Vayechi – Once Upon a Week

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Yehuda Bachana.

Vayechi (“and he lived”) — this weekly Torah portion concludes the book of Genesis. It ends on a good note, when the sons of Jacob are peacefully living in Egypt, in the region of Goshen.

However, next week we will discover that the children of Israel will become slaves. Next week we will read about Moses’ birth, we will meet Moses, and will stay with him through the rest of the Torah.

In this weekly portion Jacob is giving his sons the final blessings:

He is blessing Joseph with the famous words:

This ancient blessing is used till this day, mostly in the eastern Jewish communities. It means that you will be blessed as the fruit growing near waters. And it reminds us of the first psalm:

Answering the question about who will be happy and successful, and the answer clearly is “those who walk in the way of the Lord”. Whoever walks in his ways will receive his reward!

However, the psalm doesn’t say that following the Lord is enough, it also gives us a warning — to avoid bad company and negative influence. The person who walks in the way of the Lord and abstains from bad influence, this man does not choose something easy and simple.

Because the easiest thing is to give yourself some slack, to allow self-pity get the best of you, to think that there is no way out, everyone is against you, and there is no hope. It is much harder to take responsibility and work on your own improvement.

The person who is able to get up and decide to follow the Lord decides not to look for shortcuts or seek distractions from their problems. The person who takes responsibility and works hard to improve himself and his surroundings. What will happen to such a person?

Such a person will succeed! Similar words are found in Jacob’s blessing of Joseph, Psalm 1:3, and Jeremiah 17:7 (“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord… he shall be like a tree planted by waters…”).

This blessing is given to Joseph, who, as we remember, is successful in everything he did. He is successful, because God and his faith in God were his top priorities. His faith in God was what guided him through life and helped him to overcome temptations, like Potiphar’s wife.

Jacob is calling his children to bless them. The Torah Portion “Vayechi” contains more Messianic prophecies then the entire book of Genesis, and maybe even the entire Torah. Prophecies about the Messiah and the Messianic Era, like this one:

Judah receives the eternal promise of leadership. Traditional Jewish commentaries on this verse say that this is the King Messiah. That kings and rulers from the tribe of Judah will lead our nation for several centuries, and from this tribe will come the Messiah – the Eternal King, and all the nations will bow down before Him at the end of times.

This verse, along with other texts in the Bible, became the foundation to Yeshua’s famous words in the Gospel of John:

And then:

The Bible often use images of wine, grapes, and vineyards as an allegory to the Messiah and/or to the nation of Israel, like the famous comparison of Israel to the vineyard in Isaiah 8. The Nation of Israel is a like a beautiful vine, planted by a gardener. Jeremiah compares Israel to a choice vine as well.

We are the vine, we are the vineyard planted by God, but it also hints to the Messiah. These texts from Genesis and Isaiah prepare the ground for Yeshua’s parables.

“I am the true vine,” says Yeshua, “and you are the branches”. Then He takes it to a practical level: bear fruit, produce fruit.

Yeshua continues His sermon and says:

How do we honor our Heavenly Father and prove ourselves to be Yeshua’s disciples? By producing fruit, by doing good.

We have to love each other the way the Messiah loved us, and a big part of it is to serve our brothers with our God-given gifts, and to forgive each other.

The theme of forgiveness is present in our portion. As we are getting closer to Jacob’s death, the brothers begin to worry again. They are really scared of what could happened after their father’s death.

Will Joseph finally punish them? Will he take revenge for his years of suffering? Will all his accumulated anger finally burst out?

I personally think that they invented the story that on his deathbed Jacob asks Joseph to forgive his brothers. I do not think that Joseph told his father about what actually happened there, in the Dothan Valley, in the dry pit.

I think he succeeded to turn his traumatic experience into success, into a blessing. I think Joseph had changed. I think that Joseph is already living the blessing of Jacob: “a fruitful vine near the spring”.

He learned how to not fall into the deep pit of self-pity. Joseph planted himself in God, that’s why he is successful and his actions are blessed.

When Joseph was young, a teenager, he used to snitch on his brothers, to tell his father about their wrongs. And who knows, maybe if they would have meet earlier, then maybe Joseph would be angry and vengeful,

But I think not. I think this inner change happened in Joseph already in Potiphar’s house, because God blesses him there, everything he did was blessed by God.

Joseph has changed, and we see, that when he was falsely accused of rape, he didn’t open his mouth. He went to jail silently. He learned to keep his mouth shut. That is why I believe that Joseph didn’t tell his father about what actually happened in the dry pit of Dothan.

But the brothers fear Joseph, it is natural and understandable:

The brothers are afraid of Joseph, and I think they are lying again, in a similar way that they lied to Jacob, when they brought to him the striped coat stained with blood and said, “your son is dead”. They are lying to Joseph:

We can learn a lot from Joseph’s reaction to their words:

Why is he crying? Because he knows what he shared with his father and what part of the story he kept for himself.

But here too Joseph did not abandon God’s way, the way of forgiveness. He is not angry at them, he did not plan to hurt his brothers before; he is not going to do it now, even when they are trying to cheat him again.

Joseph sees the situation in a different way, when he told them: “You intended to harm me.” Even when you had bad intentions, even when you wanted to hurt me, nevertheless, there is a God to this world, and at the end everything works for the bests, as: “God intended it for good” (Gen 50:20).

We can see here a great example of forgiveness. Even if we were wronged, even if we were hurt, forgive and be merciful. Who knows? Maybe the wrongs against us will serve the greater good, maybe it is part of the bigger picture, which is yet hidden from our eyes, as “God intended it for good”.

Forgiveness and the ability to forgive are very important, they are of the basic principles in the New Testament. I think of Yeshua’s saying to turn the other cheek. It is one of the most famous quotations from the New Testament, and it is also one of the most controversial.

There will always be a smartypants who will come to a believer and ask, what will happened if I slap you now? Will you turn your other cheek or will you hit me back?

I believe that Yeshua is talking here about the concept, about the very idea of forgiveness, about the way of life. Yeshua is not talking about a slap in the face. And even if He meant it literally, behind His words stands a great idea — to stop acting in revenge.

Yeshua is teaching us self-control, wisdom, compromise, and forgiveness. These qualities are sometimes more important and are healthier than getting the maximum vengeance.

Revenge does not always mean justice. On the contrary, revenge often means that the circle of pain and suffering will grow.

I think that Joseph turns the other cheek to his brothers. He could get revenge for what was done to him, and he could get back to them for their continuous lies (including the fabricated dying wish of their father). But instead, he turns the other cheek and gives all the glory to God. What you did to harm, “God intended for good”.

One of Yeshua’s important and beautiful parables is found in Matthew 18, and is called “The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant”. Yeshua is telling us a story of a great and rich king, who decided to organize his accounts and deal with all who owe him.

One of the servants brought before the king had a dept of tens of thousands in silver. This servant had no way to repay his dept, he had no money, and the king orders to sell him, his wife, and his children into slavery, and use the money to repay the debt.

The servant began to plead before the king with tears, asking for mercy: “please give me more time and I will return my debt”. The King decided to be merciful and forgave him his debt.

Then the same servant, whose great debt was forgiven, went out of the king’s palace and met his friend who owed him 100 dinars (a very small amount compared to his own debt to the king). What did he do? The servant demanded to receive his debt and did not show mercy to his friend, who was pleading on his knees, in the same way he himself was asking for mercy from the king.

The servant did not show any mercy, but demanded that his friend’s wife and children are to be taken to jail until his debt is paid in full.

When the king heard of what this servant did to his friend, he called him back to the palace. The king said to him, “I showed you mercy and forgave your great debt. You should’ve done the same to your friend. And now, in the way you did not forgive your friend, I will not forgive you either.” The king took the evil servant and sent him and his family to jail, until he will repay his debt in full.

Yeshua is teaching us the importance of forgiveness. We must be merciful towards one another, we must forgive one another, knowing that we have being forgiven as well.

And on this note we are concluding the stories of Genesis. May we all be blessed.

“Hazak hazak venitchazek.” Shabbat Shalom.