Parashat Vayehi – 5786

Blessing Our Children

A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayehi

By Rabbi Dr. Rachel Posner

In my new role as a congregational rabbi, I have the incredible honor of working with conversion students—people choosing Judaism. Yesterday I met with one of my students, Tom, who is nearing the culmination of the process and preparing to meet with the Beit Din. We met to talk about his choice of a Hebrew name. Tom decided to take the name Yaakov, because Jacob’s God-wrestling resonated deeply with him. Wonderful.

Once that question was resolved, I asked Tom to consider the names of his Jewish parents. In our tradition, after all, our name is never merely Jacob or Rachel. Every Jewish name includes the name of one’s parents—an acknowledgment of where we come from.

Traditionally, gerim assume the parental names of our first ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. I offered Tom the possibility that he might forgo that tradition in favor of honoring someone in his life who felt like a Jewish parent to him.

“Oh no,” Tom said. “Bearing the names of Abraham and Sarah has incredible meaning to me. It links me to a chain of tradition. It connects me to my adoptive ancestors.”

Vayehi, the parashah of endings and blessings, teaches us that blessing is precisely this act: linking a person to a lineage without erasing their individuality.

In Judaism, our ancestors abound. We invoke them in prayer. We study their words. Their names become our names. The shalshelet dorot, the chain of generations, binds us to the past and to one another. Nowhere is this more tangible than in one of our most beloved home rituals: birkat hayeladim, the blessing of the children. In this ritual, parents step into the role of the Kohanim, offering blessings that link their children to ancestral hope.

While the core words of Birkat Kohanim come from Numbers 6:24–26, the opening formula of birkat hayeladim comes from this week’s portion, when Jacob blesses his grandchildren as he nears the end of his life:

וַיְבָ֨רְכֵ֜ם בַּיּ֣וֹם הַהוּא֮ לֵאמוֹר֒ בְּךָ֗ יְבָרֵ֤ךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר יְשִֽׂמְךָ֣ אֱלֹהִ֔ים כְּאֶפְרַ֖יִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁ֑ה׃

“So he blessed them that day, saying: ‘By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’”

Why Ephraim and Manasseh? It is striking that the blessing for boys invokes Joseph’s children, while the parallel blessing for girls names the matriarchs—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

Rabbi Mordechai Elon[1] suggests that Ephraim and Manasseh are held up because they are the first pair of biblical brothers who do not treat one another as rivals. After generations of fraternal conflict—from Cain and Abel through Jacob and Esau—these brothers model a relationship sustained by peace. In blessing our children, we pray that they, too, will forge relationships built on peace and sustained by peace.

Rabbi Shmuel Hominer[2] offers a different lens. Ephraim and Manasseh grow up as minorities within Egyptian society, surrounded by a dominant culture that threatens to engulf and flatten their distinctiveness. They face the pressures of assimilation and yet remain rooted in their people and their faith. In this reading, we bless our children to remain themselves—even when it is hard to do so.

After this initial blessing, Jacob goes on to bless each of his sons individually. Some of these blessings feel less like blessings and more like prophecies, or even moral reckonings. Yet in each case, Jacob speaks to the specific nature of the son standing before him. Sforno (Genesis 49:28) comments that Jacob “gave an individual blessing to each one in accordance with what he perceived to be the son’s need in view of his eventual destiny.” Or HaHaim (Genesis 49:28) similarly notes that “each person received a blessing in keeping with his individual personality and achievements.”

Jacob, at the end of his life, models a theology of blessing that holds two truths at once: each child belongs to a shared story, and each child requires a blessing uniquely their own.

Birkat hayeladim infuses our hopes, fears, and love into our children—but more than that, it blesses the relationship between parent and child. It sanctifies the bond that links the generations. Even, or especially, when that relationship becomes tense or fraught, birkat hayeladim invokes the shalshelet dorot to remind us of the common source we share, even as we honor the singular gifts of each child.

When it comes to family life, the days are long, but the years are short. Birkat hayeladim has taken on greater significance for me as I watch the number of Friday nights before our youngest leaves for college steadily dwindle. Most Friday evenings, when I bless my daughters, I try to remember to add a silent extra prayer that a rabbi friend taught me years ago: “God, please bless me to be the parent this child needs now.”

In a tradition so deeply concerned with transmitting faith across generations, birkat hayeladim gives us a moment—amid carpools, homework, doctors’ appointments, and handwashing—to pause and pray not only for our children, but for ourselves. It asks that the Blessed Holy One help us each become worthy links in the sacred chain of the Jewish people.

[1] HaravElon.co.il, Commentary on Parashat Vayehi, and https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/blessing-the-children/

[2] Eved HaMelech, Commentary on Parashat Vayehi, and https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/blessing-the-children