Shepherd, Kingmaker, Candlestick Maker: Vayechi.25
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
January 9, 2025
This week's portion (Va-yechi, Genesis 47:28--50:26) brings to a close the first book of the Torah, Genesis. It also offers a fulfilling conclusion to the stories of Jacob, the third Patriarch of the Jewish People, and of Joseph and his Brothers. It’s a happy ending of sorts ("happily ever after" only works in legends and fairy tales), but at the same time it also opens the door not only to the next book, Exodus, but actually to the unfolding of the entire history and philosophy of Judaism.
The main characters of these chapters—Jacob, Joseph and Judah—all grow and develop through their respective stories. Each learns something important about themselves and their place and role in the world. Jacob—the erstwhile doubter—now at the end of his life and ready to give his children his death-bed blessing, expresses his new understanding of God's Presence: "The God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day" (Gen. 48:15, NIV). Jacob’s faith is no longer riddled with doubts. He has come to understand and accept the role that God has had in his life, guarding and guiding him yet leaving him free to make his own choices and decisions.
Jacob’s understanding of God is very different from Joseph's. Earlier in his life Joseph prided himself on his God-given gift as interpreter of dreams. He saw himself as The Blessed One among his brothers, the focus not only of Jacob’s love but also of God’s attention. Now however, also nearing the end of his life, Joseph’s vision has become even grander. Even as he forgives his brothers for everything they had done to him, he tells them, "Although you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result--the survival of many people" (Gen. 50:20). What we do or say doesn't matter, he implies; it's God who pulls the strings, God who controls and even manipulates history and life. It wasn’t the brothers’ fault that they sold him into slavery. It was God’s intention all along. Joseph’s view enables him to see his years of exile and suffering as part of God’s larger—and unknowable—plan, and this gives him a measure of comfort and consolation.
Unlike Jacob and Joseph, we don’t hear much about Judah’s relationship with God. He is more of a doer than a believer, one whose feet are firmly planted on the ground and who relies on the work of his hands to shape his life. His life journey, however, has taught him a valuable lesson: What you do and say matters, with consequences that often last well into the future. Stepping up to defend and protect Benjamin, along with his confession and sincere repentance (see last week’s portion, Vayigash) make the entire story’s resolution possible. His words and deeds hold the key to his own, personal, redemption, but simultaneously also shed light on an ethical and moral way of life—the substance of Judaism from that point on.
There is no "winner take all" as this philosophical discussion concludes. Each of these three perspectives is interwoven into Jewish philosophy. Jacob's view is perhaps the most subtle, yet also more complete, of the three. Throughout our history we, B'nai Yisrael, the children of Jacob/Israel, aka the Jewish People, have seen God's guiding hand in our lives. God has indeed been our Shepherd, so beautifully expressed in Psalm 23, "Adonai is my Shepherd, I shall not want." For thousands of years this Psalm has given us solace as well as purpose. Yet it does not offer excuses for our mistakes. This is where Judah's view comes into our faith: We are individually responsible for our own actions. Our words and deeds shape our lives. We all make mistakes, but forgiveness and redemption are possible—not only through God's Grace, but as a result, once again, of what we say and do. The focus in Judah's worldview is on our humanity. Our weaknesses and our strengths form us; our choices give us purpose and direct us onto the path that is our life.
And Joseph? He represents a perfect ideal, the messianic hope that lies within each of us, that God not only guides, God actually shapes the course of our life, leading us to a predestined goal, a state of completion and holiness.
In this week's portion, however, we also find an epilogue to Joseph’s story, one that contains a cautionary warning: As viceroy of Egypt, Joseph turns all the Egyptians into Pharaoh's serfs. The lesson this part of the story teaches is that a certain danger lies in Joseph's worldview. To be sure, the messianic ideal is part of Judaism. The prophet Isaiah describes it in his beautiful vision: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them (Is. 11:6, KJV). We have always striven to achieve harmony with the world around us, to find our own place and role not only in our private lives, but also in the life of the cosmos. Our hope and purpose have always been to heal that which we see broken, to make the world whole again—or at the very least, better than how we found it. That is the essence of messianism. Yet there is a lurking danger in this philosophy: It's a perspective that emerges from, and often leads to, gross overestimation of ourselves. Messianism—the idea of a divine goal and purpose to existence—is one thing; messiahs and messianic figures are something different altogether. World (and Jewish) history is filled with people who thought so highly of themselves that they managed to convince themselves as well as others of their divine origin and purpose. Such a view, warns the Torah, is dangerous. It inevitably ends up enslaving others. It diminishes human potential and deprives people of essential human rights and freedoms. The kind of absolute devotion that messianic figures demand and command is not different from any other kind of totalitarianism. It is, for all intents and purposes, tyranny. Sadly, history—past and present—is filled with examples of this danger.
The three different perspectives that the Torah offers us have become inseparable parts of Judaism, parts of who each of us is and hopes to be. Within each of us we find the dreamer as well as the doer, even as we come to realize that we have not been walking the path alone—that God's Presence has always been there alongside us, Shepherding us through deep shadows as well as sunlit meadows.
© 2025 by Boaz D. Heilman
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