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פרשת ויחי

Genesis 49:10 is a highly difficult verse. It says that Israelite leadership will remain with Judah for a long period… ad ki yavo Shiloh, “until Shiloh comes” or “until he comes to Shiloh”.

Christian exegesis takes Shiloh as a reference to Jesus, as if the verse were saying, “Judah will be the leader until Jesus comes”. It is true that some Jewish commentators (e.g. Rashi) give Shiloh a messianic connotation, probably connecting Shiloh with shalom, peace – and of course the advent of peace is essential to Jewish messianism. Historically this cannot refer to Jesus since he did not bring peace, nor has Christianity, either internally nor externally.

In order to explain why the messianic prophecies remain unfulfilled, Christianity posited the idea of a second coming, but the many messianic passages in Isaiah and other books do not justify this notion. A great deal hinges on the word Shiloh.

A useful passage to consult is Isa. 18:7 which speaks of tribute, shai, being brought to God. The Midrash therefore suggests that our verse is saying that Judah as leader will receive homage and acclamation, and people will bring shai lo, “tribute to him”. The verse would then read something like od ki yavo shai lo. This fits in with the parallelism of Biblical Hebrew poetry and makes sense of the verse within its own context.

Jacob spent 17 years in Egypt (Gen. 47:28). What did he do with his time there? The Torah does not spell it out. How, after all, do retired patriarchs fill their days?

We wish we knew. He was an honoured elder and sage. He presumably spent a great deal of time with his grandchildren and probably schooled them in the ways and traditions of the family.

There could have been a cultural and spiritual tug-of-war between modern youngsters living in prosperous, upper-crust Egyptian society, and an old-time zaide who was desperate to preserve the language, idiom, values and customs of the family’s ancestral home.

We know that story all too well as the result of the Jewish population movements of the last century and more. In our case there is a sort of happy ending. As the American Jewish sociologist and philosopher Will Herberg has pointed out, there seems to be a rule that what the second generation wishes to forget, the third generation wishes to remember. The second generation is determined to shake off the encumbrance of the alte heim: the third generation sees that the rebellion has gone too far and tries to recapture the spirit and substance that were so hastily discarded.

It’s a pity we don’t know for certain whether this occurred with Jacob and his family. It probably did, since history has a habit of repeating itself.

It is clear from the beginning of the sidra that Jacob intended his last words to his children to be a prophetic revelation of the future. The text says, “Jacob called to his sons and said, ‘Gather together and I will reveal to you what will happen to you in time to come” (Gen. 49:1). Wondering why the promised revelation never happened, the sages come to the conclusion that God intervened: “Jacob wished to reveal to his sons the end of days, but the Divine Presence departed from him.”

Some people might think God’s intervention was unfair both to Jacob and to his children. If we ask ourselves how it can be justified, there could be good arguments on both sides. The case against God is probably that human beings have a right to know what is ahead. If I know, for example, that I will die a poor man, why should I try to make money when I should be finding a way to live with poverty? The case for God is that as a general rule it is better to live in hope and not be constrained by the knowledge of what the future will hold.

But there is another approach altogether which is implied in what happened to Jacob’s original plan. This approach asks what actually occurred at the bedside meeting of Jacob and his children. True, the patriarch did not tell them any secrets about future events, but he revealed something even more valuable when he spoke about each child. He did not say, “Reuben, you will become a millionaire”, but “Reuben, you are an impetuous character”. In other words, “Reuben, recognise your strengths and weaknesses and know that by using them judiciously you will build your own destiny”.

To each child he unfolded not a fact but a trend. If his children were honest, they would have been grateful.

The memory of Mother Rachel is sacred to the Jewish people, especially to the women. Her burial place is “on the way to Efrat which is Bet-lechem” (Gen. 48:7). Today Efrat and Bethlehem, though not far apart, are two different places. In recent years Rachel’s Tomb, Kever Rachel, has been refurbished and an educational and function centre is being developed beside it.

Jacob’s original intention was to bury her in the cave of Machpelah, but he said, as the commentator Sforno puts it, “I was so overcome by my grief that I could not collect myself to take her to the ancestral tomb”, so he buried her where she died. Ibn Ezra says that when Jacob told this to Rachel’s son Joseph he seemed to be apologising for asking that he himself should be buried at Machpelah even though he had not been in a fit state to arrange for Rachel to be buried there.

Rashi, however, quotes an interpretation that gives the episode symbolic significance. Rashi’s comment is this: “I buried her there,” Jacob said, “in accordance with the Divine wish that she should be of assistance to her children in time to come.” Rashi explains that when Mother Rachel’s descendants were being led off into exile they would pass by the tomb and Rachel would weep for them. God, however, would comfort her and promise that the exiles would “return to their border” (Jer. 31). Now, all these centuries later, when we visit Kever Rachel we thank God that her tears helped us to see the prophecy fulfilled.

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