Parashat Va-y'chi (Genesis 47:28 - 50:26)

by Rabbi Kathleen de Magtige-Middleton of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue

Summary
The portion va-y’chi brings us to the end of the Book of Genesis. It recounts the last days of Jacob. He makes Joseph swear to bring his body back to Canaan, so as to lay him to rest with his forefathers in the ancestral burial place in Machpelah. In a final attempt to resolve the traumas of his youth, adopts and blesses Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh, voluntarily reversing their birth order, by treating the younger son with preferentially as, one time he had made his father do by means of cheating.

At his deathbed Jacob addresses his sons for the last time in a beautifully poetical, but almost cruelly honest speech, traditionally known as ‘the blessing of Jacob’, yet perhaps it would be better described as ‘Jacob’s ethical will’; describing the character of each of his 12 sons with all their strengths and shortcomings, predicting from it their future, both as his sons and as future tribes of the Children of Israel. After his death follows a description of the burial and mourning period for Jacob.

The book finally ends with Joseph’s death; he too makes his brothers swear to bring his bones back to Canaan, when they will eventually leave Egypt, thus hinting to the Exodus from Egypt, which of course will be recounted in the next book.  

Commentary
Va-y’chi brings us to a crossroad in the biblical story – we remember the threefold promise, originally made to Abraham and handed down to the Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob; a promise of land, offspring and the covenantal relationship with the Eternal One. But at the end of the portion that promise is still far from fulfilled; the patriarchal family may have grown into a tribe of 70 souls strong, they are no longer living in the land; Will they ever reach the land?

The entire narrative of the Torah hangs on that threefold promise of the covenant, but it is never entirely fulfilled – instead it describes a journey – from family to nation; from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to the Promised Land; time, in that narrative is not a real straight continuum, but rather a self-repeating spiral. Perhaps that is what the Rabbis meant when they said that there is no real chronology in the Torah

Jacob’s blessing contains many anachronisms and serves as much for the narrator as a historical link between the later reality of tribal existence as the characters described in the text. It hints to that certain constancy and certainty at monumental moments in life or history; where death and life meet; when an era ends, and a new one begins, at how much the past influences the present and the future, yet how little the future can be predicted even with knowledge and hindsight of the past.

Of course we know what will happen as we have read the story so many times, but it is the finality of death, of a certain journey completed, and not quite knowing what the future brings, which resonates with in us with at this beginning of the secular New Year.  We too feel at a crossroad of time – all our actions and choices of the past year will way up our behaviour and choices in this year. Although we do have the power to change our path in life dramatically – there is no doubt that past, present and future are inextricably connected with one another, and though that may be a slightly frightening thought, we are also able to draw comfort from the fact that real dramatic changes in life hardly ever happen. 

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Kathleen de Magtige-Middleton
The Liberal Jewish Synagogue