VaYehi 5767 -- Of Burial and Blessing

There are two difficulties in this week’s parsha and perushim that I would like to explore. I hope that by exploring each difficulty a single explanation will emerge.

As Jacob grows old he calls upon Joseph and beseeches Joseph not to bury him in Egypt. Apparently unsatisfied with Joseph’s acquiescence (‘anochi e’eseh khid’varekha’), Jacob demands that Joseph take an oath that he will not bury his father in Egypt, but in the family tomb, the cave of Machpelah.

Sometime later Jacob falls ill and death looms. Joseph is informed and comes to his father’s side. Jacob relates to Joseph his covenantal encounter with God at Bet El and then announces that he will consider Ephraim and Menashe as his own children. He then returns to his life story, recounting the death of Rachel near Bethlehem and Jacob’s failure to bring her even the short distance into the land of Canaan and the family tomb. Immediately after this, Jacob announces his desire to bless Menashe and Ephraim.

The commentators (See Rashi, Ramban, and Nehama Leibowitz for an excellent compilation) understand Jacob’s focus on the death of Rachel as a sort of last confession in which Jacob pleads with Joseph to treat him better than he treated Joseph’s mother. After all, if Jacob couldn’t be troubled to transport Rachel a very short distance from Beit Lehem Machpelah, why should Joseph bother bringing Jacob all the way from Egypt to Hevron? This is compelling and dramatic stuff, as a dying Jacob painfully confronts a perhaps-long-repressed failure and trauma in the hope that his son can forgive him and grant him his dying wish.

But it doesn’t quite add up. First, Jacob doesn’t actually make any such requests of Joseph. Rather, after Jacob finishes with the death of Rachel, he immediately turns to the blessing of Ephraim and Menashe (48:8). Second, Jacob shouldn’t need to beseech Joseph at this point. Recall that as the parsha opened, Jacob made Joseph swear an oath (a shevua) that he would bury him in Machpelah and not in Egypt. Therefore, by the time Jacob reaches his death-bed he should have no worries that Joseph will treat him as he treated Rachel – he already made him take an oath to that effect! So the commentators have a difficulty: If they are right that Jacob is asking Joseph not to treat him midah k’neged midah, measure for measure, with Jacob’s treatment of Rachel, why didn’t Jacob bring this up either before, or at least immediately after, he made Joseph take an oath on the matter? This is Problem Number One – Shouldn’t Jacob have brought this up earlier?

Now onto Problem Number Two. After Jacob tells Joseph that he wants to bless Joseph’s sons, Joseph shepherds them towards their grandfather, whose “eyes were heavy with age and could not see – v’einei Yisrael kavdu mizoken v’lo yukhal lirot” (48:10). After Jacob hugs and kisses them, Joseph then arranges them for their blessings, putting Ephraim, the younger, to Jacob’s left, and Menashe to Jacob’s right. Jacob disregards this ordering, and, even in his blindness, puts his right hand on Ephraim’s head.

The Baal HaTurim notes that the word ‘zoken -- age’ in 48:10 is spelled haser, that is, it is spelled without a vav and so looks like the word ‘zaken – aged.’ According to the Baal haTurim, this is meant to evoke the verse “vayehi ki zaken Yitzhak v’tikh’hena einav merot – and Isaac was aged and his eyes grew weak” (27:1). By way of reminder, aged Isaac calls upon Esau to bring him meat so that he can bless Esau before his death, Rebecca overhears and tells Jacob to dress up like Esau so that he can take the blessing.

So what’s the connection between the stealing of Isaac’s blessing and the current episode according to the Baal haTurim? Just as Jacob deceived his blind father at the time that blessings were being handed out, so too Jacob’s own son attempts to deceive him in his blindness by putting Ephraim and Menashe in the opposite order from which Jacob intended to bless them.

But this is difficult as well for two reasons. First, Joseph did not successfully reverse the order of the b’rakhot. Jacob’s hands found their way to the right children, and despite Joseph’s second and heavy-handed attempt to make it otherwise, Jacob does bless Ephraim first.Second, what was so bad about Joseph’s ordering of his own sons for blessing by their grandfather? Where was the deception? Joseph did not deliberately try to deceive Jacob (who had not yet expressed his preferred ordering); he just put his kids in what seemed to be the right order. Contrast this with Jacob and Rebecca’s intent to take the b’rakha meant for Esau. Moreover, there was no affirmative deception along the lines of Jacob’s donning of animal skins to impersonate Esau. Joseph never said “This one’s Ephraim and that one’s Menashe.” And yet the Baal haTurim believes that in this incident Jacob is receiving a comeuppance. This is Problem Number Two: Why is the Baal haTurim, when all the evidence seems to the contrary, convinced that Joseph must be engaged in some sort of deception?

It seems to me that these problems may answer each other. That is, Jacob’s misplaced confession to Joseph may be forcing the Baal haTurim to find a deception in response.
As Rachel pointed out to me, Jacob probably had a very good reason for delaying his confession until after he had obtained an oath from Joseph: if he had made his confession earlier, Joseph might not have agreed to his request! Nonetheless, Jacob wants to get this off his chest before he dies, and so confesses on his death bed.

From Jacob’s perspective it’s all quite defensible, but I think Joseph thought otherwise. Joseph probably felt manipulated and betrayed. Recall that his father was not satisfied by Joseph’s statement that he would bury him in Machpelah and insisted that he take an oath. Why was he so insistent? The Kli Yakar offers several reasons, among which that Jacob thought Joseph would have a harder time convincing Pharoah to let him go on a discretionary errand than on one mandated by oath. But I wonder whether Joseph read it differently, thinking “My father made me swear an oath precisely so that he could later re-open a decades-old wound without fear of repercussions, at least repercussions in kind (or measure for measure). That sort of manipulation makes me really angry!”

Bound by his oath, but angered by his father’s manipulation, Joseph must cast about for some other means with which to strike back at his father. This sense of seething emotion seeking a channel may be what leads the Baal haTurim to read deliberate deception into Joseph’s ‘switching’ of Ephraim and Menashe. As noted earlier, the blessing of Ephraim and Menashe comes immediately after Jacob finishes his confession. It is therefore natural to suspect that Joseph, seeking an opportunity to retaliate, would do so in the very next episode. The parallels to a blind Isaac allow the Baal haTurim to complete the puzzle, making Joseph a deliberate deceiver of his father.

It’s interesting to note that the p’shat in the Baal haTurim doesn’t go quite in this direction. Remember that the Baal haTurim seemed to say that Joseph’s deception of Jacob here was a repayment of Jacob’s deception of Isaac (i.e., Joseph --> Jacob --> Isaac). I’ve argued that the only reason to think that Joseph engaged in any deception at all is his anger at his father. Therefore, under my reading, Joseph’s deception of Jacob is in repayment of Jacob’s manipulation of Joseph (i.e., Joseph <-- --> Jacob). I want to suggest that the Baal haTurim’s reading may reflect Jacob’s perception of the incident. In previous weeks we have seen how Jacob is either indifferent to or clueless about his family members’ emotions. Here, too, Jacob may not understand that Joseph is outraged or why. Therefore, when he perceives attempted deception, his emotionally blind mind jumps to the perfect symmetry (son --> father/son --> father) suggested by the Baal haTurim.