Shabbat Vayechi

Written by Dr Moshe Lavee Thursday, 04 January 2007

I am writing this Dvar Torah under the immense impression of my third Limmud conference experience. It will be very difficult to describe the feelings of admiration and enthusiasm evoked by the event.

 Limmud is not only the Jewish framework I was searching for for years, it is also, so it seems, the format that the Jewish people needs. It may sound an exaggeration, but I see Limmud in line with the state of Israel. Both are platforms for Jewish continuity, shaped in a model which fits the needs of its time. What is it that makes Limmud such a great Jewish achievement? It seems that a reading of our Parasha might supply us with an answer.

The book of Genesis, as the story of our ancestral tribe, is coming to its touching conclusion. It is common to read the book as a portrayal of God’s choice. In a gradual process, God has examined his creation, chosen Noah out of the ten generations that preceded him, preferred Abraham against his ancestors, saw Isaac as the only real son of Abraham and found Jacob as the chosen, superior to his twin, Esau. The process has come to its end in our Parasha, when all the children of Jacob are blessed by their father, all are included in the group, and no one is defiled, marked as evil or unwanted. This picture can be regarded as the prevailing Jewish narrative of Genesis. As such, the dominant narrative tends to silence other voices, other scripts, which are also available in the complicated, rich, and elaborate text of the Torah. The silenced script is that of reconciliation.

The book of Genesis tells us also about the ability to reconcile. The murder of Abel is irreversible; Cain had to carry its implication throughout his life. Yet each of the fighting brothers in the book ends up in reconciliation. Isaac and Ishmael buried their father together; so did Jacob and Esau; in our Parashah the twelve tribes (as the brothers are frequently named in the Midrash) are gathered together around their father’s bed in his last hours. Yet, there is a unique aspect for this specific gathering, which is absent from the former sibling’s reconciliation. All the former cases can be considered as a model for interfaith dialogue. The coming together of Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael did not create a reunited family. The distinctiveness is kept. A measure of rejection exists in each of the stories, one brother is rejected. It is only in our Parasha, that the coming together creates one family. Only now twelve distinctive Jews can come together, keep their own names and separate personalities, and yet be one united family.

There are two different models to understand this happening, the continuity and belonging of all the members of the family. One model is described in the Midrash, Sifre Devarim 34. According to the exegetical narrative, Jacob, familiar with the family history of choice and rejection, was anxious about the possibility that any of his children would not follow his path (well, he was a Jewish father…), and thus be rejected as his brother or uncle. Then, all his sons said together, ‘Hear O Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is one’. At this very moment, Jacob (Israel), confined to his deathbed וישתחו יעקב על המטה, thanked God for having twelve obedient and faithful sons. The unity of the family, according to this model, is created by the shared practices and beliefs of the twelve sons.

Yet, there is another model, implied in Rav Nachman of Braslev’s Likutey Moharan 112, where he relates the twelve sons to twelve gates, each of them needed in order to carry the prayers of Israel to God. Each gate is needed, as different individuals offer many prayers, and each one has his own tune, his own Nigun, and only through the existence of the multiple gates model, all the people of Israel are expressed and represented. In that sense our Parasha is a wonderful illustration of the greatest achievement of Limmud, in which the Leo Beack College community was significantly represented this year. It is the ability to bring all the tribes together, to express the plurality of contemporary Judaism, to open the gates of prayer by creating a multi-sensual experience. Anglo-Jewry should be proud for bringing this model to the wider Jewish world. It is a wonderful platform for carrying our Jewishness to the 21th

 century, echoed in our Parasha.

Moshe Lavee