Parshat Vayechi: It’s All About Us!

I recently thumbed through my old primary school report book. Do you remember those?

Junior 4 (the final report), when I was 11 years old and seven months.

Arithmetic: Beginning to develop some thought but needs much guidance.

Geography: A slow worker. Tends to answer without sufficient elaboration.

Writing: Letters not well formed.

Craft: Average. Is satisfied with rather mediocre results. (Which is my favourite comment so far).

Reading: Loves to read and reading aloud, is very expressive.

My love of reading was not news to either myself or my parents, for in Infants 2 (when I was seven) my teacher wrote:

"In reading, Claude has certainly shown very good progress and now enjoys reading his books".

I may have been an 'F' student when it came to woodwork and needlecraft. Maths was never a strong point but from early on I discovered books and as a result the pleasure that emanates from reading them - and I haven't stopped lapping them up!

I have been reading a great deal recently as a result of not being able to listen to music since my mother's passing in April. My sister-in-law, Louise, recommended Amazon's Audible service which allows you to listen to audiobooks for a modest monthly fee. I haven't looked back since and, as a result, have had the opportunity to hear a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, ranging from wonderful 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' and 'Remains of the Day' to the extremely moving ‘Telephone at the Edge of the world’, which is simply unforgettable.

However, if I had to identify a single genre that I have returned to repeatedly since my childhood, it would definitely consist of biographies.

I used to think that writing an autobiography was the height of conceit. After all, is a person so important that they feel they need to share their inner secrets with the rest of the world? I suppose that you might level this charge at a young person who has yet to live their life through to a decent age, but could one really accuse a genius like Charlie Chaplin or the 'Last Fighting Tommy', Harry Patch, of being self-absorbed? Both men had a story to tell and in doing so, they shared a part of history that enables us to connect to the past. Indeed, in my own family a great-aunt wrote a book about her childhood which sheds a fascinating light on my maternal grandfather's very early years in Sydney.

In fact, my own mother wrote her memoirs for my children which they will be able to share with my grandchildren, Please Gd. You may be wondering where all of this fits in with this week's Parsha or within the Torah itself, so let me explain.

Vayechi begins with the following verse:

Genesis 47:

(28) Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, so that the span of Jacob’s life came to one hundred and forty-seven years.

We have reached the end of the road for the Patriarchs.

Yaakov is about to die and he wants to leave a legacy for the next generations who have taken on the name of Bnei Yisrael - the children of Israel. It is the only Parsha in the Torah that continues on from the last one without the introduction of a new paragraph - it is literally 'stom- closed’. Our Rabbis explain that this is because, with the death of Jacob and the settlement of his family in Egypt, a long, closed period of suffering was not far away (as we shall soon discover in Sefer Shemot (Exodus)).

I would like, however, to focus on a different interpretation of the first verse, as per Chizkuni, a 13th century French Rabbi and Commentator. He writes:

"...(that) It was only during Yaakov's last seventeen years in Egypt that his mind was at rest and not beset by serious worries of one kind or another. In fact, this whole verse has been inserted in the Torah as a compliment to Joseph who was the cause of Yaakov’s last seventeen years being happy years. During those 17 years he repaid his father who had sustained him for the first seventeen years of his life, by providing for him during the last 17 years of his life. He had been seventeen years old when he had been sold."

We are told that Yaakov 'lived' in Egypt.

According to Chizkuni, there is 'living' and 'living'. We can choose to live our lives and accept each day as it greets us or we can 'live' our lives in the knowledge that this is indeed the best time in our life. Yaakov really appreciated what was happening to him. He was reunited with his beloved son and for those final seventeen years, life was really 'as good as it gets'.

A well written and absorbing biography is much more than a chronological record of a person's life. It allows us to understand what makes them 'tick'. To share in their joys and also empathise when life is not so rosy.

I still recall many of the biographies and autobiographies that I have read and, for the most, the way their subjects faced the challenges in their lives, were inspiring and revelatory. My abiding interest in history and how it impacts on human beings drives my fascination with their life stories and this is also where the Torah shines its Divine light, sometimes at its brightest.

Our Rabbis tell us that there are seventy aspects to the Torah (Shivim Panim laTorah) which can be interpreted in many different ways. On the one hand, it is a guide on how to live an ethical life, as witnessed by the deeds of our Patriarchs, Matriarchs and their descendants such as Moshe, Aharon, Miriam and Joshua. On the other, a great deal of space is given to detailing our complex laws and providing a template for creating a just and moral society. And on the other hand, it presents a narrative of our history, starting with the creation of the world and ending with the death of Moshe.

Sefer Bereishit acts as a biography of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah and those people associated with them and this feeds into the other four books. We read about their strengths and weaknesses, personal successes and failures. We learn of their joy and sorrow and of the lessons they learned, sometimes in a very painful manner.

Following on, I would even venture to say that the Torah as a whole, amongst its other glorious achievements, manages to be a biography of the Jewish people. For if you want to understand what makes us, well, ‘us’ - dip inside our Holy Book and see for yourself.

Amongst my very favourite books, The Torah (and its two companions, Neviim and Ketuvim) are at the very top of my Biographical list.

Happy reading!

Shabbat Shalom