VA’YECHI 
(MIDDLE PORTION IN TRIENNIAL READING)
Berashit 49:1-26 (27)
Plaut 307-310; Hertz 183-187; Etz Hayim 298-305; Soncino 302-309

This Shabbat we read the middle sedrah of Parashat Va’yechi, which is the last parashah in Sefer Bereshit.  This sedrah consists of most of chapter 49, and focuses on Jacob's blessing of his 12 sons.  Jacob's words resemble other sets of blessings in the Torah, but enough is unique to make them worthy of closer attention..

In describing the last testament of Jacob, Rabbi Plaut is quite irreverent (Plaut Chumash 307); he calls it:

		". . . a combination of prayer, blessing, curse, warning, psychological assessment, parable, recollection, and hope.”

Even Rabbi Hertz, citing Ibn Ezra, accepts that Jacob's words are less blessing than revelation of the future.  The actual blessing is said to come later (in 49:28), but it is not recorded, so we do not even know if this real blessing is for the whole family or person by person.

I will return to Rabbi Plaut at the end of my d’var, but for now let’s stay with the traditional view that Jacob's testament was intended to be prophetic. If so, we should look at his statements analytically, but, as usual, we quickly run into problems.

The first problem is a modern one, and it stems from the division of one parashah into three parts for triennial reading.  All chumashim that I could find say that in this middle year of the triennial cycle, we read verses 49-1 to 49:26. Unfortunately, leaving out verse 27, which is directed to Benjamin, means that Jacob's 12th and last blessing is cut off from the other 11. To me, this separation is wrong for both literary and substantive reasons. I would therefore like to treat this parashah as if it includes 49:1 to 49:27. Unfortunately, that makes my d’var too long, so all I can do is record my protest.

More interesting is the discrepancy in the length of the blessings. Joseph is the clear winner with about 65 words, Judah comes second with 60, with no one else even close. To me, the strength of these two blessings suggests that Judah was intended to lead the progeny of Leah, and Joseph the progeny of Rachel, but that is just my own hypothesis. Nothing in the text suggests a division of the tribes into Leahites and Rachelites.

Reuben comes next with about 40 words, and then Shimon and Levi share 31.  Most of the rest of the tribes get about 20 words but Gad, Asher and Naphtali only get 10 or less. They are all sons of the concubines.  Perhaps Jacob did not consider them as equal to the sons of his two wives, or perhaps he just did not know them very well.

The blessings follow birth order at the start, as Jacob speaks to Reuben and then to Shimon and Levi. This makes psychological sense.  Reuben and Shimon and Levi are the only ones whom Jacob wants to criticize sharply with his words, or, in effect, to give a negative blessing.  It is only Judah, Jacob’s 4th son, that Jacob is truly content, and he predicts a royal future for him, which is in fact what did happen: King David came from the tribe of Judah.

I do not have nearly enough time to review all 12 blessings, so I am going to focus only on the six tribes that were the progeny of Leah. I will also bypass Judah, who deserves a d’var to himself.  Leah’s six minus one equals five, which is enough for one d’var.

Reuben’s blessing starts off positively with two lines of what should come to the first born, but it turns sharply to focus on Reuben’s great error of his apparent sleeping with Bilhah (Ber 49:4; 35:22) -- in effect, usurping the place of his father. I say “apparent” because there are alternative viewpoints; one suggests that he intervened when, after Rachel's death, Jacob took his bed and moved into Bilhah's tent.  Whether Reuben did this to protect his aunt's honour (Tz"ur) or to prevent further offspring (Rambam) is not clear.  What is clear is that Reuben was impetuous, which is Rashi's explanation as to why he lost his role as firstborn. Jacob makes no prediction of Reuben's future -- unless one interprets the non-blessing as predicting ultimate extinction, which did in fact happen as Reuben settled east of the Jordan River and presumably assimilated with Arab tribes living there.

Simon and Levi, born second and third to Leah, are identified with the Shechem incident in defense of the honour of Dinah. However, Nachmanides emphasizes that Jacob chose words to indicate to everyone that he was unaware of their plan. He then condemns both tribes to be “scattered in Israel,” (49:7) which what happened, though with an element of reprieve. The Soncino chumash points out, the text really says that they slayed a man (49:6), which could mean that they only killed Shechem, the man who violated Dina, Though the chumash goes on to say that we interpret “man” to mean “men, use of the singular could explain why the Levites may have been scattered in Israel; they received tithes rather than land, and thus served all tribes. Shimon also did not exactly disappear. Rather, as a small tribe with land surrounded by Judah, Shimon eventually came to be absorbed by Judah, which was not such a bad future.

Zebulon is mentioned 5th and out of order as he is last of Leah's six sons.  Why before Issachar?  Rashi says that, being involved with shipping and commerce, it is Zebulon's role to support Issachar so that the latter could study Torah. This shows that those who provide for students of Torah get a reward equal that granted to students themselves. Neither explanation makes sense from what we know of land distribution under Joshua.  Zebulon was land-locked, and both Zebulon and Issachar were a long way from Dan.

Issachar is mentioned 6th and is likened to a donkey under yoke.  Plaut takes this to mean that the tribe sought the easy life, and was willing to give up freedom in order to live quietly, whereas Etz Hayim is more explicit in suggesting that Issachar provided warriors who fought for the Canaanites. However, the traditional interpretation is that this description implies that Issachar carried the yoke of Torah and was therefore a student and teacher (Tz’Ur). 

That’s a good place to end, but I cannot ignore an amusing Midrash that offers a very different explanation for the reference to a donkey: According to this midrash, Jacob was returning from work in the fields when his donkey brayed. Leah heard the bray, went out to meet Jacob, they were alone, the sun was setting—all very romantic--and that meeting led to the conception of Issachar. Fanciful, perhaps, but the midrash does have some back-up from Chapter 30. That was where we read about the mandrakes (Ber 30:14-15), which is a medicinal plant that is also thought to be an aphrodisiac. Reuben found some for Rachel, who at that time was childless, and Rachel rather grudgingly gave some to Leah along with agreement that Leah could go to bed with Jacob that night.  Now, coming back to our midrash, whatever one thinks of mandrakes, that meeting of Leah and Jacob resulted in the conception and later the birth of another boy, whereupon Leah said “yesh sakhar” (thus, Issakhar), as a recognition of some element of divine favor (Eitz Hayim, note to 30:18).  Moreover, to carry the story further, in handing some mandrakes to Leah, Rachel refers to the forthcoming lying together of Leah and Jacob with the verb Shin-caf-bet, which, according to Eitz Hayim (note to 30:15), in Genesis “is used with a sexual nuance . . ./as with sex/ that takes place under unsavory circumstances” which just might refer to having sex in a rock-strewn field, at a time when mosquitos are out, while listening to the braying song of a donkey.

We could end our d’var on that pleasant note, but we really should end with a more serious conclusion:  Clearly, traditional commentary and my own d’var work at making things come out right, and there is not that much prophecy anyway.  Perhaps Plaut catches the essence of Jacob’s blessing when (while discussing Jacob's blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh) he writes (305):

		"Every blessing bestowed by man is at the core a prayer, since it asks God to help him accomplish what he by himself cannot."

Shabbat shalom,

D’var prepared and given by David B. Brooks at Adath Shalom Congregation, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on 30 December 2017

COMPARISON OF ORDER OF BIRTH OF JACOB'S CHILDREN
WITH ORDER AND LENGTH OF THE BLESSINGS 

		               Mother              _______________  										Order 	Number 
						of    	of Hebrew
Child		Leah	Zilpah	Rachel	Bilhah	Blessing	Words    
Reuben		 1				 1	22
Shimon		 2				 2/3
						      	} 31 
Lev		 3				 2/3
Judah		 4				 4	60
Dan		 			5	 7	20
Naphtali					6	10	 6
Gad		  	 7			 8	 6
Asher			 8			 9	 7
  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  mandrakes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Issachar  	9				6	20
Zebulon		10			 	5	10
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dina (Leah)  - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Joseph				11		11	65
Benjamin				12		12	20