וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
As I prepared to write a D’var Torah for parashat Vayehi – with my Tanakh, my research notes and my computer open in front of me, my thoughts kept going to the date later in the week of the yahrzeit of my husband, Rabbi Joseph H. Wise z”l. I looked it up and parashat Vayehi was read on the Shabbat following his passing which seemed to further connect the parashah and the yahrzeit.
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
Wrestling With Our Names: Lessons from Jacob/Israel
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayehi
By Rabbi Rena Kieval (’06)
Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents
Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear
Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls
Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors
Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing
Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love
Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work
Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness
Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.
© Translation: 2004, Marcia Lee Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayehi
By Rabbi Marc Rudolph (’04)
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D‘var Torah
In Act ll of Richard the Second, Shakespeare tells us that:
The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth/ that breathe their words in pain.
This week’s parasha recounts the dying words of Yaakov avinu. As you recall, Jacob has brought his entire family to Egypt and for seventeen years has been reunited with his beloved son Joseph. The parasha opens with Jacob summoning his children to his bedside. With his last words Jacob rebukes some of his sons, prays for others, gives blessings to some, recalls memories, shares psychological insights, delivers warnings and imparts hope. After blessing his youngest son, Benjamin, Jacob speaks no more. The Torah tells us that he gathers his feet into his Read More >
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
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A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayehi
By Rabbi David Markus
This last Torah portion of the Book of Genesis (Vayeḥi) concludes the drama of Jacob, Joseph and his brothers. The dramatic saga – their troubled family dynamics, power and power inversions, regret, guilt, fear, their very lives – it all finally reaches a settled tableau. Jacob is buried, hatchets are buried (maybe), and Joseph’s body is embalmed. With them, Torah’s first era of Jewish ancestry ends.
Of course, their deaths are Torah’s fertilizer for the future. Reflecting God’s promise to Abraham long before (Gen. 15:13), by design all of this week’s endings are mere prelude. The next chapter soon will open by recounting those generations (Ex. 1:1-6), and a new king of Egypt will rise to life who knows not Joseph (Ex. 1:8). Centuries of bondage will commingle death and life until only supernatural deaths – the Tenth Plague and the drowning Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayehi
by Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)
With Parashat Vayehi we come to the end of the book of Genesis, the completion of a series of individual narratives including those of our matriarchs and patriarchs.
Let us imagine for a moment that Genesis and the following book of Exodus are two parts of a movie, each with its own musical soundtrack. Genesis ends on a happy note as Jacob is buried in the family plot at Makhpela in Canaan, surrounded by his family — grand-finale-type music, or perhaps a mellow, sweet melody. Camera pans out. Suddenly, the tone of the movie score alters dramatically as the Exodus narrative begins — a sinister motif suggesting the portent of things to come, the slavery of our people at the hands of a paranoid and cruel pharaoh. There’s trouble ahead!
Pause. We’re not ready to move forward yet. High-speed rewind. Let’s take another look at that Genesis happy ending, Read More >
The Future — A Sealed Book?
By Rabbi Len Levin
If you were handed a sealed envelope that you had reason to believe contained an infallible prediction of the future course of your life—or of the world’s political history of the next twenty years—would you open it?
This week’s portion Vayehi is unique in its orthography of all portions in the Torah. Whereas the beginning of most portions is indicated by a clear paragraph break, with the words beginning on a new line or after a couple of inches of blank space, Vayehi begins after only a two-letter space separating it from the previous text. The rabbis of the third century interpreted this anomaly: “Jacob our patriarch sought to disclose the end of days, but it was sealed off from him.” (Genesis Rabbah 96:1)
Indeed, in the continuation of the portion, Jacob gathers his sons and tells them, “Come together that I Read More >
by Rabbi Isaac Mann
Did Jacob ever find out that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and that they deceived him into thinking that he was killed by a wild animal?
The Torah never directly addresses this issue, but according to one popular interpretation of the “blessing” that Jacob gave Simeon and Levi, it would appear that he did know that the brothers, in particular those two, were instrumental in Joseph’s kidnapping. Thus, his parting words to them — “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” (Gen. 49:6). The last phrase of this verse reads “u-virtzonam ikru shor,” which can be translated, as does the Midrash, “willingly they uprooted (in the sense of harmed) the ox.” Who is the “ox” that the two brothers uprooted or intended to Read More >
Parashat Va-Yehi
Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky
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Many people associate this week’s parashah with endings. Much of the parashah consists of Jacob’s final testament to his children, and next week we no longer read about the trials and tribulations of Abraham’s descendants, but rather of the rise of Moses as a leader and the Israelite’s enslavement in Egypt. Despite this emphasis on the end of an era, an interpretation found in the Talmud understands a verse found at the beginning of this week’s parashah as a sign of beginning.
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Parashat Vay’hi
Hazzan Marcia Lane
As a Jew, and in particular as a hazzan, I’ve always felt very comfortable with life in thegolah, in exile from the Land of Israel. As much as I love it when I’m there, I feel my Judaism strengthened by my life here in the United States. In the final parashah of the book of Genesis, Vay’hi, we close out the narrative of the families of our patriarchs and prepare for the next story, one that will take the tribes descended from those patriarchs from servitude in Egypt to the brink of the Land of Canaan, which will later become Israel. The essence of Parashat Vay’hi is life and death, specifically the lives and deaths of Jacob and his beloved son Joseph. Curiously, the ways in which they lived are not necessarily reflected in the events surrounding their deaths. Is there something to be learned from these two men about relationships to family, to the land Read More >
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