December 29, 2012

Va-y’chi, Genesis 47:28–50:26

By Dr. Deborah Miller | Associate Director of the Melton Research Center for Jewish Education

It’s Not What You Say . . .

A number of years ago, I took my grandson to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. During the intermission, he said, “This is the best show I ever saw in my whole life!”
I smiled. He was four. His whole life? When can we look back and say, “All my life I have (believed / felt / acted as though . . . )”?

Certainly Jacob is in this position in the final parashah of the book of Genesis, as he lies on his deathbed. We, too, can look back on his life and see what patterns emerge as we consider what kind of a person he has been. At the same time, we see Joseph, the early favored son, standing with his father in his final scene on earth—and serving as a contrast to him.

We have learned that two trees do not make a pattern—it takes three. So we have to look at a series of events in order to learn about Jacob. What can we discern?

To my mind, there are two salient aspects of Jacob’s life. One is that he has been true to his name throughout his long life: He was named sneak/supplanter at birth, and has rarely veered from that description. He has exercised poor judgment in his family life, and made it difficult for his children to live nobly. He has shown no growth of character, and no wisdom gained from experience. On the contrary—after seeing the devastating familial effects of favoring Joseph, he still persists in blessing the younger of Joseph’s two children more than the older, in spite of Joseph’s attempts to correct him.

Joseph, in contrast, has learned. If Jacob’s social and emotional maturity looks like a flat line, Joseph’s shows growth, change, and learning from life. He magnanimously looks beyond the hurts his brothers inflicted, takes his brothers in and nurtures them, and sees to all their and their families’ needs. He can see the bigger picture—how their deliberate injuries inadvertently resulted in his ability to save a whole civilization. Having this perspective, he can try to relieve their well-deserved guilt.

I’m afraid that my low opinion of Jacob and my high opinion of Joseph are all too evident. For me, the proof of the differences in their characters is captured in an amazing repetition of a key phrase. In two different stories, in two different contexts, Jacob and Joseph say the same thing. In each the tone is totally different. And each reveals the essential character of the protagonist.
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