Our Family Tradition

This week’s Torah portion is Vayechi, which means, and he lived. Jacob is about to die. He calls his son Joseph, Viceroy of Egypt, to give him final instructions about Jacob’s burial in Canaan. He adopts Joseph’s sons, Menashe and Ephraim, as his own. Later, just before he passes away, he blesses each of his 12 sons and dies quietly and peacefully, a very good death. His sons bury him and then become worried that Joseph will seek revenge for their plans to sell him over 30 years ago. Joseph forgives them completely. Later, as Joseph dies, the book of Genesis comes to a close.

The section of this portion I’d like to consider tonight is toward the beginning, where Jacob has called Joseph to speak with him. The Torah reads: “Jacob said to Joseph, El Shaddai had appeared to me in Luz in the land of Canaan and God blessed me. God said to me, Behold, I will make you fruitful and numerous and I will make you a congregation of peoples, and I will give this land to your offspring after you as an eternal holding.”(Gen. 48:3-4) In the next verse, Jacob adopts Joseph’s sons. Why is Jacob speaking to Joseph about God appearing to him? What relevance does it have to the adoption?

To answer these questions, it’s interesting to speculate about the stories told in this family. God appeared to Abraham at least six times; to Sarah and to Rebecca at least once; to Isaac more than once; and to Jacob at least twice, and perhaps four times. There was a family tradition that a personal relationship between God and man could be a normal, or at least a periodic, occurrence. Were these experiences regularly spoken about within the family? I imagine they were. What might God have wanted the members of this very special family to internalize from these stories? When Jacob speaks to Joseph, perhaps one thing Jacob wanted Joseph to do was to carry forward the personal relationship between God and human beings into the next generation of his family.

This possibility of a close relationship with God is something that we need the Torah to inform us of. Without the Torah, this possibly might not be known. We might also ask: what kind of person might Jacob have been without God’s direct and personal intervention? He began life as a manipulative person, not content with what he had, but wanting what others possessed. He had a lack of integrity and ran away from conflicts. After God’s guidance: the dream of the ladder reaching to heaven, the 20 years spent learning patience and much else from Laban’s negative example, the wrestling match with the angel; Jacob emerges as someone with great personal integrity, who faces up to confrontations; one who forgives and is grateful for what he has, valuing all his personal relationships and having learned from his and his family‘s mistakes. His closeness to God was vital to his becoming the Patriarch we revere and from whom we are descended.

There are teachings here for us as well. Like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob; like Moses and all the many prophets, many more than 20, like the Baal Shem Tov and many of the Rebbes who came after him in the 18th & 19th Centuries – this personal relationship with God is available to each of us. And further: God cares about each of us as God cared about Jacob. Our development, like his, is being directed, so that we can continue to grow in goodness, as he did. Jacob says to Joseph earlier in the portion: “do kindness and truth, chesed v’emet, with me.” These are our two main subject areas: kindness and truth.

Our Divine Teacher, our Divine Parent cares about us passionately; directs our studies and desires us to be in this personal relationship with God, as Moses says in Deuteronomy, for our benefit. As the secular year draws to a close and the new year begins, may we strengthen this relationship with God by applying ourselves to the study of these subjects, knowing that Goodness is working with us, as Rabbi Gelberman once wrote, on our behalf, to bring about a better us, a better year, and a better world. This is what Jacob wanted Joseph to remember and to actualize. This is our task too: to bring forth and maintain our closeness to God, which is after all, not only our birthright, but our family tradition.