Vayechi – And he lived
Genesis 47:28-50:26
Essay from The Glimpses from the Torah. Analysis of Psychological Causes of the Human Behaviour in the Torah.
Inna Rogatchi (C) 2023 – 2026
With Art by Michael Rogatchi (C)
Parsha Vayehi, And he lived, which ends the Bereishit, the first Book of the Torah, is one of the most concentrated chapters of the Torah. It is filled with so many essential topics for Judaism and Jewish outlook towards the world that even one of them would be sufficient for a very substantial part of a Jewish fundamental document to discuss and learn. But perhaps the fact that this parsha concludes the first book of the Torah demands an extra weight in it.
In this part, we are told about the passing of both Jacob and Joseph, the third Jewish patriarch and his beloved son, it narrates a rather dramatic and essentially meaningful process of Jacob’s blessing the Tribes, his sons, and in the case of Joseph, his grandsons. That destiny-prescribed blessing gave to the Tribes the impetus for their development from the new plato, with new knowledge and understanding, all of it being articulated by their father at the highly special moment before his departure from this World .
The parsha also tells about the one of the most enigmatic episodes in the entire Torah when Jacob who was about to tell the Tribes , and thus, to the entire Jewish people, the time of the end of the world ( meaning the coming of the Messiah in the Jewish tradition) , was prevented from doing it by the Divine intervention. The reason for that is still discussed by the Jewish scholars till today.
Vayechi tells us about the return of Jacob’s body to the Land of Israel and the unusual circumstances of his burial there ( with Talmud bringing more dramatic detail on that important episode). It also tells about the death of Joseph, but yet before that , it brings to us another eternal thriller of the Tribes’ behaviour towards Joseph after passing of their all father, in a very human whirl of emotions, fears and nervousness.
And – it produces Shema, its beginning, the first of its three verses, in the scene of the beginning of Jacob’s blessing of the Tribes. The appearance of the quiet-essential of Jewish prayer is a very decisive mark of the chapter which tells about Jewish people entering a principally new, post-Patriarchal stage of our history. With the passing of Jacob, the last of the patriarchs, the Jewish people were about to enter the next period of their life. The life in which the responsibility for self-sustainability had been growing for every Jewish person individually further more. They had to be morally prepared for this new way of their spiritual and moral life. They had to have their constant personal check-in, which the Shema is effectively about.
It is in this connection that Jacob decided to double-check, in the emphatic manner, the Tribes’ devotion to the Jewish faith. Prior to his departure from this World, Jacob knew that he needs to make the Tribes, his sons and two of his grandsons, to look into themselves at the pivotal moment and to make them to be decisively re-assured in their devotion to the Creator, an absolute basic of Jewish faith.
Jacob’s sudden, sharp, dramatic question to his sons which was perceived as an unexpected alarm by them ( and that reaction was exactly what Jacob was aiming to), in fact , was his ever-wise signal to the Tribes to remember who they are, what was their purpose in life, and what this purpose shall be based upon.
The Tribes’ emotional reply is the first phrase from our three-phrased essential Shema prayer: “Shema Israel, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonay Ehad” ( Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One). Before the Shema will be formed as we know it in the last, the fifth book of the Torah, in Deuteronomy, its first phrase, according to the Talmudic authorities was actually the Tribes’ answer to their father Israel ( as Jacob was re-named by the Creator, and as his name is written in the Torah since then, including the entire Vayechi chapter) – “Hear , O Israel… “ was their re-assurance, literally so, to their dying father of their strong, deep, unshakable devotion to the very core of the Jewish belief.
In Michael’s very special – and unique in his oeuvre – visual interpretation of the Shema, there is a ground for many reflections on the matter, from clear differentiation between good and evil to virtual details of the essential for Jewish people prayer. The shield of our belief and the way of an Jewish individual in his very personal daily addressing the Creator and plea to Him are expressed in this amazing artwork at the high level of intellect and laconism. Every time this work has been exhibited, we observed many people spending a lot of time in front of it, not surprisingly.
Further on in the parsha Vayechi, patriarch Jacob not only blesses his sons and two of his grandsons, Joseph’s children, before his passing, but his vital blessings is also a deep destiny-visioning analysis, which only wise heart of a unique leader of a courageous nation can provide. The leader whose own life was a concentration of an incredible amount of trials. It is not coincidental that many commentators have pointed out that the last seventeen years of Jacob’s life, his time in Egypt after his re-uniting with Joseph, were not only the happiest days of his life, but it was the only happy period of it. This is less than the eighth’s part, something like 11% of his 147 years of life. And he lived – emphasises the title of the parsha.
In the crucially important for all the further development of the Jewish history Jacob’s blessing of the Tribes, the leaders of the Jewish people received the impetus for their personal and, very importantly, their families, the tribes of Israel, further development. They’ve got the direction from Jacob, putting it in the modern way of expression. And they lived by it. Our people lived by it, having the Tribes characterised by Jacob before his passing, in the most authentic way.
That’s why Michael’s Strength of Love depicting the Lion of Judah in his work of 2016 ( he has more than one work on the theme) is so powerful. It conveys Jacob’s blessing to Judah as it is breathed through and from the canvas. At the same time, the work also reflects Judah’s and his descendants’, including King David, Michael’s favourite personality in the Jewish history, devotion to his father’s crucial blessing, and brings it tangible to anyone who sees it. The loyalty of Judah – and his tribe – to his father, and to Jacob’s vision and principles of life , his and his descendants’ resilience to defend our soil, spirit, lives and values, has become one of the noblest features in the Jewish character and Jewish history. And it continues to be like that.
The Torah’s commentators in every generation were acutely interested in the fact that Jacob, very decisively, has blessed two of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, thus elevating them to the level of his sons, the Tribes. In the blessing that has doubled Joseph’s portion, according to Jacob’s intention, Jacob foresaw two other crucial developments in Jewish history, with our heroes and formative figures Gideon and Joshua coming as descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim respectively. Nothing, just nothing, not a single detail in this amazing parsha Vayeish appears as occasional, sidelined or casual. And he lived.
Coming to its end, parsha Vayeish tells us about Joseph’s passing. But yet before that, the Torah narrative gets us to Shechem, twice. Firstly, in the beginning of his meeting with Joseph during which Jacob made his beloved son to give him the oath ( an exclusive deed in Jewish life), he grants Shechem as the portion in the Land of Israel to Joseph and his descendants, in a very meaningful reminder of the role of the place in their both destiny. Shechem was the place where his brothers carried out the plot against Joseph. By granting Shechem to Joseph as his portion of the Land of Israel, Jacob recuperated the devastating damage that the brothers, his sons, inflicted upon Joseph. It was an absolutely important and very meaningful implementation of fairness which, as a concept of life, is a backbone of Jewish moral heritage and tradition.
The next time Shechem appears in the same parsha after Jacob’s death, when the burial procession of his family accompanying Jacob’s coffin enters the Land of Israel and moves towards Machpelah Cave in order to bury the third patriarch there. At the Machpelah, as the Talmud provides in a dramatic and rather detailed account, there was also a dramatic confrontation between the Tribes and their descendants and Esau who decided to appear and prevent a possibility for Jacob to be buried at the last available place in the Cave, which Esau has planned for himself. The confrontation led to the ultimate end of Esau in swift and rather brutal way when one of the grandsons of Levi, in indignation of Esau’s plotting against Jacob, took his sword and the Esau’s decapitated head rolled over on all the way to the Machpellah, stopping precisely at the feet of his father Isaac where it is believed to be still there from then on, as it is stated by the Torah authorities.
But Shechem which is 200 km from the Machpelah, was the place where Joseph went alone after entering the Land of Israel after all those 37 years that he spent in Egypt after being set up by his brother in Shechem. It was essential for Joseph to return there, at the place from which his life has had such an ultimate and dramatic turn.
In Joseph’s decisive return to Shechem and his quiet intense prayer there, on his own, a special important feature of Jewish existence has transpired. In Shechem, returning immediately after entering the Land of Israel after 37 years of absence, a third part of his life that continued for 110 years, a mighty viceroy of Egypt, a de-facto ruler of a huge and important country, has profusely become the person who he really and always was: a Jewish man, the son of Jacob and Rachel, supremely talented and intelligent, solely devoted, introvertive Messenger of G-d, to cite the vision of Elie Wiesel, who had a lot of similar characteristic with Joseph himself and who understood and loved him deeply.
First and foremost, that sole prayer of the Egyptian viceroy at the pit in Shechem that has changed both his destiny, the destiny of his family, and consequently, the destiny of Jewish people, was absolutely important for Joseph who was there Alone But Not Lonely. That return and that prayer in Shechem was not just a closure for Joseph, but, from the point of view of Jewish perception of the world, it was a closing of the circle, which is an essential philosophical concept in Judaism. In the case of Joseph, it was a circle of a Jewish destiny which in the form of a circle is always purported to the perfection, and the logic in which the end also means the new beginning. This is actually the foundation of Jewish stern optimism that moves us on through the centuries of unimaginable trials against all odds.
Both, his father Jacob’s and his own deaths featured in the parsha Vayeshi, have not only ended their both noble and extremely difficult lives which did not poison their both hearts, but it prompted the springing of Jewish life further on, led by their both’ sons, the Tribes and Manasseh and Efraim whom both Jacob has elevated to the level of the Tribes so prophetically.
