Parashat Vayehi: Jacob was Gathered to His People

Friday night, January 2, 2015

Rabbi Mark H. Levin

When I am in Israel, I frequently like to imagine scenes from other time periods that occurred right where I happen to be standing. In southern Jerusalem, for instance, Haas Promenade, an often toured walkway and large public area 2 ½ miles due south of the Old City of Jerusalem, brings to my mind's eye several graphic pictures. When I am facing north, I am looking at the Old City of Jerusalem from the south. The city's never been conquered from the south, a fact that prevented General David ben Gurion from attempting to recapture the Old City from the Jordanians and abandon the Jewish Quarter until it was reconquered in the Six Day War 19 years later in 1967. But perhaps 3,000 years earlier King David snuck into the Jebusite City of Yerushalem through the water cistern, by the Gihon Spring, directly in front of me. If I turn to my right, eastward, perhaps a half mile on the top of a hill stands the place the Six Day War started in 1967, as Israeli troops took over the U.N. outpost on the old Green Line separating Israel from Jordan. Turn 90 degrees to the south and you can find on the ground the marker placed there by the Israelis pointing out the aquaduct the Romans built to bring water 26 miles through the mountains, needing to find a path that was downhill all the way, bringing water to wash the blood of hundreds of daily sacrifices off the Temple Mount and into the Kidron Valley below. Turn another 90 degrees and face west, and you're likely looking at the path Abraham walked with Isaac and his servant Eliezer to take Isaac to Mt. Moriah on God's command to perhaps sacrifice his son Isaac on that mountain, 4,000 years ago. Standing there it's not hard to visualize each of these Jewish scenes, how our ancestors, centuries and millennia apart, walked this same geography that I have walked so many times, bringing about the history of our people.

And these thoughts rise to mind as we once again read the last parashah in Genesis. The only parashah in the Torah that begins without a break in the text, right in the middle of a Torah column, as if to anounce, "There's no break in the story here." We come to the conclusion of our patriarch Jacob's saga. He finds himself old and ill, and feels compelled to call his sons together for a summation of their lives and a final blessing to each.

There are various ways to view Torah. Some want to see it as a historical document. If that's the case, then this parashah concludes the story of the patriarchs, matriarchs and their families. I can't tell you these stories actually occurred as portrayed here with real people in real time. We just don't know.

But there is a new direction in the way the story of the Jewish people is being told.  In Genesis, concluding with this parashah, the story of the Jewish people is the tale of individuals and the intertwining of their lives. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Joseph, Asenat, Laban, Esau, Potiphar, Pharaoh – these are the protagonists and antagonists of Genesis history. But starting next week, our story becomes the history of a people. It's not Moses' story, or Aaron's, or Miriams, or Yocheved's. It's the interaction between the people and their God. Torah introduces a new perspective: how the people relate to God.

But here we are, at the conclusion of Genesis. Maybe history; maybe not.

Another way to view Torah is a series of commandments. Jews live by those commandments, and so Torah can be viewed from the perspective of how we are taught to live.

But there are no commandments in this parashah, and only 3 in all of Genesis. So the legal perspective may not help us at all; and the historical perspective presents a nice story, but maybe it never even happened.

And then there's another way to view Torah, from its spiritual perspective. In this way we take the stories and ask: what is Torah teaching us about our spiritual lives?  And maybe we have something here, something interesting and useful for everyday living.

You see, every human being who ever lived faces what Jacob confronts in this parashah. He's both old and sick, and acknowledging his mortality, Jacob decides to call his family together. Now think about it: Jacob has likely been sick at various times in his life. We know nothing about what happened to him in the 20 years Joseph was in Egypt. But I'm guessing it wasn't all a bed of roses. But for some reason, Jacob thinks about this illness, and his age, and decides, "Now's the time. I need to call the family together."

But for what?  It's not like he just saw his internist and got a bad report. He's not had an mri, a ct scan, bad blood work, nothing diagnostic. Why's he getting the entire family together? It's not for something medical; Jacob wants to pass along a spiritual message.

Jacob brings his family together to bless them, to explain to them the meaning of their lives, to challenge them to live into the future. Now think about what's really occurring here. Every person craves some signficance in their lives. We want our lives to matter. We can't all be rock stars, or TV personalities, or presidents and congressman. But we crave knowing that we were here for some purpose. We know we will pass from this earth. What will we leave behind? The most obvious legacy is any children we have brought into the world. They not only carry our genes, but our morality and our peculiar behavior. Two weeks ago I opened my wallet to pay a restaurant bill. Right there in my wallet is my driver's license. I  was looking at my driver's license, taking a credit card from my wallet, when I became aware of what I was thinking in the back of my head. I was thinking, below the thoughts of paying the bill and taking out the credit card, "Why am I carrying a picture of my dad?"  I was staring at my own driver's license and thinking it was a picture of my father! I never in my life was told I look like my dad, always that comment was about my mother. But here we are, carrying on our parents physical genetics as well as their behaviors and their values into the future.

At the end of chapter 49 the patriarch Jacob dies. The Torah says that he expired, rather than that he died. The translation says "breathing his last." It should have said that he died, vayamawt rather than vayigva. It's clear that Jacob has died. The Torah goes on to say that he was embalmed and eulogies were recited for him. He certainly is no longer in this life. But the Talmud uses this opportunity to claim that Jacob didn't actually die. Then it says, "As long as a man has living sons he has not died." As long as someone remains who righteously bears our teachings, we have not died. Whether it's a student, someone upon whose life we have made an indelible impression, or our actual physical offstring: as long as our teachings are alive we have not died. The body is consigned to the grave, but the purpose of a person's life lives on.

What was Jacob doing in calling his children together? He was assuring his immortality, immortalizing his values in his imperfect children who each would carry a piece of him into the future.  Here the Torah spiritually teaches the purpose of these stories. Our hearts yearn for immortality.  But we are not physically immortal. As Woody Allen so cogently proclaimed, "“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

Standing in Jerusalem and remembering, our ancestors live again in our minds. But even better, when we live according to the values of our teachers, particularly our parents, the Torah and they come to life.  As Psalm 118: 17 promises, "I shall not die, but live, and proclaim the works of the Lord."