Dvar Torah on Parshat Vayechi

At the beginning of the portion of the week, Yaakov is described as having grown old; his eyesight is poor, he is bedridden, and he is preparing for his death and burial in the Land of Canaan. His son Yosef comes to see him, bringing with him his two sons, Ephraim and Menashe. Yaakov greets them while sitting up on his death-bed, and delivers the first of an extended series of death-bed speeches. In this first section, in which he addresses Yosef and his sons - he will speak to his other children later - Yaakov reviews his own history, and tells Yosef that these two grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe, will be as sons to him, rather than grandsons, and will be considered, along with the rest of Yaakov's sons, two of the twelve tribes, and will inherit a share of the Land of Israel - "like Reuven and Shimon [Yaakov's first two sons] they will be to me."

Immediately following this speech, Yaakov looks at these two children of Yosef and asks "who are these?" Yosef responds: "they are my sons, which God gave me in [or 'with'] this...". After having their identities verified, Yaakov proceeds to bless his two grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe. The commentaries are, understandably, bothered by Yaakov's not recognizing Ephraim and Menashe. He had just been with them, talking to Yosef about them; why all of a sudden does he seem to not know who they are? The simple answer, obviously, is that Yaakov was experiencing a "senior moment". We know his eyesight is bad, he is 147 years old, he probably just lost it for a second and forgot who these two kids were.

Rashi, however, does not agree. Apparently unwilling to ascribe to Yaakov senility, blindness, or a lack of recognition of his own grandchildren, Rashi explains Yaakov's question - "who are these?" - in the following way: "he wished to bless them, but the Holy Spirit went away from him, because Jeroboam and Achav [two really evil kings] were destined to descend from Ephraim, and Yehu [another especially bloodthirsty king] and his sons [another bunch of creeps] from Menashe. He therefore asked, 'who are these', as if to say 'where did these, who are unworthy of being blessed, come from?' And so Yosef answered 'with this', and showed him the engagement document and the Ketubah [Jewish marriage agreement] of his wife, and Yosef ask for mercy, and the Holy Spirit rested on Yaakov [and he was able to bless them]."

It would seem that Yaakov saw, in some prophetic way, the potential for evil in his two grandchildren - they would have these wicked descendants. This made him unable or unwilling to bless them. How, then, does Yosef's waving his wife's Ketubah around make it possible for them to be blessed?  How does that change the repugnant decendants they will have?  It is not as if he is showing Yaakov that his assessment of their descendants is wrong, or that they, or some other offspring, will do some good deeds to offset the evil which will be perpetrated by Jeroboam, Achav, et. al. How do these marriage documents change things, and enable Yaakov to bless Ephraim and Menashe?

I think that by exhibiting these classic Jewish marriage documents, Yosef is trying to communicate the following message: Look, these kids may not be perfect, bad things will happen through them and because of them, but I did the best I could. I gave them a Jewish home, a Jewish family, their mother and I got married and lived our lives within the framework of Jewish traditions and values - even down here in Egypt! - what more could we have done? Obviously, this did not guarantee that our family would be perfect, that nothing would go wrong with our children or their descendants, but we did our best, we gave them the best family framework we could, we did what our tradition told us to do. After all this, are you going to withhold your blessing from them because they, or their descendants, will not turn out to be who we wished they would be?

This profound and heartfelt description of what it is to be a parent - to do one's best, to do the right thing, follow the advice of experts, work together with your spouse to give your kids the best possible home that you can, and yet still not be in control of how it will all turn out, in fact, not even know how it will all turn out - convinces the Holy Spirit to return to Yaakov, and let him get on with blessing these two well-brought up kids, who nonetheless will, somehow, bring evil into the world.

Parenting, we see here, is not about it all turning out perfect. It's about doing the best you can to create a framework that makes it at least possible for things to turn out as well as they can, and then realizing that stuff will happen anyway, and accepting that.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix