Interrupting the Sibling Patterns of Genesis
A sermon on Parsha Vayechi by Benjamin S. Kay.
On Friday night, in keeping with Jewish tradition, we bless our children. Our son Isaac gets the blessing, “May Hashem make you like Ephraim and Menashe.” Why Ephraim and Menashe? My understanding is that this practice originates with Rashi, the 11th-century French rabbi. But Rashi does not say why we should do that. Rashi is just pointing to this week’s portion Vayechi, which contains the blessing that Ephraim and Menashe receive from Jacob, their grandfather.
Other than Vayechi being the obvious source of the form for this blessing, Rashi does not offer us any reason for using these brothers in particular when blessing sons. For that, we must wait for Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov, a 19th century Hasidic Acharon, who argues that we elevate the brothers for their lack of jealousy and arrogance when discussing Parashat Vayechi in his work Agra De-Kallah. That is essentially the version I was taught as Jewish folk wisdom: that Ephraim and Menashe are celebrated, and we seek our sons to emulate them, because they are the first brothers in the Torah who actually like each other.
Before them, for all the major brothers for which we have real textual evidence, there are serious conflicts. Cain kills Abel. Isaac and Ishmael have their childhood play ruined by family dynamics. Jacob and Esau quarrel over birthrights. Jacob’s favoritism, Joseph’s arrogance, and his brothers’ envy and bad judgment lead to heartbreaking tragedy. By those standards, Ephraim and Menashe are paragons of Philadelphia, of brotherly love.
However, we do not see strife between Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Genesis is full of brothers we only meet as names in genealogies— for example, Lamech’s three sons; the 15 sons of Japheth and Ham and Shem; the many sons of Keturah and Ishmael and Esau, plus their descendants. But we do not know much about them at all. Not knowing their good and bad qualities, we would not necessarily want our sons to emulate them.
But that is a little strange, because there is not a lot in the text to show that Ephraim and Menashe liked each other, played nicely, or made each other laugh. All we have to go on is that when Jacob reverses the traditional order of blessing and blesses Ephraim (the younger) first and Menashe (the older) second, the very same kind of decision that caused enormous conflict when his father Isaac blessed Jacob instead of Esau, nothing happens. It is the absence of conflict that is taken as evidence of warm feelings and good relations. To me, this feels like rather thin evidence.
But brotherly love and good treatment is so sorely missing in Genesis that Ephraim and Menashe’s calm reaction to the reversed birthright sets a new and higher standard for what it means for brothers to get along.
There is another pair of brothers with a much better documented pattern of familial affection and a track record of working well together. And we are going to meet them again for the first time next week: Moses and Aaron.
When Moses is at the burning bush and learning about his divine mission, he complains to God about his inadequacies. God tells him that his brother Aaron, who at this point he does not know at all and has never met, will be glad to see him and will work together with him. They have their problems, including at the golden calf, but they manage to lead the Exodus, build a post-Egyptian Israelite government and religion, and they seem to have more good times than bad.
I have four brothers. Growing up, my father used to say that everything below waist level was dirty, broken, or both. We fought a lot. I once had a drinking glass thrown at my face and bounced off my head. My twin brothers once broke into a tussle on the bima at their b’nai mitzvah dress rehearsal, triggered by one of them impersonating the cantor’s thick Israeli accent.
But do not get me wrong. We love each other dearly, and the five of us, with my sister, our spouses and partners, and our kids, had a great time hanging out in DC last week. Our quarrels are much more in the spirit of Isaac and Ishmael’s young rough housing than Cain’s barbarism. Though we were sorely tempted, we never sold anyone to any passing Midianites.
We just observed the minor fast day Asara b’Tevet. The fast mourns the 587 BCE siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia, an event that began on Tevet 10 and culminated in the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah, and the Babylonian exile.
Given their similar themes, it seems fitting that Asara b’Tevet is near Vayechi. The 10th of Tevet always falls seven or eight days after the last day of Chanukah, depending on whether Kislev has 29 or 30 days. So, depending on the exact year type, Asara b’Tevet will land during the weeks of Vayigash or Vayechi.
It is a fitting taste of sadness that presages the tragic events in Exodus, and the sweetness of liberation and the return from exile. Like Vayechi, Asara b’Tevet marks the beginning of an exile, one to Babylon and the other to Egypt. Both are about a moment when things still look more or less normal, but history has already shifted. The siege has started, even if the walls have not yet fallen.
In that sense, Asara b’Tevet is not the fast of destruction. It is the fast of the first crack. We are asked to mourn not just burned stones and toppled walls, but all the earlier chances we had to notice, to change, to listen to our prophets and to each other, and did not.
Brotherhood, literal and non-literal, can be one of those first cracks. The stories of Genesis are brutally honest about it. When brothers do not know how to handle difference, or hurt, or unfairness, the result is exile. Joseph’s brothers send him to Egypt, but they also send all of us. By the time we get to the end of the book, we have learned how powerful sibling rivalry can be in shaping intergenerational family dynamics and even in setting a whole people’s geography.
I do not actually know if Ephraim and Menashe loved each other, or made each other laugh, or fought over toys. The text does not say. What it does tell us is that when their grandfather repeats the most dangerous pattern in his family, choosing the younger over the older, they do not turn it into another Cain and Abel, another Jacob and Esau, another Joseph and his brothers. And that is enough for Rashi, and later for Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech, and for all of us, to say: “this is what we want for our children.”
When I put my hands on Isaac’s head on Friday night and say, “May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe,” I am not just praying that he and his siblings will not throw drinking glasses at each other. I am asking that he grow into someone who can live in complicated times, in various exiles, without turning every difference into a war. Someone who can be a brother, in a deep sense, and not an enemy.
Isaac will be leading musuf davening in a few minutes. As you see him around shul today and in Shabbats to come, let me know whether you think the blessing is working.
As we move from Vayechi into Shemot, from comfort in Egypt into slavery and then liberation, and as we move from Asara b’Tevet along the arc that ends in Tisha B’Av and then Tisha B’Av’s consolation, we might take on one very practical avodah: to notice the moments when we harden ourselves to a sibling, a partner, a fellow Jew. To treat those as our personal tenth of Tevet and respond while the walls are still standing.
May we be blessed to raise children, and to become adults, who can be like Ephraim and Menashe in that way. May we be brothers and sisters to each other, in our families and our community, in a way that interrupts the old Genesis pattern. And may the God who “visits” us in Egypt, in Babylon, and in every exile, visit us again with a redemption that grows out of real brotherhood and not out of shared disaster.
Parshat Chayei Sarah Evening Drash in Honor of Gila Kay
11/18/2022
Friends and family, welcome! I’m thrilled you could be with us to kick off a weekend of celebration in honor of Gila’s Bat Mitzvah.
Gila’s torah portion is Chayei Sarah. The rabbi and I have been helping Gila with her drash (her sermon) on the torah portion. I think you are really going to like what she’s written when you hear it tomorrow.
I’d like to share a few of my gleanings from the portion. But don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling any of Gila’s good stuff. And, of course, the rabbi also shared some wisdom with us. But the sages teach that the Torah has 70 faces and so there are at least 68 others for me to talk about.
I’d like to talk about Eliezer of Damascus, Abraham’s servant. Eliezer works no miracles, has no visions, never speaks to G-d, nor does have the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Samson, or the military genius of Joshua. To some this makes him ordinary, but he is anything but.
Eliezer isn’t a sidekick. He isn’t Watson to Abraham’s Sherlock. And he certainly isn’t Igor to Abraham’s Frankenstein. No, Eliezer is more like Forest Gump. He is a man that, by virtue of his morality, hard work, goodness, bravery, and faithfulness can transcend his humble origins to accomplish great things and bear witness to seminal events.
We first meet Eliezer in parshat Lech Lecha, where we learn that Eliezer is Abraham’s chief servant. He holds this trusted role through end of Abraham’s life. What I didn’t know, until I started studying with Gila, is that this also meant that he was Abraham’s heir until the birth of Ishmael. It must have hurt to lose the prospect of inheriting Abraham’s fortune and that special place of love in Abraham’s household. Many people displaced like Eliezer would be embittered. Just look at Prince Harry’s autobiography “Spare”!
But that’s not Eliezer’s reaction. He remains a steadfast and devoted servant, not just to Abraham but to Isaac even though the boy eventually displaces him.
His reward is to witness legendary events and literal miracles. A long-childless elderly Abraham has a son and Eliezer is there. And then, even more miraculously, Abraham has a second son with his 90-year-old wife Sarah. Again, Eliezer is there. When Isaac is bound and almost sacrificed, Eliezer gets to be one of the first to hear of the miracle. And he’s even there when our matriarch Sarah dies.
Then, near the end of Abraham’s life, Eliezer makes a solemn vow to find Isaac a bride. But how can he find someone worthy? How can he find a good-enough wife for a man the almighty himself reached down to save? To find a bride to be mother of and matriarch to the Jewish people? To fill the mighty Abraham’s shoes when our patriarch was too frail to search himself?
And the prospect of Eliezer's search must have been terrifying. After bearing witness to or at least hearing around the campfire of the horrors of Sodom and Gomorrah, he knew how dangerous and horrifying a trip to Ur could be.
But again, he rises to the occasion and succeeds, making a shidduch between Rebecca and Isaac. And that match is one of the greatest love stories of the Torah and perhaps all of history. And he’s blessed to be there the moment when they fall in love.
We can’t all be the father of nations. We can’t all be strong as a giant or clever enough to slay one. We can’t all stir men to action with our words. We can’t all dazzle history with our genius. We are limited to gifts the good lord gave us.
But we can all choose:
hard work over sloth,
bravery over cowardice,
camaraderie over envy.
And if we do, perhaps we too can see great things and make a small mark on history. Shabbat Shalom!