Vayechi: The Blessings of Israel's Identity

The last portion of the first book of the Torah ends with the death of Joseph, after narrating the burial of Jacob by his entire family, which follows the blessings for his children including Joseph's sons.

Jacob last blessings encompass traits and qualities that shape Israel's identity. As we mentioned in our previous commentaries on this portion in this blog, these blessings are given in the spirit of unity and togetherness of Israel as a family and as a nation.

“(...) 'Gather yourselves together',” “Assemble yourselves, and hear, you sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father.” (Genesis 49:1-2)

In this context we can understand Jacob's words shaping Israel's identity.

Identity comprises a wide range of facets, levels and dimensions which are diverse, though part of the same unity. Our most formidable challenge in life is to integrate them all as a harmonic functional unit. Jacob blesses his children with precious talents and potentials he presents as branches of the same tree.

Besides being extensions as expressions of consciousness, they are also contained within each other. Blessings are manifest as long as we pursue their meaning and purpose.

We need the cunning of Dan to protect the goodness of Joseph, and safeguard Issachar's Torah wisdom. We need Judah's leadership towards love's redemption in order to guide Zebulun's journeys in the sea, and empower Naphtali's eloquence to proclaim Benjamin's eagerness to defend justice, righteousness and freedom.

We need Joseph's transforming love to make successful Judah's rectifying regency, in order to defeat ego's negative trends such as anger and violence.

Blessings are also guidelines that correct the course of ego's fantasies and illusions, as well as negative traits and trends in consciousness. In this sense, Jacob's condemnation of Simeon and Levi's weapons of violence are actually his blessing for them. He cursed their anger and violence for their own sake.

Our choice to reject the negative trends in consciousness is a blessing, for we choose goodness over evil. Likewise, we are blessed when we are reminded to respect the rights of others in order for them to respect ours, as it occurred with Jacob's address to Reuben.

Jacob's final words to his sons contain ethical values as directions to enhance and empower the positive potentials in our consciousness. Indeed life is the vessel where God's blessings are bestowed, and every level of consciousness is expected to experience them, and manifest them in our immediate surroundings.

We truly experience God's blessings when we integrate all aspects of life towards the goodness of the blessings. The premise for this is to discern, think, feel, sense, speak and act in love's ways and attributes in order to realize that God's love is the blessing.

We can't expect to be happy, fulfilled and complete if love is absent in our life. Love makes the difference between what is real and transcending, and temporary illusion.

In this sense love transcends time and space as the essence that gives us life, and sustains our identity beyond life. Love is what we are and have before we are born and after we die. Love is what keeps us alive here and beyond. In this awareness we realize that love is what we have beyond the material world.

Once we said -- equalizing Torah study to an act of love -- that one who loves every day is assured a place in the World to Come, because the ways of the world are love's. In a deeper meaning and in practical terms, as long as we love every day, love's ways become our ways that also will be ours in the after life. Hence love is the only thing that remains with us in our transition when leaving the material world.

The more we love each day, the more we shall keep loving in our after life's days. This is about recognizing and embracing love as our essence and true identity here in the material world and beyond. Thus we understand the transcendence of love. Some compare love's transcendence to soul's transcendence because both exist beyond the limits of time and space.

The lesson at this point is to make ourselves aware every moment that love is our true identity here and beyond.

This is the underlying foundation of all blessings, including Jacob's for his sons. All we are and can be with the blessings we are, we manifest as long as we infuse them with love's ways and attributes, which are the means to manifest God's ways, as He teaches us in His Torah.

King David reminds us this in his last words when he blessed his son and heir, Solomon.

“(...) that the Lord may establish His word which He spoke concerning me, saying: 'If your children take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail you', said He, [as if He were] a man on the throne of Israel.” (I Kings 2:4)

This is the way we find our essence and true identity. We must understand that love is the way through which we find ourselves, and it is also the means to find our Creator. For His love is the truth in which we walk with our own love.

Vayechi: The Blessing of Israel's Unity

The unity of Israel as Jacob's family and as a Nation is the main message of Vayechi, and we must have full awareness of the qualities of this unity. Let's reflect on some verses that help us define such qualities.

“And Israel said to Joseph: 'I did not think possible to see your face; and, lo, God has let me see your seed also'.” (Genesis 48:11). Our Sages ponder on the meaning of the Hebrew verb translated here as “to think possible”, which refers to praying. Although, “to pray” is a reflexive verb in Hebrew, in this verse is not conjugated as reflexive, and may indicate an incomplete thought due to Jacob's sadness for Joseph's disappearance.

This brief preamble takes us to consider the wholeness implied in the Hebrew reflexive form of praying. Our Sages teach that, as our concentration in elevating all levels of consciousness to God, prayer replaces the offerings that our ancestors elevated in the Temple of Jerusalem. Still, why is it a reflective action and not one directed to Him? It must be reflective because, by engaging together all aspects and dimensions of consciousness towards God, we (think possible to) achieve our connection, unity and Oneness with Him. Hence Jewish prayer is about engaging oneself together with the Creator, and not a method to summon Him to grant us what we may need or want to require for our personal well being.

Jacob was concerned and worried that their children may not come together and united around him and his legacy (Israel as God's People). Our oral tradition tells that all his sons together declared to him, “Listen, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” to demonstrate that they were aware of the true meaning of unity. He called them commanding them to be united: “And Jacob called unto his sons and said, 'Gather yourselves together (…). Assemble yourselves, and hear, you sons of Jacob; and hearken to Israel your father'.” (49:1-2).

This request is the premise, the condition, the prerequisite, the provision for them to receive his blessings. Hence our Sages conclude that the blessing for each Tribe is also the blessing to all of them. We have to reiterate that the Tribes of Israel in the same way represent traits and qualities of human consciousness, defined to achieve God's will in who we are and what we do. We said in previous commentaries that Joseph became the Firstborn, Levi the Priesthood, and Judah the Kingship, as the threefold paradigm of Israel while the rest of the brothers are contributing aspects to it.

In our consciousness this paradigm encompasses intellect, mind, thoughts, emotions, passions and instincts along with talents, skills, traits and qualities aimed to enrich the diversity that life is. The variety we see in the material world inspires us to be as diverse as creative in the common mission to proclaim God's Presence as His Love manifest in His Creation.

In this sense God's Love, as our true Essence and identity, is Israel's paradigm to be enthroned as the leading and commanding ruler of who we are, what we have and what we do. Thus Love's ways and attributes are the only means to achieve unity in our consciousness as individuals, and consequently unity as a collective in the material world. In our praying we evoke God's Love by elevating our Love to Him. As both loves unite, we are ready to proclaim His Glory which covers the Earth. In this awareness we go out into the world to fulfill our mission to unify what is separated, to fix what is broken, to rectify the mistake, to heal what is ill, to ease what is burdensome, to untie the tied, to free the captive, to empower the weak, to educate the ignorant, to gather the exiled. We do all these through the unity that Love is.

Jacob blessed the goodness of who we are and the goodness that we can become. His blessings are such that also refer to the negative traits that threaten goodness as our common and final purpose: “(…) instruments of violence are their weapons. Let my soul not come into their council; unto their assembly let my glory not be united; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath because it is cruel (…).” (49:5-7).

We have said often that Love does not cohabit with anything different than its ways and attributes. Wrath and anger are inherent to violence. God's Love as the banner and Soul of Israel must not be associated with the negative aspects of consciousness. Our Sages remark that the Hebrew letter zayin (which also means armament) does not appear in any of the words in Jacob's blessing to Judah. In his mission to proclaim God's Sovereignty in the world we Jews don't need weapons. Neither Love needs them to bestow the blessings of God's Love.

Our Patriarch Jacob commands us to pursue unity in order to fulfill our mission as the Jewish people, and also teaches us that our Love is what unifies us to enthrone God's Presence in our individual consciousness, as well as in the entire world. The last four portions of Genesis start with Joseph and end with him: “These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph (…)” (37:2) and “Joseph died at the age of one hundred ten years (…)” (50:26), closing the first book of the Torah with the Firstborn and inheritor of Israel's legacy as the paradigm of God's Love manifest in human consciousness. Fourteen chapters that teach us through Joseph the qualities of the greatest blessing of the Creator for us: His Love.

Parshat Vayechi: Recognizing and Embracing God's Love

The last four portions of the book of Genesis are the most emotional of the Torah. The story of Joseph and his brothers makes us shed tears, indeed the same tears we shed when we yearn for God’s Love as our sole Redeemer.

Joseph is the keystone that maintains the unity of Israel in their coming down to Egypt and their consequent slavery under Pharaoh’s rule. Joseph reaffirms his prophecy of God's deliverance: “God will surely remember you.” (Genesis 50:24).

Our Father surely remembers us not only in times of affliction and ordeals, or as a fact in the future, because He always remembers us. The time of our individual and collective Redemption depends on our own initiative, by choosing the blessings and not the curses that we face every day in life.

How long is going to take us to recognize Joseph, our brother who represents Love’s ways and attributes? What does it take to choose Love over ego’s negative and ephemeral fantasies and illusions that cause us pain, suffering, disillusionment, separation, isolation, sadness, depression and everything that causes affliction in life?

The story also reminds us that Love is the subject in the relationship of Joseph and his brothers, and Love is also the object of our relationship with the Creator. Israel’s connection and unity with God are based on His Love. Also through Love that we relate to our Father in the return to our true home with Him. We said many times that we acquire knowledge through trial and error, true and false, right and wrong; and through this experiential process we learn to discern good from evil.

In this predicament we must integrate goodness into our consciousness and discard the negativity derived from falsehood and evil. This is the fundamental message the Torah teaches us in its words. Our Sages explain that God’s Love is the cause of Creation, and we have to embrace and experience Love in order to know our Father.

In this final portion of the book of Genesis Jacob blesses all his children with words full of symbolic meanings that are not easy to understand. This difficulty is explained by several reasons, being the most complex the divine context of these blessings we can’t fully grasp, for Jacob’s words for his sons were uttered by divine inspiration.

Our Sages teach that some of the blessings are related to the near future of Israel as a nation and the conquest of its enemies. The symbolic meanings of the Tribes (lion, snake, wolf, ox, gazelle, gate, ship, etc.) represent not only human traits, skills or qualities, but also deeper dimensions and potentialities of Israel in his connection with the Creator. Hence Israel’s mission is to know and to be aware of his relationship with Him through Torah study and good deeds, as the dynamic process of learning His ways and attributes.

Let’s take a look of parts of these blessings. “Shimon and Levi are brothers” (49:5). Our Sages quote Jacob saying to them: “You were brothers to Dinah, but you were not brothers to Joseph” (Midrash Rabbah). They ran to defend their sister’s honor (after she was raped in Shechem) because it was also their family’s honor. But they did not comprehend that acknowledging Joseph’s spiritual prevalence and leadership in the family was also a way of defending their honor and paying respect to their father’s will. “Instruments of violence are their weapons” (49:5). Our Sages also explain that these are not Israel’s instruments to fulfill his mission commanded by the Creator. These are Esau's, as his father Isaac said to him: “And by your sword shall you live” (27:40).

The negative potential aspects of our consciousness -- represented by Esau and the Canaanite nations -- are the instruments of violence and affliction to us and our fellow man. Israel is destined to conquer them and subjugate them. This means that all aspects and dimensions of consciousness must be subservient to Love’s ways and attributes. “Cursed be their anger” (49:7).

In anger our vision is lost. Our Sages teach that living in anger is equated to idol worship, because it is like living in one of ego’s illusions (as well as pride, envy, lust, greed, indolence, etc.) instead of living in the truth of God’s ways. Hence anger must be cursed and vanished from our consciousness.

Let’s see now a part of Jacob’s blessing for Joseph: “(…) from the God of your father, and He will help you, and with the Almighty, and He will bless you [with] the blessings of the Heavens above, the blessings of the deep, lying below, the blessings of father and mother.” (49:25). God’s Love is indeed in every dimension of life and in every aspect of consciousness, never separated from us.

At the end of this portion again Joseph is not recognized by his brothers: “And when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘What if Joseph will hate us, and will pay us back the evil which we did to him’?” (50:15), “And Joseph wept when they spoke to him” (50:17), “And Joseph said to them: ‘Fear not; for am I in the place of God’?” (50:19).

God is the place of the goodness of Love, the place that we have to know, to recognize, to embrace and to cherish. Love is the place that also yearns for us to be with Him, weeping sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly.

The haftarah for the last portion of the Torah makes a parallel between Jacob’s final blessings and David’s blessing to Solomon, before he died: “That the Lord may continue His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your children take heed to their way, to walk before Me in Truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail you’, said He, ‘a man on the throne of Israel’.” (I Kings 2:4). This is Love’s promise and Love’s manifestation when we cleave to God's Love.