בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְותָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסוק בְּדִבְרֵי תורָה:
Blessing for Torah Study
Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha'Olam Asher Kideshanu Bemitzvotav Vetzivanu La'asok Bedivrei Torah
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, Sovereign of Eternity, who has made us uniquely sacred through Your mitzvot (sacred callings) and called upon us to immerse ourselves in the words of Torah.
December 30, 2023 / 18 Tevet 5784
Summary of Torah Portion from ReformJudaism.org
- Jacob blesses his grandchildren, Ephraim and Manasseh. (48:1-20)
- Jacob's twelve sons gather around his deathbed, and each receives an evaluation and a prediction of his future. (49:1-33)
- Joseph mourns his father's death and has Jacob embalmed. Jacob is buried in Hebron in the cave of the field of the Machpelah in the land of Canaan. (50:1-14)
- Joseph assures his concerned brothers that he has forgiven them and promises to care for them and their families. (50:15-21)
- Just before he dies, Joseph tells his brothers that God will return them to the Land that God promised to the patriarchs. The Children of Israel promise Joseph that they will take his bones with them when they leave Egypt. (50:22-26)
We Begin with Kushiyot/Challenges/Difficulties in the Text:
- Grammatical inconsistencies (Words repeated, something left out, sentences that seem to not make sense)
- Theological inconsistencies (The Torah tells us something that is morally problematic or a character does something that isn't right)
- Ambiguities (Torah says something that can be interpreted in more than one way)
- Metaphor (The Torah uses a word or a phrase that isn't meant literally, but is figurative)
- Contradictions (The Torah says one thing here, another thing there)
- Superfluous language (The Torah includes information that doesn't seem important)
- Narrative Inconsistencies (The sequence of events is unclear or out of order)
As we read the following texts, ask yourself , what Questions/Kushiyot arise for you?
“The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day—
(16) The Messenger who has redeemed me from all harm—
Bless the lads.
In them may my name be recalled,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.” (17) When Joseph saw that his father was placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head, he thought it wrong; so he took hold of his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s. (18) “Not so, Father,” Joseph said to his father, “for the other is the first-born; place your right hand on his head.” (19) But his father objected, saying, “I know, my son, I know. He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great. Yet his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall be plentiful enough for nations.” (20) So he blessed them that day, saying, “By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh.
Commentaries
Who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you, to Egypt: With these words, Jacob intimated why he considered Ephraim and Manasseh his own sons. These two grandchildren were born and raised in Egypt before Jacob was there and nonetheless grew up true to his ideals. Therefore, he considered them as loyal to him and his ideals as his own children. (Likutei Sichot, vol. 15) **Likkutei Sichos (literally, "Collected Talks") contains both the scope and the core of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings
Why should the children of Israel specifically bless themselves [with Ephraim and Manasseh] and not with the rest of the tribes? It is an important foundation in the ethical traditions of Judaism not to exalt oneself over others and not to be jealous of them. When Jacob saw that even though he chose the younger Ephraim to serve as the "firstborn" [in status], despite this, Ephraim did not exalt himself over Manasseh and Manasseh was not jealous of Ephraim. Jacob said [to himself]: "If only all the children of Israel could be like this, free of arrogance and envy!" . . . Therefore, Israel is blessed specifically through them, so that like them there should not be jealousy and competition ruling them. (Igra DeKallah, by the nineteenth century Polish Rabbi Zvi Elimelech of Dinov)
Why, specifically, "like Ephraim and like Manasseh?" Rather, Jacob saw that the Diaspora was growing closer to his children, and he knew that in a foreign [place] Jews are put into grave danger, therefore he blessed them that they should be like Ephraim and Manasseh-the first Jews who were born, grew up, and were educated in the Diaspora, in Egypt-but despite this, "they are mine" (Genesis 48:5), they are as faithful to the house of Israel as Reuben and Simeon. (Yalkut Y'hudah, a work by the nineteenth-twentieth century Russian Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ginsburg)
Why do we bless our sons in the name of Ephraim and Manasseh? Perhaps, she says, "because these are the first two siblings in the Bible who do not fight. With Ephraim and Manasseh, the family pathology that unfolds in the Book of Genesis, in which siblings struggle with each other, finally comes to an end. They teach us that we do not have to fight over blessings: there are enough of them to go around. (Rabbi Laura Geller)
Biblical Motif: The Older shall Serve the Younger
"What the major appearances of the Younger Brother motif have in common is that they are all distinguished by the inscrutable nature of God's choice. Younger brothers do not appear to be selected for their merit, at least initially ... In the majority of [the] cases, the later specialness of the person - the qualities which divine foresight might have led God to choose them in the first place - often emerged in conjunction with suffering and not glory ... Given Israel's checkered history - in the Bible's terms, of faithfulness and infidelity - there must have been a strong sense of mystery, even anxiety, about God's choice of this people. They were neither numerous (Deut 7:7), nor militarily strong ... Deuteronomy repeatedly gives love as the main reason for Israel's chosenness alternating it with the 'merit of the forefathers' (Deut 4:37), but neither of these reasons is based on a strong, independent sense of self.
"The Younger Brother stories are fraught with the danger of extinction, with the threat that the hero, and by extension, the community, may not survive ... the tension inherent in such texts is played out in a paradoxical manner: God chooses those whom one might least expect." (E. Fox is titled "Stalking the Younger Brother: Some Models for Understanding a Biblical Motif.")
"Years of story telling have accustomed us to younger offsprings' success in overcoming impossible odds and overthrowing the shackles of oppression. Rather than catching us off guard, the appearance of a younger son attracts our attention, signaling his eventual success, even as we wonder how that will be achieved… In the end, Israel was as unlikely a choice as the heroes of her past. But like them, she believed herself both truly chosen and fundamentally deserving ... Very much at the center of God's world, Israel looks forward to a time when her political power, like that of the Bible's younger brothers, will match her theological status." (Frederick E. Greenspahn has written an entire book on our topic called "When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of Younger Siblings in the Hebrew Bible.")
Genesis has seen this pattern in the lives of Isaac (who supplants Ishmael), Jacob (who supplants Esau), Rachel (more beloved than the elder Leah), Peretz (David’s progenitor, who trails Zerach out of the womb), and especially Jacob’s children, including the beloved son Joseph (who supplants 10 older brothers and one sister) whose story concludes Genesis this week, and about which I will have a little more to say below... This week, we close the book of Genesis with the full expression of this pattern in the lives of Jacob’s children and grandchildren. For one thing, the physical firstborn, Reuben, is rather bluntly reminded of his displacement. Perhaps more dramatically (Gen. 48), Reuben’s younger brother Joseph is enshrined as the true spiritual firstborn, and Joseph’s own children, Ephraim and Menasheh, see the same pattern play out in their family status… In what appears to be a gesture of formal adoption, Jacob asserts that—for purposes of inheritance and family status—Ephraim and Menasheh become Jacob’s own children, equal to Reuben and Simeon. The effect of this gesture, it would seem, is to guarantee that Joseph receive the double portion due the firstborn.
Why does the Torah consistently repeat this pattern of rav ya’avod tza’ir (the older shall serve the younger; Gen. 25:23)? A clue might be found in Jacob’s ungentle deathbed rebuke to Reuben (Gen. 49:3–4). “Reuben,” begins the patriarch, “you are my firstborn, my strength and my vigor, most powerful and most mighty.” This indicates the folk-medical reason why the firstborn was seen as preeminent: ancient people thought the firstborn received the best dose of his father’s genetic material. But, Jacob goes on, Reuben blew it. “You are unstable as water, and you will not endure, for you came upon your father’s bed and defiled my couch.” Reuben, you may recall, slept with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine (Gen. 35:22).Again, a psychologically attentive reading is kind of heartbreaking here... poor Reuben never got over being displaced by his younger siblings, and spent his whole futile life trying to reassert his role, failing every time. A midrash (Tanhuma Buber Va-yehi 11) adds another layer of pathos to this episode, suggesting that the reason Reuben had sex with Bilhah was to drive Jacob back to the bed of Leah, Reuben’s lonely mother, Jacob’s unloved first wife.
But don’t be too sympathetic to unloved Reuben, or you will miss the moral and spiritual thrust of the narrative: Reuben had natural strength on his side, but was morally unworthy of those gifts.
The Bible, and Judaism generally, are wary of thinking that natural order or natural strength is decisive. Beyond them is the moral and spiritual greatness that our small nation can attain by loving and serving God and God’s creatures. If outward power were decisive, we and our children and our children’s children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.
srael is driven to see past the outwardly powerful to the inwardly profound. Even in our own families, Genesis reminds us, those whose birth order would seem to make them natural candidates for leadership must earn their positions through moral greatness, not good looks and big muscles. “God does not see as people see. For people see the outward appearance, but God looks through to the heart.” (I Samuel 16). (Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky)