D'var Torah
Arthur C. Greenfield

Vayechi, the last Parashah of Genesis, spans chapters 47:28 to 50:26. It tells of Jacob's predictions for his children and his death.
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Jacob knows his strength is diminishing and that his end is near. He summons Joseph to him and asks Joseph to place his hand under Jacob's thigh and swear he will not bury him in Egypt. He charges Joseph to bury him with his father and grandfather in the cave of Machpelah which Abraham bought and where he and Sarah were buried. This same cave is the resting place of Isaac, Rebekah and where he, Jacob, buried his wife Leah. Joseph swears he will obey his father's wishes.

A short time later Jacob grows weaker and Joseph is told of his frail condition. He brings his sons Ephraim and Manasseh to his bedside. Jacob tells Joseph he will adopt these two boys as his own and they will share in the inheritance. He blesses them placing his right hand on Ephraim's head and his left on the head of Manasseh. Joseph tells Jacob his right hand should be on Manasseh's head as he is the first born. Joseph goes to move his hands. Jacob refuses to switch hands and tells Joseph both will be a great people but the younger brother will be greater—then Jacob blesses them.

Jacob gathers his sons to his deathbed to tell them what is going to befall them. To each he ascribes different traits of character. Reuben his first born he calls unstable as water. He declares Reuben will not be successful because he defiled his father's bed by engaging in sexual activity with his stepmother's maid Bilhah.

In Genesis chapters 49:1-18 Jacob tells each of his sons what they can expect to experience in their lives. He describes each son in graphic terms. Judah he names a lion's whelp and tells him he will dominate his enemies. Dan is described as a serpent in the road that bites the horse's heels, and he would judge his people. Jacob called Simeon and Levi brothers in violence. He prayed that his soul not come into their council—for in their anger they slew men and beast.  Jacob cursed their descendants to be scattered throughout Israel. When he has finished describing the future of his twelve sons he reclines in his bed and takes his last breath.

Joseph, accompanied by Egyptian dignitaries, traveled to the cave of Machpelah where he buried Jacob. Upon his return to Egypt his brothers feared Joseph would seek revenge upon them for their act of selling him into slavery. Joseph told them not to fear, for he was not G-d, and even though they had intended him evil, God meant it for good in order to save many people. Joseph reassures them and commits to sustain them and their children. He tells his brothers G-d will lead them out of Egypt to the land promised to Abraham. Joseph died when he was 110.

In reading the portion where Jacob describes his children in such graphic terms I was reminded how journalist and writer Damon Runyon (Guys and Dolls and Pocket Full of Miracles), gave descriptive names to all his characters: Benny South Street, Nathan Detroit, Harry the Horse, Apple Annie and Nicely, Nicely Johnson.

I also reflected on the obvious theme that all of his children were different. Anyone with children knows that is usually the case. As parents we are sometimes surprised by how different our children are. My brother and I were born ten years apart; we were essentially two only children. I looked up to him as my very smart big brother. To him, I was just an annoyance who should be ignored.

As an adult, when my father was stricken with cancer, even though we lived in Bakersfield it was I who drove in every week to take him to City Of Hope for chemotherapy. When my mother was sick and elderly, it was I who did what needed to be done for her. My brother was just too busy or lived too far away in Leisure World. He is going to be eighty-eight in a couple of months and is not in good health. Not surprisingly he is feeling depressed and I have been calling him every few days to see how he is doing. I realized I had a choice to make. See my brother and sister-in-law once a year with phone calls every couple of months or remember we are a very small family and recall lessons I had learned through the years and forget the past. I could say tough luck, or like Joseph, believe it was G-D's plan and all had been for the best.

One would think that the basic problems of today would have little or no relevance to events that occurred around 3000 years ago. We might well think that our characters have evolved, that we have become so much wiser with the passage of time, and yet it does not appear to be the case. I suppose the basics have always been there: love, hate, envy, anger, greed, guilt and forgiveness.
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It seems to confirm—the stories we read in Genesis really do have a place in molding our thinking about today's concerns.

D'var Torah
by Erika Schwartz

This Torah portion deals with how Joseph treats his brothers after he reveals himself to them.  To fully understand the ramifications of how he chooses to behave towards them, we must first revisit a little of the family history.
 
In Genesis 37:28 we learned that Joseph’s brother sold Joseph to passing Midianite traders for twenty pieces of silver.  Why?  Because Joseph was favored by his father and so the brothers were jealous.
 
By any standards, this was a cruel and treacherous act.  Not only had they sold their brother into slavery but they covered it up by dipping his tunic in blood and presenting it to their father who, of course, came to the conclusion that his beloved son had been torn to shreds by a wild beast.
 
As years passed, the brothers could only imagine that Joseph was either dead or living a brutal life.  They had no way of knowing that, in fact, Joseph eventually fared very well in Egypt.  Because of his ability to interpret dreams, he had become a favorite of the Pharoah and eventually was second in Egypt only to the Pharoah.  Joseph’s power and influence were unequalled.
 
When, during the famine, Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt in an attempt to purchase grain, he (Joseph) recognized them.
 
So, let’s pause here for a moment.
 
Putting yourself in Joseph’s shoes, how would you react to the sudden realization that the very brothers who sold you into slavery were now begging you to sell them grain so that they and their families wouldn’t starve? What a super opportunity for revenge!  There aren’t too many people that I’ve known who wouldn’t hold a lifetime grudge if their siblings had sold them into slavery.  I suspect that, if they suddenly found themselves in a position of unlimited power, the first thing they’d do is take out a contract on said siblings.
 
But Joseph has other plans.  Without revealing who he is, he sells them the grain but returns their money in the sacks of grain.  He accuses them of being spies, thereby giving him the perfect opportunity to extract information from them about their father and his brother, Benjamin.
 
Which then brings us to the current Torah portion, Va-Yiggash, in which Joseph reveals to his siblings that he is the brother they sold into slavery.  Not only does he reveal himself to his brothers but, almost in the same breath, he tells them:
 
“. . .do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that G-d sent me ahead of you.  It is now two years that there has been famine in the land, and there are still five years to come in which there shall be no yield from tilling.  G-d has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance.  So, it was not you who sent me here, but G-d.”
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So, what has Joseph done?  He’s taken a moment in which he could have exacted brutal revenge on the siblings who sold him into slavery, and turned it into an awareness that G-d does have a plan . . . an awareness that, from some of the most awful situations can perhaps come a realization that good has come from it.
 
Notice that I said “can perhaps come a realization”.  That’s because not all terrible situations turn into blessings in disguise.  That’s an absolute given!  But many do and most of us don’t even stop to think about that.
 
When something terrible happens to us, whether it’s by someone else’s design or by fate, we cling to the anger or the resentment or the depression for life.  How many of us are still talking endlessly about our awful childhood or the terrible thing a friend or sibling did to us decades ago?
 
Or, even worse, how many of us get angry over the most trivial things?  I know two brothers who didn’t talk to each other for two years because one brother got angry at the other over an annoyingly noisy contraption that one of the brothers was playing with.  Really???
 
But, let’s get back to deliberate (or seemingly deliberate) acts of cruelty or meanness.  Or even acts of   G-d that shred our souls.  Have we ever bothered to look back at these awful situations and consider that, had we not gone through the pain of those situations, we wouldn’t have particular blessings in our life today.
 
I just had a realization . . . . I’ve come full circle to the theme that was at the core of the last D’var Torah that I wrote and, when I began writing this, I had no intention of going in this direction.  But here I am again, reminding myself that sometimes our darkest pain can be the cause of our greatest joy later in life.  I promise I’ll try to go in a different direction next time.
 
Joseph attributed his enslavement in Egypt to the plan that G-d had to save Egypt and Joseph’s own family from the terrible famine to come.  He had no anger or resentment toward his brothers because he saw their act of selling him to the Midianites as having been orchestrated by the hand of G-d.  By the same token, it took me 40 years to realize that the very difficult life I had led from the day of my very birth eventually forged a sense of love and gratitude for the life I have today.  Would I live in such love and gratitude if my early years had been a bed of roses?  I seriously doubt it.  So all the pain was definitely worth the outcome.
 
All we have to do is allow ourselves to see the silver lining.  But we have to be willing to look for it.