting looking back at the first question Rashi asks about the book of Genesis. Rashi asks why there is a book of Genesis, and indeed the first eleven chapters of Exodus. It is not till Exodus 12 do we have a mitzvah that is exclusively for Jews. Why all the words between In the beginning to This month shall be the beginning of months? The answer is to tell the story of our family, of the family who received those mitzvot contained from Exodus 12 until the next time these twelve tribes are blessed, this time by a dying Moses in Deuteronomy 33. We see a story, as I’ve noted before, of family that just can’t quite get it together, from Adam and Eve’s blame game to story after story of family rivalry. Genesis abruptly ends when brothers can actually live together in peace, and shoot no more arrows in each other’s direction.

My sister and I chose different paths, polar opposites of that question. Neither of us is completely right, neither is completely wrong. It just is our own different path. As an uncle my nieces and nephews are sometimes a joy to be around, sometimes they are not. I sometime lament that the kids are a tangible item, so many people will comment on how cute talented and smart they are, to the pride of their parents. Yet my studies have produced so little that is tangible. Enough words to fit on one CD-ROM, with megabytes to spare, and less than 40 hits a month on a website. My efforts get so little attention I will never know how even that pebble in the pond will ripple into the greater Jewish world. As provocatively as I could write Shlomo’s Drash or a paper for my Masters in Jewish Studies, neither screams as loud as a six year old, neither brings the people running to listen words of Torah the same as running to the latest dance recital.

Jacob, in what he said to each of his sons, was creating twelve stories about the past. Twelve different tellers of the story, and we still listen and retell that story. My sister after reading Rashi’s Daughters thought of it only as a historical novel, and did not want me to ruin the other books by telling her about Rabbenu Tam, the grandson of Rashi and one of several of that generation of Rashi’s descendants who would continue the traditions of commentary started by their grandfather, opposite him on every folio of Talmud. Yet every week, though not related to Rashi, I tell that story of commentary, whether anyone listens or not, just in case anyone ever does need to. I know that is my path, however it may lead. My sister and I are two people to tell stories into the next generations of our immediate family and of the Jewish people, and like the twelve sons of Israel, each in our own way.

May you find your own.