The End of the Beginning

The end of Bereshit – an accomplishment that feels markedly set within each year of Torah engagement. We have traipsed through our creation stories, begun to wrestle with our relationship to G!d (and his characteristics, interactions, and personality), and questioned all that we should learn from the narratives of our ancestors. This week, the last of our “forefathers” die, but not before blessing the future generations, the children who will forever be associated by name with the tribes of our people, and give us a national identity that Shemot (Exodus) will begin to form next week.

In a connection similar to Chayyei Sarah, the title “Vayechi” refers to Joseph’s life, but is also fraught with the story of his death. When you ask someone who happens in this parsha, often you hear answers such as “death” and “moving,” but even more popular: “Blessing.” In a similar fashion to Abraham’s exchange with his servant, Israel (Jacob) asks his son Joseph to place his hand under his thigh. This covenantal oath formula, particularly the physical aspect, is actually a matter of some discussion. Since circumcision was also a covenant, the use of the word thigh here has been suggested as sort of a linguistic censorship. The Tanakh includes other examples of possible euphemism – some more questionable than others (such as Isaiah 6). For some reason, this week is the first time I was made aware of this possibility!

After Joseph swears to his father that he will bury him with his ancestors (in Hebron – which requires his remains to be moved out of Egypt at some point), the parsha continues with the blessings Israel bestows upon his sons and on Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Reading through the blessings of the brothers provides an insight into their personalities and the future of the tribes. Beyond these words and the pictures they paint, though, we are left with a final blessing of the younger rather than the older son (this time Joseph’s children), causing us to again question the motivation in scripture to say one thing but repeatedly practice the other.

This week, a friend asked me why I thought this happens. In a second moment of realization this week, I found that I easily expressed my opinions, but had never thought to vocalize them in such a way before. Based solely on my personal (albeit including years of formal academic) study and familiarity with the text, I suggested a twofold consideration of the phenomenon:

Culture: Perhaps since the blessing/inheritance of the firstborn was something that occurred not just among the “Israelites,” but also their neighbors, this suggestion was meant to fit the culture, but the blatant and repeated misapplication of the “rule” set the developing nation (through their forefathers) apart from the other nations.

Text: By creating a trope, the narratives communicate priorities of G!d, leading to the idea of elevating the disenfranchised. [This idea relies upon an understanding that by even presenting the stories of women, non-Israelites, etc., scripture has already presented both G!d and the authors as different from many of the surrounding cultures.]

So this week, my reflections became more academic than they sometimes are (particularly this year, as I have sought to offer my first responses to an unaccompanied reading of the text, rather pulling from my ever-growing library of familiar resources to help me understand.) We’ll see what this final reflection in the first book of the Torah has to offer in the next few weeks as we recall the exodus from Egypt and the “formal” presentation of our people as a nation.

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I am ready to delve into study and reading during break to krawl partway out of my komps kaos. I have continued working on finalizing my last bibliography this week and also found some primary texts to peruse.