Shalom JTF readers,
This week we are reading a memorable Parasha. It is memorable to me because I remember driving down to Los Angeles when my father was in the hospital the week before he passed.
In this Parasha both Jacob and Joseph die. As Jacob comes to the end of his days he wants to tell his twelve tribes about what will happen at the end of days, but due to an event that the sages argue about, he was unable to actually give over this prophecy. What is memorable to me is that when I visited my father in his hospital bed his wife asked him if he had any dreams, and my father said that he saw me {or Israel} fighting. I took this as a prophetic dream from my father, and thus I will always remember this Parasha because of this.
Here is the Chabad Parasha in a nutshell:
http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3228/jewish/Vayechi-in-a-Nutshell.htm
Jacob lives the final 17 years of his life in Egypt. Before his passing, he asks Joseph to take an oath that he will bury him in the Holy Land. He blesses Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, elevating them to the status of his own sons as progenitors of tribes within the nation of Israel.
The patriarch desires to reveal the end of days to his children, but is prevented from doing so.
Jacob blesses his sons, assigning to each his role as a tribe: Judah will produce leaders, legislators and kings; priests will come from Levi, scholars from Issachar, seafarers from Zebulun, schoolteachers from Simeon, soldiers from Gad, judges from Dan, olive growers from Asher, and so on. Reuben is rebuked for “confusing his father’s marriage bed”; Simeon and Levi, for the massacre of Shechem and the plot against Joseph. Naphtali is granted the swiftness of a deer, Benjamin the ferociousness of a wolf, and Joseph is blessed with beauty and fertility.
A large funeral procession consisting of Jacob’s descendants, Pharaoh’s ministers, the leading citizens of Egypt and the Egyptian cavalry accompanies Jacob on his final journey to the Holy Land, where he is buried in the Machpelah Cave in Hebron.
Joseph, too, dies in Egypt, at the age of 110. He, too, instructs that his bones be taken out of Egypt and buried in the Holy Land, but this would come to pass only with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt many years later. Before his passing, Joseph conveys to the Children of Israel the testament from which they will draw their hope and faith in the difficult years to come: “G‑d will surely remember you, and bring you up out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Let us start this time with the honorable Chaim Ben Pesachs drash on this Parasha:
Here is Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute talking about the revelation which was prevented from being told to the sons of Jacob:
Topic: Video Study for Parasha Vayechi (Read 3870 times)