Vayechi: Blessings in Darkness

As Bereshit comes to an end, we are met with another ending: the end of Ya’akov’s life. His last acts, his lasts words, are filled with blessing. Having secured Yosef’s promise that he will be buried with his ancestors in Cana’an, Ya’akov blesses his favourite son and brings his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe under the umbrella of his own children, stating לי-הם אפרים ומנשה כראובן ושמעון יהיו-לי, ‘Ephraim and Menashe shall be mine as Reuven and Shimon are mine’ (Gen. 48:5). He goes on to bless each of his children individually, with reference to their characters and their actions. Some blessings are more glowing than others, but one thing is utterly clear in his words – Ya’akov knows his children and their potential. He knows that they are the hope, the blessing, that will continue and grow the Jewish people. In his last moments, he gathers his children around him and asks them to bring him home to be buried with his kin, his family. His life ends filled with blessing and hope for those that will succeed him.

This rather positive ending can be seen to be in contrast with many elements of Ya’akov’s life. Whilst he had the joy of many children, a deep, unwavering love with Rachel (and undoubtedly some element of love with his other wives), and the knowledge that he was the next link in the chain of the Abrahamic covenant, his life was also marred with great tragedy. It is curious that he is so filled with blessing when his life was filled with such suffering. As Erica Brown points out in The Torah of Leadership, he had experienced many disappointments – ‘the theft of his brother’s blessing, the switching of wives on the marriage altar, Laban’s exploitation, the disappearance of Joseph, the rape of Dinah [and] the famine in Canaan’.[1] Such disappointments – at such fundamental points of his life – must have shaped his view of his own existence. This idea is reflected in last week’s parasha Vayigash, where, meeting with the Pharaoh, Ya’akov laments that the years of his life are fewer than those who lived before him, saying ומאת שנה מעט ורעים היו ימי שני חיי, ‘few and hard have been the years of my life’ (Gen. 47:9). It is a short exchange, with words filled with a depth of sadness in acknowledging the difficulties he has faced, yet, just as with the end of his life, it is marked not by melancholy but by blessing. In his greeting and farewell to Pharaoh, the Torah repeats the word ויברך, ‘and he blessed’ (Gen. 47:7,8).

As Brown points out, this exchange is a puzzling one, ‘one of the strangest conversations in all of Tanakh’.[2] Its brevity is jarring, and one could wonder why it is included at all. Brown offers a beautiful answer to this question, noting Ya’akov’s curious and surprising ability to bookend the tragedy of his life with blessings. She writes that ‘[Ya’akov’s] years were characteri[s]ed by difficulty, but [Ya’akov] always carried with him the capacity to bless’ – the ability to find some good, some light, in the darkness and struggle of surmounting tragedy.[3] In fact, his conversation with Pharaoh acts as a microcosm for his life as a whole. It is no easy task to see light when the clouds are so heavy overhead that you are drenched in melancholy, yet Ya’akov continually exemplifies this quality, blessing even the darkest times for setting him on the path intended for his life. Despite everything, his faith in G-d and in those around him is unwavering. Just as with Yosef last week, who  recontextualises his struggles in order to frame them within the reasons why they were meant to happen, Ya’akov recontextualises his melancholy within the hope of his children, putting his faith in them whilst holding space for the reality of his emotions and experiences. He blesses his children, even those that have disappointed or angered him; he instils in them hope for the future, and in securing their promise that he will be buried in Cana’an, in the land promised to the generations before and after him, he instils hope in himself that his life will end as it should.

As he dies, the Torah refers to Ya’akov as Ya’akov, writing that ‘breathing his last, he was gathered to his people’ (Gen. 49:33). For the remainder of the parasha, however, he is referred to as Israel, by that second name which G-d bestowed upon him after his struggle with the angel. In fact, the very addition of this name could be seen as the blessing he asked for after that physical struggle. That he is referred to as Israel after the Torah depicts him embodying this hopeful quality is significant, and Brown reflects on this, writing that ‘more than any other biblical leader, [Ya’akov] understood the secret of Jewish community and leadership: the ability to find the blessing in the struggle’.[4] Ya’akov’s conversation with Pharaoh might have been a microcosm of his life, but his character was the microcosm of the Jewish people, of עם ישראל. Our history is marred by tragedies great and small, from biblical times through to the present. Yet we are always able to see the light, however dim or distant it might seem. Brown writes that ‘it is always harder to plow on and seek the light [and that it] is even harder to make the light by finding the blessing in the struggle’.[5] Yet this is the power of the Jewish people. We bless, even when things are so murky, so indiscernible, that there seems no explanation or way forward. We make blessings on death, on earthquakes and tornados, on hearing bad news, blessing even that which appears wholly negative. It is part of what makes our souls flicker ever brighter. It lies at the centre of our survival.

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[1] Erica Brown, The Torah of Leadership, (2024), pg.49

[2] Brown, pg.47

[3] Brown, pg.50

[4] Brown, pg.50

[5] Brown, pg.50