The Blogs: Parashat Vayechi, Seeing Soul’s Sides, Part 1

The following essay is a revised version of the d’var Torah I posted here in 2025. This year I have re-edited it into two parts.

“Each of the twelve tribes is like one part of the external body, linked by the joints” (Zohar, Vayechi 241a). This is one of the Zohar’s comments on this parasha, where Jacob gives blessings to his sons (and two of his grandsons), whose descendants will become “the tribes of Israel.” A little later, the Zohar says about the human soul: “It drops pearls which are linked together like the joints of the body” (245b). We talk about connections that are everywhere, and the word kedusha (holiness) is an intentional kind of elevating separation that we create. For our reflection on love and our own creative processes, kedusha means naturally directing our mental separation or focus to think our best and feel aligned.

One Shabbat morning at kiddush (which comes from the same Hebrew root and which also happens to be the separation point between two sacred acts on Shabbat: prayer and eating), I had a related conversation about connection and separation. By happenstance, I was speaking with two women, each who works for her husband, and it seemed that for these two couples, both their businesses and marriages were thriving. I asked them questions about how this works, and they told me that among the keys to working together with a spouse are: (1) each one recognizing where the other excels and letting the other do that without interfering; and (2) keeping work life separate from personal life. Both of these pearls of wisdom connect to something deeper: a particular type of awareness of one’s connections and separations, as an individual, that comes before that of a couple. I had previously thought, from hearsay, that mixing work with one’s partner might ruin a relationship, but apparently even research studies suggest it is good to do many activities together, including work, as long as there are boundaries.

That idea turned out to be what I needed for a piece I was writing at the time. During that same period, I was studying a lot and immersing myself in my own types of meditations to maintain balance, and I published several long Torah articles back-to-back for many weeks. Each week, I often told myself, “Maybe this is the last article that I will write in this marathon.” I also wasn’t exactly visualizing myself continuing to write. If I stopped, it would be okay. I went against what I thought was “imagination creates reality,” because I was thinking about stopping, but I didn’t. I was exploring my honest feelings, which gave me the inner clarity to keep writing, increasingly better with each article.

This dance between the physical world of my creations and the inner world of my feelings reminds me that our soul is also composed of different parts that create balance within us. For example, we have the nefesh soul, which grounds us in the physical world and attends to physical needs of homeostasis. We also have the ruach soul, which is our emotional side, the basic mental state of homeostasis. As you may speculate, they are connected to the upper and lower sefirot. The nefesh and ruach are two of the basic distinct parts of the soul that we give attention to.

Any meaningful part of our life is connected to creativity, because everything we do and are is a creation. We don’t intentionally do creative work on Shabbat, but that day is also part of the creative process, the passive part, when we enjoy what we have created. We will explore that more in an upcoming chapter. We give blessings to our loved ones and the world on Shabbat – not as work, but more as an acknowledgment of what we already have.

The blessing that Jacob gives to Joseph’s two sons in this week’s parasha has been the inspiration for the words that parents traditionally have used for thousands of years to bless their sons on Shabbat (as Jacob stated it would be). The words we use to explain life design our lives. I find it most empowering to think that the boys’ two names represent different mental states in the creative process, because after all, in a somewhat passive way, we are always creating and appreciating our creations. We let God actually create. According to the fundamental processes of creative studies, we can say that convergent thinking is M’nasheh and divergent thinking is Ephraim.

Divergent thinking is big-picture thinking and letting many ideas emerge, a lot like seeing all the “fruitfulness” of the “land”, appreciating what we have, as in the name of Ephraim. On the other hand, convergent thinking is analyzing, letting go of what is too much, even if it is a good thing as we said before, or doesn’t serve us, as in the name of M’nasheh.

Interestingly, M’nasheh, who is the firstborn, can represent the appreciation of our inner world, which comes first, and Ephraim, our appreciation of our outer world. In the parasha, Jacob crosses his hands and Ephraim gets the blessing instead of the first-born. Perhaps, Ephraim needed to be blessed first because we do things in the physical world to change how we feel internally, which then changes the outside world, which then influences the internal again, and so forth in a cycle.

We may always be in the process of creating and enjoying our creations, but, too often, I find that the more I detach from the mental focus of creating, the faster solutions come. It seems that the moment I spend more time focusing on my heart, the center of emotions, right after, I get the most done in the physical world. Not everything needs to be focused on; we can let the subconscious mind, the other soul parts we will talk about next, do the rest. After all, it always has more information than our simple awareness.

It is when I am taking care of myself that I have ideas for helping those who are close to me and the greater world. We are like separate limbs that are connected by joints. As we focus more on the heart, which connects us to each other and to what we know and feel is right, our minds create balance by naturally connecting to the outside world to maintain harmony and to thrive. As infinite creatures, holy separation, kedusha, isn’t about dividing ourselves from each other, because we are never actually divided; just made of many parts that all want to be appreciated.