January 6, 2012: Jacob's Teshuvah Gemurah

Jacob’s Teshuvah Gemurah (Vayechi)
January 6, 2012

For me, the most powerful words of this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, the most powerful words Jacob spoke in his life (as he prepares to die), perhaps the most powerful words articulated by a human being in Genesis (as the book draws to a close), is the short phrase: yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know.” It reminds me of another terse repetition from the Bible: ka’asher avadti avadti, “if I perish, I perish,” which Queen Esther declares, as she herself faces death by entering unbidden the throne room of the king. As hospital chaplains discussing patients’ different responses to illness and death, I and my colleagues have noted the difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation still contains traces of resistance, rebellion, and anger over impending fate. By contrast, acceptance constitutes a state of complete wholeness and peace. Yadati bni yadati and ka’asher avadti avadti both exhibit complete acceptance.

Jacob’s placement of Ephraim ahead of Menasseh conforms to the basic trope of the Torah in which the younger son supplants the older. This literary pattern goes back to Cain and Abel, and includes, among other examples: Isaac and Ishmael, Moses and Aaron, and, of course, Jacob and Esau. The bechor, the firstborn, is throughout identified with the most excellent, the most exalted, the one most favored by God, whether it be the firstborn of the flock designated for the sacrificial altar, or every firstborn Israelite who is to be consecrated to God (Exodus 13:2) and redeemed through the Jewish ritual ceremony of Pidyon Haben practiced to this day. Given the significance of the status of the firstborn, the Torah’s fundamental subversion over and over again of the natural order of succession is all the more shocking.

In explanation, many scholars point to the status of the Israelite kingdom among the nations. On the stage of the ancient world, Israel was a minor province, barely worthy of notice, and hardly mentioned in the historical chronicles of the great empires that surrounded it, Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the time the Israelite people coalesced sometime around the 10th century BCE, these other civilizations had been around for millennia, since the dawn of recorded history. Israel was an upstart, a recent arrival, “the new kid on the block” in the ancient Near East. How could it be that Adonai, the mighty Ruler of the Universe, especially concerned Himself with such an insignificant populace? Deuteronomy states: “It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that Adonai set His heart on you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because Adonai loved you and kept the oath made to your fathers that Adonai freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 7:7) The literary theme throughout the Torah of the displacement of the older son by the younger reflects Israel’s political situation among the nations of the ancient world and justifies the legitimacy of the Torah’s claim that the children of Israel were God’s chosen people.

That may be. But for me, the power of Jacob’s words on his deathbed lies not in the grand scheme of history, but in the much more personal story of the individual—and what we are each given life to accomplish. When it comes time for Jacob to issue his final blessings, Joseph, well aware of the proper order of succession, presents his sons in correct position in front of Jacob, with Menasseh, the firstborn, in front of Jacob’s right hand, and Ephraim, the youngest, in front of Jacob’s left hand. To this day, the right-hand side symbolizes goodness, strength, and vigor. However, Jacob refuses. Openly and deliberately, he crosses his hands, advancing the younger before the older. Ephraim is to precede Menasseh. (In later history, the allotment for Ephraim included a vast area that became identified with the Northern Kingdom of Israel, whereas the tribal allotment for Menasseh was relegated across the Jordan, across the boundary of the Holy Land.) Joseph protests that it is not correct to favor the younger—despite the fact that he himself, the younger brother among his own siblings, enjoyed the special affections of his father, arousing the jealousy and hatred of his older brethren. Jacob replies in the simplest terms: yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know,” meaning: “I know what I’m doing. You may think I’m blind, you may think that I can’t see, but I can see perfectly well, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Why do the words yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know,” send shivers up my spine every time? Because Jacob’s eyes are no longer set on Joseph and Joseph’s children. Instead, he is envisioning an entirely different scene from long ago. Rolling back the years of travail and suffering to the very beginning, he sees a young child coming before his father full of hurt, because his father loves his older brother, and not him. The child is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; he is determined to wrest his father’s affections through stealth, if he cannot claim his father’s love openly. Jacob himself is that little child. When Jacob says: “I know, my son, I know,” “my son” does not so much refer to Joseph as it refers to the little boy Jacob inside of himself.

Maimonides delineates three stages of repentance: desisting from the transgression, resolving in one’s heart never to recommit the transgression, confessing the transgression and making restitution. Then, he famously posits a fourth, final stage: "What constitutes complete repentance, teshuvah gemurah? The one who is confronted by the identical situation wherein one previously sinned and it lies within one’s power to commit the sin again, but nevertheless does not succumb,” and chooses a different course of action. (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2) At the end of his life, Jacob has come full circle back to the beginning. Once again, he finds himself in the position of claiming the blessing of the firstborn. This time, his overt articulation: “I know what I am doing, and I do so in the sight of all,” reverses his original deception. Jacob has achieved teshuvah gemurah.

Through my work as a hospital chaplain, I have learned that there is no greater gift for the dying than a clean conscience. The thing is, we mustn’t wait until we are confronted with death before we clean our conscience. We can and must live today, and every day, as if it were our last. My blessing to you today is the promise of teshuvah gemurah. May you go beyond resignation, and achieve the fullness of acceptance, wholeness and peace.