by Rabbi Sari Laufer
Facebook has already started making its year end videos, making it seem like 2019 is even closer than it is. With Christmas lights twinkling, traffic lightening, and 80 degree weather approaching—it is clear that we are in the holiday season, preparing for vacations and relaxation and the end of the year.
I recently had the chance to learn with some of our members about time—how we conceive of it and use it, both in American culture and in Jewish tradition. In our final class, we talked about the New Year—both Rosh Hashanah and January 1. In Jewish tradition, actually, there were 4 days considered the beginning of the year, marking different ways of counting our time; ultimately, Rosh Hashanah came out on top. But, as an American Jew, I’ve always appreciate the chance to have both Rosh Hashanah and January 1. The timing between them always felt appropriate, letting the secular New Year be a check in point for the intentions I might have set at Rosh Hashanah, the behavior and relational changes I hoped for myself. A chance to say: How am I doing? And what could I do differently or better?
This week, our Torah speeds towards the conclusion of Genesis, with Jacob’s life—and then Joseph’s—coming to an end. These two narratives, the stories of their lives, are the most complete literary stories in the Torah—a beginning, a middle, and end. There is conflict and resolution, tension and denoument. And here, in VaYechi, we find Jacob surrounded by his sons at the end of his life. In a bookend to the complicated way that his story began, Jacob ends his life by blessing first his grandsons, and then each of his 12 sons.
Upon first glance, you wonder about these blessings. To Reuven, his first-born, he acknowledges the privilege of rank and power bestowed on him by the birth order. But, he goes on to say, ‘instability like water in you does not permit you this privilege, for you have mounted your father’s couch and profaned it.’ Or Shimon and Levi, of whom he speaks of their fraternal bond, but also says: ‘A curse therefore upon their anger, for it is too cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.’
His words to each of his sons are complicated, but there is also something powerful in the way that—though he is blind at this point—he truly sees them. He sees them for who they are, for their strengths and their weaknesses, and in these challenging blessings, is able to give them—perhaps—a clue to changing their lives and their behaviors. If nothing else, he ends his life with nothing left unsaid; indeed, the book of Genesis ends with a sense of completion. Jacob’s bones are returned to the land of his birth, and Joseph is buried—for the time being at least—in Egypt, the place that saved him. And while we (spoiler alert, Egypt doesn’t work out as well for the rest of us) know what is to come, the book—full of turbulent familial relationships—ends with a sense of rest and quiet. All Is well, at least until next Shabbat.
The end of 2018 is not the end, period. We wake up on January 1, no different than we were on December 31—if perhaps a little tired. But, as we read this Torah portion a week and a half before the year ends, perhaps there is a lesson to learn from Jacob. Perhaps, like the days before Rosh Hashanah, these days are days for us to check in, to take stock. Perhaps they can be days to say the things we want to say to loved ones—hopefully kind things and blessings, but maybe hard things too. Perhaps, they are the days in which we do make resolutions, not just about the weight we are going to lose or the gym we are going to join, but about what we can do in this “other” New Year so that we can grow closer to the person we imagined ourselves becoming when we sat together on the High Holy Days.
And, so, my blessing for you in these days ahead are that you find some quiet and relaxation, that you have time with family and friends, and that you enter 2019 in health, happiness, and hope.
Shabbat Shalom.