Vayechi

Vayechi – Yehoshua Engelman

Yehoshua Engelman teaches at Siach Yitzhak Hesder Yeshiva and works as a psychotherapist in Jerusalem.

Every portion in the Torah is separated from the previous one by starting with a new paragraph on a new line. All but this week's parsha. It seems to be addended directly, as if to say: This aftermath is an intrinsic part of all that precedes; without it, Jacob's story is not whole.

Last weeks portion has Pharaoh, a total stranger, asking Jacob his age, to which he does not suffice with simple adequate numeric answer, but responds "The one hundred and thirty years of my sojourning have been few and bad, less than my parent's". This is a complaint and statement of fact in which the answer to Pharaoh's question is secondary. It is also a sigh, a sharing, perhaps with one who he sees as an equal, not one of his children, perhaps the only person he, a stranger in Egypt, can share with. It is not a "Thank God" response, and it is a true one. Jacob looks back over his life and it has been a bad, sad, tragic, painful one. Nothing can change that; it is history, it is a fact. "I have not had a good life". The Midrash (traditional Rabbinic narrative) says that Job's words (III- 26) "I have had neither calm, nor quiet nor rest, rather anguish came" could equally well have been Jacob's motto.

This week's portion opens with a quite sudden "And Jacob lived!" - as a direct continuation from last weeks portion. "And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years, and Jacob's days, the years of his life, were seven years and forty and one hundred years". These may have been his best years. Retired, surrounded by his family, children and grandchildren, cared for by his powerful favourite son, he at last, after having travailed most of his life, can relax.

But there may be more than simple relaxation involved, there may be reflection. The Beit Yaaqov points out that, unlike other patriarchs whose days are numbered with the hundreds mentioned first (e.g. "One hundred years and seventy years and five years") Jacobs days are numbered conversely. Beit Yaaqov sees the 'hundreds' as signifying the generality, the essence, which precedes the details. There was a germ of a narrative which gradually grew into what was their life, there was a theme which unfolded throughout their lives. But this was a theme of which they were always in some way aware; Abraham and Isaac innately knew, had a sense, of what they were doing and had to do. They had a sense of direction and an inner guideline.

Not so Jacob. He was completely clueless as to what he was about, what his task and role in life was 'supposed to be', where he was going. Step by laborious step he had to grope his way in utter existential darkness, trying to fathom out, by trial and error, what seemed 'right', what he was supposed to do. Nothing - even moral quandaries which may for us seem simple questions - was fore-granted or known in advance. Neither did he have a goal, nor could he believe in any apriori truth which could guide him. There was no sense at all of any concept such as "God's Will" existing prior to his acting; he had no sense of direction. It was a constant, painful trial and error process of discovering what was right, in general and for him, and even that may have been of no use, for how can yesterday's solutions be of use for today's so-real deliberations. There was no script written by which he could act, he had to entirely invent his lines as he went along. And so each year was disparate, separate, from the preceding and following ones. Only at the end of his life, when he finally finds rest, can they be counted, and then - only backwards. His last years are ones of finally fully living - seventeen years of reflection addended to the preceding ones.

Some of us have a sense of where we are going, what we need to do, maybe getting derailed on the way, but never veering far from the track nor losing sight of goals. This is, for others, enviable. They look on wondering how that works, how does one construct life that way, where does one alight on this train of one's life? For such people there are no such guidelines; sadly there exists for them no plot to lose. They have to grope their whole way, each time creating anew a coherent narrative. For them, bliss may be the ability to see, in hindsight, that notwithstanding the agony of the Odyssey there emerges post-facto, all the same, a narrative of beauty. And sometimes, when one succeeds in taking a step back and seeing the artistic, literary or dramatic beauty that is difficult if not impossible to see when one is the actor - then one is granted, even before old age, a place of enjoyment of the aesthetic beauty that inheres even in one's pain, and a sense of the beauty that is so far beyond a judgement of good - evil emerges, and thus one is afforded a narrative and a place from which to continue one's life.