TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Vayechi
January 7, 2023 | 14 Tevet 5783
Torah: Genesis 47:28-50:26 Triennial: 47:28-48:22
Haftarah: I Kings 2:1-12
Missing Matriarchs
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Missing Matriarchs
Genesis ends with a cliffhanger. So much is left unresolved. The plot of most of Genesis is driven by the two promises which God gave to Abraham – the promise of progeny and the promise of land. By the end of Genesis, we have achieved progeny. After three generations of siblings quarreling, the Joseph story moves beyond sibling conflict. All the sons of Jacob will inherit; they all become the bearers of blessing. But we are in the wrong land. We have left Israel for Egypt and we remember what God told Abraham at the covenant between the parts – we know we are in for a time of slavery. This unresolved promise is the driving force for the rest of the Torah. Having left Canaan, we spend the next four books trying to return.
Tradition has it that the redemption from Egypt happened thanks to the actions of the Israelite women. We read in the Talmud, B. Sotah 11b, In reward for the righteous women of that generation, Israel was redeemed from Egypt. The promise of land is fulfilled because the women understand the plot. Likewise, it is the women who drove the plot in Genesis. The matriarchs understood the importance of the promise of progeny. From Sarah issues the line of Israelites, while Abraham is the father of many nations. Rebecca converses with God about her pregnancy and ensures that the correct son receives her husband s blessing. Rachel and Leah control their husband s procreation, breeding him like a sheep. Similarly, most of the action in Genesis is driven by the need to procure correct marriages. Guarding the lineage is passed down from one matriarch to the next, with the patriarchs as the delivery men.
But by the time we get to our parashah, we have lost the women. In fact, they disappear near the beginning of the Joseph story, after the stories of Tamar and the wife of Potiphar. It does not seem to matter whom the sons of Israel marry. No one is paying attention to the production of progeny any more. For the first time, there is no one to drive the story towards the fulfillment of God s two promises and it shows. The story stagnates until the women pick up the narrative again in Exodus.
Our parashah does contain remnants of the matriarchs. Jacob, shortly after asking Joseph to bury him in Israel, pauses to explain what happened to Joseph s mother. We read, And I, when I was coming from Padan Aram, Rachel died on me, in the land of Canaan, still a short distance from Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath. Soon after, Jacob instructs all of his sons to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah, which he identifies as the place where, Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried; there Isaac and his wife Rebecca were buried; and there I buried Leah. At first glance, the women appear in memory. They are the dead. But even in death they are still working to achieve God s promises. They are the ones pulling Jacob and Joseph s bodies back into the land of Canaan. More radically, it is the need for a place in which to bury their bodies which leads to the beginning of the fulfillment of God s promise of land. The Israelites first stake in Israel was the burial plot that Abraham bought for Sarah. The matriarchs possessed the land of Israel long before the Israelites returned to it.
Why do the women disappear at the end of Genesis? Do we need to lose the plot in order to find it again? One hint can be found in the way Joseph is characterized in Jacob s blessing to him. We read, From the God of your fathers, may He aid you, Shaddai, may He bless you blessings of the heavens above, blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of breasts and womb. Jacob passes to Joseph all the good of Genesis. He starts with the creation story, the heavens and the deep, and progresses to the women, the drivers of action. We find these same ideas at the end of the Torah, in Parashat Haazinu. The heavens and the earth are called to listen to all that God has done for Israel, including acting as mother to them. So Jacob invites Joseph to be the missing matriarch, to act as the driver of the plot and the nurturer of the emerging Israelites.
Do As I Say, Not As I Did
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
On his deathbed, David instructs his son and heir Shlomo (Solomon) to follow God s mitzvot as a recipe for royal continuity. But more memorable and disturbing is what follows: detailed directions regarding three people whose paths crossed during the Absalom revolt, and with whom David has apparently not had the last word. He instructs Shlomo to kill Joab, his army chief, for killing two army chiefs outside of wars. To act kindly to the children of Barzilai the Gileadite who helped the fleeing David during Absalom s revolt. And shrewdly kill Shimi ben Gera, the Benjaminite who cursed David as he fled Absalom.
Some read this as petty account-settling by David, leaving Shlomo to clean up what he felt unable to do in his lifetime. But there may be a different, more political reason behind this list. To decipher it we will look briefly at the three cases. (You can find them in II Samuel chapters 3, and 15-20.)
Joab, David s army chief, led the battle against David s son Absalom when the latter rebelled. David warned everyone to go easy on Absalom, but given the opportunity Joab killed Absalom, putting an end to the rebellion-civil war. David, inconsolable, fired Joab and appointed Amasa (Absalom s army chief) to the position. Joab killed Amasa, accusing him of treason, and returns to the position of army chief.
Shimi ben Gera was of Saul s family. As David fled Jerusalem Shimi cursed David, holding him responsible for the death of Saul s family. On David s return, he apologized and David, deciding wisely to calm down the situation, swears not to kill him.
Barzilai the Gileadite proves that gratitude, not only revenge, guides David. Having hosted David and all his people he was offered a place at David s table in the palace; but he refused, preferring to live out his life at home.
All three people crossed David s life at a most critical junction, during Absalom s revolt. When it was over, David knew who he could count on and who he did not trust. Now it was time to secure the throne for Shlomo. David, as a seasoned leader, managed to control Joab and Shimi, but he understood that Shlomo did not have a chance against these tough people. He had his personal reasons to be vengeful, as a wise leader he probably did not intend to ask the young king to start his reign by taking revenge for his father. It seems more likely that David singled out the people that would be the greatest threat to Shlomo s kingdom. He also taught Shlomo to treasure good allies for generations. David leaves Shlomo unsavory but shrewd and logical political advice.
Did Shlomo follow his father s request? We know that he killed Joab and Shimi, but the reasons appear to be as much Shlomo s interest as his father s instructions. If you are curious about the full story, read I Kings chapters 1-2.
Are You My Mummy?
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the
Parashah
When Queen Elizabeth II died a few months ago, I found myself having to explain to my 13 year old daughter what needed to be done to the Queen s body in order to preserve her until she was buried some ten days later. My daughter thankfully knows little about burial practices, but she somehow knew that Jews do not wait so long for burial, nor do we practice embalming. Based on Deuteronomy 21:23, the rabbis perceived there to be a mitzvah to bury as quickly as possible. Only in order to honor the dead are we allowed to delay burial and even then preferably only for a short time (see Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:5).
But perhaps somewhat surprisingly, our parashah portrays not one but two of our ancestors mummified in order to preserve their bodies until they can be brought to the land of Israel. This first occurs in Genesis 50:2 when Joseph tells the Egyptian doctors to embalm his father, Jacob, and again when Joseph dies in 50:26. Of course, these are special circumstances both Jacob and Joseph die in Egypt, where embalming/mummification was a normal practice for important leaders. And both Joseph and Jacob are to be brought to Israel, so their bodies might need special preparation. Still, these stories beg the question as to whether embalming is actually prohibited by Jewish law and if so, why?
The Rashba (13th century, Catalonia) addresses a situation in which a father dies and the sons need to transfer the body to the familial burial place. In order to ease transport, they wish to put lime on the body to hasten its deterioration and then carry the bones. The Rashba permits this practice based on the notion that embalming in order to honor the dead does not cause pain or dishonor to the deceased. Rashba understands the embalming of Jacob and Joseph as a precedent for his case at hand if necessary (but not as a norm), the body may be embalmed. A more modern posek, R. Shmuel Halevi Wozner (Bnei Berak, 20th century) also allowed injecting the body with fluid in order to preserve the body for travel.
In contrast, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Rabbi Nachum Baumel (Brooklyn, 20th century) prohibits embalming based on the idea that burial in the ground is part of the atonement process for the deceased. Rav Rimon, a modern Israeli posek, explains that burial in the ground is symbolic of the fact that we do not control the world, God does. This atonement is effected once the body begins to decompose in the ground; embalming prevents the proper biological and theological process from occurring. Rabbi Baumel considers embalming to be a , disgrace to the body, and therefore not something that a Jew is allowed to ask to be done to him/herself (Sanhedrin 46b). Jacob and Joseph are not paradigms of Jewish behavior; they are exceptions. Rabbi Baumel does allow the body to be frozen if necessary for transport. Obviously, this less intrusive means of preserving the body was not available in the pre-modern world.
Recently, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky authored a teshuvah for the CJLS discussing alternative methods of burial that are less damaging to the environment. As Rabbi Kalmanofsky notes, the typical American body enters the earth bearing three pounds of formaldehyde, amounting to millions of gallons of carcinogenic embalming fluid deposited into the earth each year, set amidst hundreds of thousands of tons of metal coffins and millions of tons of concrete tombs. Less environmentally damaging and space consuming forms of burial are a topic of increasing interest in the United States(see here), where burial in vaults, expensive coffins and embalming cause massive damage to the environment (for some innovations in Israel see here). While I am not necessarily endorsing these particular methods, clearly embalming should be discouraged due to its destruction of the environment.
Embalming as practiced in America (and elsewhere) today is not done just in order to preserve the body for travel. It is done as part of the elaborate ritual for preparing the body for public display. It is not embalming per se that Jewish law so vehemently opposes, for as we see, some authorities do rule that it is permitted. It is the display of the body itself that is so deeply problematic. Upon death the body must be returned to the ground from whence it came. The body s holiness is inherent in its being fashioned in the image of God, and the practice of beautifying the body for display is antithetical to Jewish law and belief. As with so many points of Judaism it is not a particular practice, in this case embalming, that is so troubling, it is the message that this practice encodes. In cases where this is not the point of the practice (such as travel) Jewish law makes exceptions. But as a norm, embalming is not something Jews do.