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Parashat Vayechi / פָּרָשַׁת וַיְחִי
✷ To be read on January 11⎮11 Tevet ✷

Vayechi (“He Lived”) is the twelfth and final Torah portion in the Book of Genesis. To Jacob, Joseph makes the promise that he will bury him in Canaan in the Cave of Machpelah. Jacob blesses Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, and then each of his own twelve sons. Jacob dies and is buried.

In this Torah portion, we learn that the "chesed ve'emet" (the ultimate kindness) is that of burial. This is because, in burial, we do for another what they cannot do for themselves and with no possible expectation of reciprocity. In this sense, the living are meant to serve the dead. Indeed, Judaism is a mode of living defined by its orientation to (and on-going repetition of) the ancient past. Paradoxically, it is, at the same time, staked on an emancipatory promise: that the broken world will someday be made whole through our efforts.

How then might the on-going repetition of the past become itself as a means of achieving emancipation from that very place of brokenness and disappointment? How might remembrance not be melancholic, but happy-making? And, in what ways, do Jewish rituals offer us glimpses of liberated future?

Originally printed in 2023 "LJCC Weekly Announcements December 28 / 16 Tevet."