Torah Posting: ויחי
At the beginning of the conclusion of the first book of my family’s creation story, my forefather — Ya’akov, whom God called Yisra’el — asks his son — Yosef, who has been made governor of Egypt — not to bury him in Mitzrayim when he dies. He asks Yosef to bring his body back to Kena’an to be interred in the ancestral place. Yosef agrees and swears to him it shall be done.
Soon after, the governor is told his father is ill, and he brings his sons, Menasheh and Efrayim, to see him.
So begins a series of intergenerational blessings that is the template for much of the essence of Jewish spiritual practice.
First, to Yosef, Ya’akov declares — in the name of אל שדי, the ancient nurturing name of the Breast-God — that his grandsons Efrayim and Menasheh will each have tribal holdings of their own, alongside Ya’akov’s own sons. Any sons born after them will receive their holdings from Yosef. Ya’akov does this in the name of his wife, Rahel, who died during travel and was not able to be buried in the ancestral place.
Then Ya’akov pronounces a blessing upon Efrayim and Menasheh directly, which becomes the explicit model for fathers’ blessings upon the heads of sons, as is customary on Shabbat evening.
At first, he cannot recognize them because his eyes are dim with age. This beautifully echoes the moment Ya’akov received the patriarchal blessing from his own father, Yitzhak, which he had to do by trickery in order to keep the divine plan moving.
Yosef brings Ya’akov’s grandsons close, and Ya’akov kisses and embraces them. Then he turns to Yosef and exclaims his joy. “I never expected to see you again,” he says, “But here you are, and your children as well!”
Yosef bows low to the ground in emotion. Then he brings his sons — Efrayim at his right hand, Menasheh at his left — close to Ya’akov for their blessing. The text is highly explicit and precise about the directions; it explains that the sides the sons are on are mirrored for their grandfather facing them, but Ya’akov crosses his hands, putting his right hand on the head of Efrayim, the younger son, and his left hand on the head of Menasheh, the first-born son. All this is surely meant as instructions to the reader for how to bestow such blessings, but the criss-cross nature of it also seems to illustrate the story and the tangled qualities of this lineage.
Then the poetry begins to flow out. In the name of the ancestral God and the Divine Messengers who have protected this line, and in the names of the ancestors themselves, Ya’akov begins to pronounce blessings and predictions about what will come next.
When he’s done with Yosef and his sons, he calls all his own sons to him for their blessings, and these become more complicated. They are certainly blessings, but they account for the brothers’ past conduct, which as we know has been far from perfect. Some of the predictions for the brothers’ lineages are not altogether positive. All of them are omens for the far future, when the children of Yisra’el are settled in the promised land.
Yehudah gets one of the most abundantly positive blessings, with Ya’akov comparing him to a lion. This has a little bit of a history-written-by-the-winners quality if you ask me; the tribe of Yehudah, the Yehudim, that’s the tribe that survives into the future: the Jews.
“All these were the tribes of Yisra’el, 12 in number” — the primordial Mesopotamian number for dividing the cosmic whole into parts.
When he completes his transmission, Yisra’el informs his sons that he is about to die and instructs them to bury him in the cave of Makhpelah, in Kena’an, which their forefather, Avraham, bought fair and square, and in which Avraham, his wife, Sarah, Yitzhak and Rivkah, and Ya’akov’s own wife Le’ah — but not Rahel, who died on the road — are all buried.
Ya’akov finishes his instructions, draws (יאסף, ye’esof, an echo of Yosef) his feet up into the bed, and is gathered (יאסף, ye’asef) to his people (עמיו, a weighty application of the word ’am, as in ’am Yisra’el, the People of Israel).
Yosef flings himself upon his father’s body and weeps, and then does something strange; he orders the Egyptian physicians to embalm Yisra’el, a 40-day process. And the Egyptian people mourn him for 70 days.
This is a touching public moment of solidarity, but on the other hand… Jewish people don’t embalm our dead. It’s kind of our thing. These customs are surely in part meant to set us apart specifically from Egyptians, the reasons for which have not yet happened in the story, and so there’s no reason they should apply yet. But it does contrast with the way in which the other ancestors were buried in the cave of Makhpelah. I can’t help but connect this embalming — which was not part of Ya’akov’s instructions! — with the way Yosef has assimilated into the Egyptian power structure.
At any rate, with the funeral rites complete, Yosef goes before Pharaoh’s court and relates his father’s wishes for his body to be taken out of Mitzrayim and buried in Kena’an. Pharaoh solemnly agrees to let his governor go do this. So Yosef, the whole family, and a whole cadre of Egyptian elites and dignitaries go up to Kena’an with the body.
They cross the Yarden river, and then they hold another huge funeral for seven days. The Kena’anim see this solemn gathering and pay their respects as well. When it’s over, the sons take Ya’akov’s body to the field near Mamre and bury him in the cave.
They all return to Mitzrayim afterwards.
Yosef’s brothers become worried that Yosef will exact revenge on them for the whole selling him into slavery thing, now that their father is gone. They relate to Yosef an instruction from their father that he must forgive them. It is not at all clear whether this really happened. But regardless, this is an emotional scene for all involved, and the brothers are contrite.
Yosef’s response is interesting. Just as he did more than once when people ascribed his magical dream interpretation powers to him personally, Yosef defers to God. And he says that God clearly intended all this for good, because it led to this reunion and indeed to the people’s survival through this intense famine. Yosef promises he will continue to provide for them in Mitzrayim.
The parashah gives Yosef’s lifespan as 110 years — not quite his father’s 147, but not too shabby. Yosef lives to see the third generation of his sons’ descendants. Then Yosef calls in his brothers, about to die, and he echoes their father’s dying message. “God will protect you and bring you out of Mitzrayim, back to the land of our forefathers. And when I die, you must carry up my bones from here.”
The Book of Bereishit ends:
וַיָּ֣מׇת יוֹסֵ֔ף בֶּן־מֵאָ֥ה וָעֶ֖שֶׂר שָׁנִ֑ים וַיַּחַנְט֣וּ אֹת֔וֹ וַיִּ֥ישֶׂם בָּאָר֖וֹן בְּמִצְרָֽיִם׃
And Yosef died, a son of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus in Mitzrayim.
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