VAYECHI 1991

In the Torah portion Vayechi we learn how Yaacov blesses his children before
he dies.  We learn how it says, "And Yaacov lived in the land of Egypt for
70 years and it was the days of Jacob, the years of his life 147 years, and
they approached the days of Israel to die".  Throughout the beginning of this
Torah portion they have interspersed always the names Yaacov and Yisroel.
Yaacov was different than Abraham because Abraham's original name was Avrom,
and after G-d changed his name from Avrom to Avraham we never find that his
original name Avrom is ever used again.  The same thing was true with his
wife, Sorai.  That was Sarah's original name.  She was called Sorai until
G-d changed her name to Sarah, and from then on her name was always referred
to as Sarah and never as Sorai, but Yaacov was different.  Yaacov was given
the name of Yisroel by the stranger with whom he wrestled all night before
he encountered his brother Esau.  The rabbis interpret that this was the guardian
angel of Esau and after he defeated him this angel said, "You have struggled
with man and G-d and you have prevailed."  Later G-d confirmed this name Yisroel,
but still Yaacov is referred to by both names, by both Yaacov and Yisroel.
This seems strange.
Also, too, in this first part of the Torah portion where we learn how Yosef brings his two sons to be blessed by his father that it says the name Yisroel almost always when Yaacov is addressing Yosef.  Only once does it use the name Yaacov.  It seems strange that this should be so, that when Yaacov talks to his son Yosef he always talks to him with the name Yisroel except for one time, and that one time was when he told Yosef that Yosef's two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, would be considered to Yaacov like his own sons, and, therefore, they would inherit a portion in the land of Israel.  Yosef was given a double portion.  To him was given the firstborn rights.  In Jewish law the firstborn did not get everything as in English law.  That is why England became such

conalizing nation because the eldest son got everything and the second son, if he wanted to have any land, had to move, had to go to a colony otherwise he was forced to seek a profession, either in the law or the government service or medicine or the army or the church, etc.  The elder son got everything: the law of primagenator.  In Jewish law this is not so.  If a person had four sons then he divided the property into five and the eldest son would get two portions.  Reuven, who was actually the eldest son, got nothing because he had acted impetuously and his father did not feel he was worthy of the rights of the firstborn.  Yosef was the firstborn son of Yaacov1s favorite wife, Rachel, the one he really wanted to marry all along, received the firstborn rights.  But why is it that the names are used in such a way that every time Yaacov addresses Yosef he is known as Yisroel and only this one time when he tells Yosef that he was going to be given the double portion, that he was going to have two tribes in Israel, was the name Yaacov used?
Besides, we learn that Yaacov also blessed Reuven with the right hand and
Menashe with the left hand, even though Menashe was the oldest.  Again, throughout
the whole Torah, at least the first book of the Torah, one of its underlying
themes is that the spiritual blessing does not necessarily go to the firstborn.
In fact, throughout the book of Bereshis it did not go to the firstborn at
all.  It did not go to Yishmoel; it went to Yitzchak.  Yitzchak was not Abraham's
firstborn.  It did not go to Esau; it went to Yaacov.  Esau was Yitzchak1s
firstborn.  Here, too, the spiritual blessing did not go to Reuven; it went
to Yosef, and of Yosef1s children it did not go to the oldest, Menashe, but
it went to Ephraim.  Yet, we are still puzzled because when Yaacov give the
blessing he does not tell Yosef to please put Ephraim under his right hand
and Menashe under his left hand, but he allows Yosef to bring the children
in front of him so that his right hand should have been on Menashe and his
left hand on Ephraim, but what Yaacov does is crosses his hands so that the right hand goes on Ephraim and the left hand on Menashe.  Why did he do that? Why didn't he just have Yosef bring the children in front of him so his right hand could be placed directly on Ephraim and his left hand directly on Menashe?
It seems to me that the reason why Yaacov was always referred to as Yisroel when he speaks to Yosef, and this is very, very clear because in the same sentence it will say Yaacov and then when it mentions that Yosef is coming it changes immediately to Yisroel, and the reason for that was that Yosef occupied a very important government position.  After all, he was the viceroy of Egypt, and, therefore, in his hands lay the fate of not only himself but also of all his family, of all his relatives.  A Jew is judged not just by what he does and he is not just afflicted for his mistakes but his whole family is afflicted for his mistakes.  A whole people suffers when Jews are not perfect. Therefore, Yaacov wanted to impress this fact upon Yosef because we all know that Jewish people are not necessarily loved.  They are not treated well because they are loved.  They are treated well because they are needed.  In fact, this is what it says.  It says, "And it was told to Jacob and it says, 'Behold your son Yosef coming to you and Yisroel will strengthen himself as he sat on his bed1."  Immediately he changed from Yaacov to Yisroel.  What does this mean?
It means that the name Yaacov refers to Jacob struggling, struggling to overcome the problems of life while Yisroel means you have struggled with man and G-d and you have overcome.  Not always did Yaacov overcome all his problems. Yisroel stands for the achieving of perfection.  It stands for achieving of standards.  The name Yaacov stands for struggling to meet the standards. Not all Jews are perfect.  Judaism never promised that if Jews will practice
Judaism they would be perfect.  They could try to be perfect.  All we say that if we try to practice Judaism that society as a whole will be better. There will be less crime, more family loyalty, less pettiness, less violence, more creativity, a greater gentleness, a greater sense of compassion, but there will not be perfection.  The Messiah has not come.  We all struggle to do the right thing but many times we fail.  We know G-d will forgive us if we sincerely repent and want to start over again, but that many of us do fail.  Many of us adopt certain positions not because they are right but because they give us power.  Many of us are not faithful in our business dealings.
Sometimes many of us do things that will destroy our families and our marriages. Sometimes we say things we should not say, etc., but we try.  That is the important thing.  We admit our mistakes and we come back and try again.  Yaacov was not perfect.  Yaacov made mistakes, but Yaacov was telling Yosef, "You are acting in a very important position in Pharaoh's kingdom.  You cannot afford to make a mistake because Jews are held to a different kind of standard. Jews must be perfect.  If Jews are not perfect the nations of the world will come down hard on us."  This we see in today's world, too.  In today's world, too, we Jews are judged by an altogether different standard than other people. When Jews beat up Arabs after a terrorist attack or they even beat up other Jews for defending the Arabs, it makes headlines.  Nobody is killed and what they have done is 100% wrong.  They should be castigated.  However, when Arabs disagree with other Arabs they kill them.  There have been 700 and some deaths caused by the Intifada and there have been 350 caused by Arabs killing other Arabs, but it does not make any headlines when Arabs do that.  The headlines are always Jews beating up other Jews or Arabs.  The reason, of course, for that is that we are held to higher standards.  Yaacov was telling that to Yosef.  You must always be Yisroel.  You must always overcome the problems of the world.  You must always stand at the highest pinnacle of morality.
Even so-called highest intellectual leaders have the same bias against Jews. The head of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dr. Strugner, just made comments that he is anti-Jewish and that Judaism is a race religion and the best thing Jews could do is mass convert to Christianity and he hates Israel because it does not have any right to exist and we should not be here anyway.  We are a lower religion. These are not sentiments that are held by just the riff raff.  Many important intellectual leaders of the world hold these types of beliefs.  Judaism is thought to be worthless if one Jew commits one sin anytime or anywhere.
Therefore, we see that we are held to an altogether different standard.  Jacob was telling Yosef, "You must remember you are always Yisroel.  You cannot afford to make mistakes if you are in that type of position because if you do it will be to the detriment of all the Jewish people." When Joseph brought his children in front of him Jacob placed his right on Ephraim and he crossed his left hand on Menashe because Menashe was carrying on in his father's mold.  Menashe, too was a diplomat.  Menashe, too, was in government service.  Menashe, too, was influencing the lives of countless numbers of people.  He was more or less imbued with a different spirit.  He was immersed in Jewish causes, and Yaacov was saying, "Menashe, you are very important.  Therefore, I do not want to switch places." For us to overcome and to be able to persevere in the face of this double standard we have to have internal Jewish values.  We have to realize the beauty of Judaism and how the lies that are told against it are completely false.  Therefore, I am putting my right hand on Ephraim but I am not denegrating the achievements of Menashe.  I want Menashe to understand that when hard times come, when we are thrown out and treated badly it is only because of the internal strengths that we gain through studying our own tradition that Ephraim represents that will allow us to continue and to persevere.  Yaacov was, in effect, being an optimist.  He was telling Yosef that it is inevitable that a new Pharaoh will
arise.  Don't worry the Jewish spirit will not be crushed.  We will be able to endure because of the gifts of Ephraim.  Later on the gifts of Menashe will be used by the world again, too, but we can only persevere if we have the gifts of Ephraim.
I am reminded of the story they tell about two boys.  One was a terrible pessimist and one was a terrible optimist.  Their parents decided they had to do something about it.  On the first night of Chanukah they gave both presents.  They gave the pessimist beautiful toys and the optimist they gave a huge pile of horse manure.  The next morning they found the pessimist crying and crying.  The parents asked why he was crying and the boy said, "Well, Ifm afraid to play with my toys because maybe I'll break them."  Outside they found that the optimist was singing and joyfully playing in the manure.  They could not understand why he was so happy.  He said, "Well, with all this horse manure around there must be a pony." We see from this that we should not despair.  Even if the world holds us to a higher standard, even if the world expects us always to be Yisroel and never Yaacov we can still endure anything the world can throw at us because we have the strengths of Ephraim.  We have the inner teachings of our faith which give us the strength and courage to overcome our problems.  May we do so so that the Mashiach will come.  Amen.
The Torah portion Vayechi starts differently from all the other Torah portions
in the Torah.  All the other Torah portions start with an open paragraph,
which means that they start like we start today with our paragraph.  Ac paragraph
ends and the next line we start a paragraph, but in the Torah there are
no punctuation marks and there are no musical notes.  Also, the Torah is
not written according to perfect grammatical Hebrew so, therefore, even if
you know Hebrew perfectly it is hard to read the Torah correctly unless
you first practice.  In the Torah portion Vayechi we start the Torah portion
just a few spaces after the end of the previous Torah portion, Vayigash.
It is not even a closed paragraph.  In a closed, paragraph you start at the
very end also on the same line as the concluding paragraph, but here in
the Torah portion Vayechi we start just a few spaces after the end of the
previous Torah portion.  That is, of course, very unusual.  In fact, it
is called in Hebrew Shtumah, which means that it is difficultito tell where
the Torah portion Vayechi starts.  It is very difficult because it does
not start the regular way.
The rabbis also ask the question, why should this be so?  Why should Vayechi start in this particular way?  Also, in this Torah portion we learn how Yaacov calls together all his children and how he says to them, "Gather together and I will you that which will happen to you in the end of days." Then it says, "Gather together and listen to the sons of Jacob and listen to Israel, your father."  The rabbis say that this redundancy means that there were actually two times that Jacob called his children together. The first time he called them together to tell them about the end of days. He was not able to do so, and then-he gave them his blessing.  Of course, Jacob's blessings were more than blessings.  They were also a critical analysis of his sons describing their weaknesses and their strengths.  The rabbis say that Jacob wanted to tell his children about the end of days but he
was not able to do so.  He had the intention to do so, but he just could
not do it.  They explain that the same way that this Torah portion starts
in a hidden way, in other words, it is hard to find this Torah portion because
there are just a few spaces between the end of the previous Torah portion
and this Torah portion, so the same thing is true when it came to Yaacov
telling his children about the end of days.  He wanted to do it, but he
could not do it.  Now why did he think he could do it?  He thought that
he could do it because if you take all the letters of his children you will
find that there is no Chet and Tet in them, and these two letters stand,
of course, for sin.  Of course, if you also look at all the letters in the
names of his children you will find that there is also no Kuf and Tzadek,
which means the end of the days.  We all know that Jacob wanted very much,
according to this explanation, to tell his children about the end of days
but he could not.  I had a great-uncle who said if you take the word Achrees,
the end of days, that he interpreted it a different way.  He interpreted
it Achare Cherusriisha Yerushalayim Tibone, that after Russia will gain freedom
Jerusalem will be rebuilt.  Of course, we are living in that day now when
democracy seems to be sweeping Russia.  We hope that it will come to pass.
Yeltsin even today has asked for membership in NATO.  We know that Israel's
position in the world has been greatly enhanced because Russia was the driving
force behind the PLO and Arab intransigence.  All the Soviet embassies,
as well as the embassies of eastern bloc countries, used to transport explosives
and other materials for the PLO, that the network of Soviet spy and KGB
activities was open to the PLO to also use and there were all sorts of training
facilities that they could train in.  Now the Arab states who had Soviet
backing are stripped to their patron, and they are not getting free arms.
Israel's position in the world has been strengthened.  That is, of course,
why the Arabs are coming to the peace table.  They still have not been convinced
that Israel is here to stay, but that is the real reason the Arabs are even contemplating negotiating.  With the influx of Soviet Jewry, the Palestinians know that unless they talk pretty soon there will be nothing to talk about, so maybe my great-uncle knew a little bit about what he was talking about.
We see here that Jacob wanted to bless his children because he thought there was not Chait among them, but then he could not.  Of course, the answer why he could not do it is really found in the next sentence where it says, "He gathered together his children and he blessed them." How did he bless them?  He blessed them by renumerating their faults as well as their strengths. In other words, he recognized the fact that although potentially among the Jewish people we could act without sin (Each of us actually does act with sin.  In fact, as the Gemora says there is no man alive who has never sinned.) and so, therefore, he wanted to point out to his children that even though they did sin the end would still come.  The Mashiach would still come. As long as we did Teshuva, as long as we were sorry for what we did and tried again and tried better then we would make sure that the Messiah would still come.  The Chait may obliterate for a second the vision of the Kaitz but the Kaitz will still come.  The Jews can still be redeemed even though many of them sink to low levels, even though many of them do not seem to be worthy for the end.  As we learn also in the Talmud, the Mashiach comes at the most unexpected times.  G-d chooses the most unexpected times in order to begin the deliverance and salvation of the Jewish people.  Of course, we believe we are living in one of these times now because you can see with the in-gathering of the exiles from Ethiopia, from Russia, from all other countries, with the strengthening of Israel, with the revival in many circles of more religious attitude, we can see that those Jews who we have seemed to give up hope on are once returning to Judaism.  We can see that in Russia where there is a thirst for Jewish learning, where pretty soon there will
probably be more yeshivas than in the United States, where in Israel there
are many Russian Jewish organizations whose whole purpose is to recapture
the tradition for our people.  I just came from a rabbinic conference in
San Francisco and there at this UJA Rabbinic Conference we discussed Spanish
Jewry.  We discussed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 to the
Operation Exodus of Russian Jews today, and there is a certain similarity.
The certain similarity is that the Jews who were expelled from Spain, especially
those who had been new Christians, who had been far from their heritage
and actually for 150-200 Moranos secretly left Spain in order to once again
reclaim their Jewish heritage.  In the year-1391 there were huge pogroms
in Spain, and many thousands, tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly converted
to Christianity.  After the pogroms spent their fury these1Jews wanted to
come back to Judaism, but the church would not allow it even though they
were forcibly converted but the church also knew that because they were
forcibly converted and because they were really not sincere in their conversions
that there was danger that they would lapse as soon as possible, so what
they did was to erect barriers between these new Christians and the Jews
that had remained Jews even though they were relatives.  Therefore, they
instituted all sorts of restrictions on Jews and established all sorts of
ghettos, etc.  By 1492 the church was convinced that they could never end
this conflict between the new Christians and the Jews so, therefore, they
started to expel all the Jews, and that, of course, was why in 1391 they
first established the Inquisition to make sure these new Jews did not have
any contact with their former relatives and return to the Jewish faith.
The Jews were expelled in 1492 and they were also expelled because of greed.
Ferdinand and Isabella had finally defeated the last Moslem enclave in Spain
in Andalucia with Granada, of course, its capitol and that took a lot of
resources, a lot of gold and silver and the Jews would be able to make up
the deficit if they were expelled.  The Jews were expelled.  Most of them went to Portugal.  Of course, in 1497 they were once again expelled from Portugal and in 1498 from Nevar.  These Jews, some say it is 400,000, many of them went to North Africa and some say to the Balkans-where there were thriving Jewish communities in the Balkans which spoke a> Jewish form of Spanish until the Nazis wiped them out, especially around Salonica.  In fact, even Dubronik and Split were originally in the 16th century Jewish towns or Jewish merchants controlled much of the trade of those towns. The amazing this was the Moranos, Jews who had not been able to practice Judaism for 8 generations, made their way to London and to Amsterdam and to Homburg in order to retain their Jewishness.
That is what Yaacov was saying.  Even though there would be Chait in Israel, even if there would be Chait in Israel there was still going to be a Kaitz. There is still going to be a time when we can reclaim these Jews.  Not all these Jews are lost.  Today when we see the Ethiopian Jews who were cut off from our people coming back, and we see the Russian Jews who most people had written off are coming back, then we can see that there is great hope. Today when we read these studies that say it is more likely for a young Jew to marry a gentile and I am not talking about a gentile who converts to Judaism because they are-considered Jews but a gentile who maintains his former religion, that it is more likely for a Jew to marry a non-Jew than a Jew, that we could give up hope, too.  According to this study, too, only 25% of the Jews are active.  That means just lighting candles on Friday night, keeping Pesach, keeping Yom Kippur and giving to Jewish charities. Thirty-five percent are only nominally affiliated, and another 40% are nothing. They do not do anything.  We could claim that we should be filled with great despair, but just as the Russian Jews came back and just as the Spanish Jewry can never be completely squelched so, too, we should never give up
hope.  We know that somehow the Pintele Yid, the Jewish Neshoma, will come to the fore.  We should not despair.  One of the proposals made that we should at least try to expand the 25% to 35% and the ripple effect will, of course, touch other Jews as well.  The point that Yaacov was telling his children was, "Yes, I want to tell you about the Kaitz, but Chait could get in the way.  Now I see that my children today have been able to overcome most of the Chait, but I still cannot tell them about the Kaitz because of the future Chait, but the Kaitz will come.  The Mashiach will come." Jews will be redeemed.  Jews will be able to reclaim their heritage.  Never despair.
This idea that Jacob was assuring his children that even if they sinned there would not be an end to the Jewish people but that they will be able, in spite of their sins, to rejoin the Jewish people, that even though they are separated from the Jewish tradition either because they have been forced to abandon it or because they abandoned it themselves, they will be able to regain it.  We can learn this from the word "Hayosvu" which normally means "be gathered together" but can also mean "to rejoin the Jewish people" after you have been excluded.  This we find with Miriam after she had been excluded from the camp because she had become a leper.  After seven days when her leprosy left her she rejoined the camp.  The word for her rejoicing is "Tayosaivu", the same word that is used here which is a feminine act of future tense of the same word.  We should never despair.  Eventually those who seem lost and cut off from our tradition can return.
I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who was the richest man in town and how after he passed away all the busybodies wanted to know who was going to get his money and how much money he had.  Mrs. Fafofnik went up to his lawyer and said, "Mr. Crumley, how much did Mr. Goldberg leave?"
Mr. Crumley looked at her and said, "All of it."  That, of course, refers to our tradition, too.  It is all there.  All we have to do is reclaim it. As long as there are Jewish books, as long as there are Jewish commentaries, as long as there is a Talmud, as long as there is one teacher we can reclaim our heritage.  Let us hope and pray that all our Jews will reclaim their heritage so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.