Indifference to the wonders around us

Vayyechi


Genesis 47:28 - 50:26

Précis: As the Book of Genesis comes to a close, Jacob lived (vayyechi) in the land of Egypt for 17 years and dies after giving a final, poetic, individualized ethical testament to each of his sons. In a great funeral procession, Joseph, his brothers, Pharaoh and his court bring Jacob’s body to Machpela to be buried. At the end of the parasha, which is also the end of the Book of Genesis, Joseph also dies after exacting a promise from his family to (eventually) bring his remains to the family plot as well.


Genesis 48:11. “I never expected to see you again, and here God has let me see your children as well”
     Abraham Joshua Heschel has said, “Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.” How does this statement relate to Jacob?
     Last week, we read that Jacob informed Pharaoh, “The years of my sojourn are one hundred and thirty. Few and bad have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life spans of my fathers” (Genesis 47:9). At a time when Jacob should have been happy with his family’s reunion, he can only think about the hard life he had lived, and of its disappointments. A tragic flaw in Jacob’s character as portrayed up to this point is that he lacked the ability to recognize the blessings of life, a flaw which many of us share.
     But in this parasha, we see another side of Jacob. As he is about to die, Jacob says to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, and here God has let me see your children as well” (Genesis 48:11). Jacob is expressing his awareness that he has indeed experienced much good in his life. Jacob goes on to offer his blessing to his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh: “The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day, the Angel who has redeemed me from all harm — bless these lads” (48:15).
     Jacob’s death-bed utterance reveals that he at last recognizes the blessings in his life. He asks that the same Angel who has protected him through his travels will do the same for his grandsons.
     As Heschel says, we cannot be indifferent to the wonders all around us. Let’s use these verses as a reminder of the need to appreciate what we have. When we focus on life’s tribulations, we can forget all that is good in life. This is the basic rationale for the recitation of so many brachot into our daily lives: we are acknowledging God’s gifts in all that we experience.