Perceiving & Living, Vayechi’s Message for 2026
Shalom,
I was recently recollecting an amazing birthday cake a community member of ours made for their child’s party several years ago. It was a Brown Bear cake, as in the children’s book by Bill Martin and Eric Carle and the cake itself was a true masterpiece. This memory sparked my mind to think about the book’s ability to support children’s vocabulary, language, and sequencing among many other important skills. It also helped me see the way the volume aids young people’s development of perspective and learning to recognize that we all have our own perception; this fosters awareness and connection.
This brings me to a new understanding of this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi. It concludes the Book of Genesis, and perhaps even launches us into the experience as a growing people as we descend into the experience in Egypt. Our ancestor Jacob dies at the beginning of the portion. We are in Egypt and his son Joseph is running the Pharaoh’s country. As we proceed to carry Jacob’s remains back to the Land of Israel for burial, a powerful moment of perceiving differently occurs. Joseph’s brothers, the tribes, get anxious of their brother’s potential retribution for their deed of tossing him into the pit earlier in our story. There is a moment the brothers’ are described as “seeing” something and our sages in the Midrash elucidate a powerful message.
“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong that we did to him!”” (Genesis 50:15)
Midrash Tanhuma describes the “seeing” as leading to a certain perception with the following imagination:
What did they see that frightened them? As they were returning from the burial of their father, they saw their brother go to the pit into which they had hurled him, in order to bless it. He blessed the pit with the benediction “Blessed be the place where God performed a miracle for me,” just as any man is required to pronounce a blessing at the place where a miracle had been performed on his behalf. When they beheld this they cried out: Now that our father is dead, Joseph will hate us and will fully requite us for all the evil which we did unto him. (Midrash Tanhuma Vayechi 17:5)
Joseph, according to this midrash, takes a moment of Hakarat HaTov (our Mussar tradition’s understating of Gratitude which best translates as: Recognizing the Good). The brothers, however, perceive something different. They worry that he is recalling their horrible treatment of him, and their deeds.
Ultimately, the brothers all reconcile. The Midrash goes on to describe this episode as demonstrating the way Torah is designed and crafted for the purpose of peace, peace in the family and in our world. The name of our portion, Vayechi, means and he lived, as in “And Jacob lived…” (Gensis 47:28).
Living is often about perceiving. It is a journey of recognizing that we all have our own perception. As children, we develop the awareness that each mind, each human sees things differently (as Joseph and his brothers demonstrate). Our charge, our challenge, and perhaps even our potential, is to know that perception is always at work. The responsibility inherent is to learn about one another’s perceptions, to ask, with an open heart, how others perceive, rather than assuming as Joseph’s brothers did.
In our moment in history, the world is full of disparate perceptions. We all experience the overflow of information in our unique ways. Let us ask one another how we perceive with the intention of learning, for maybe that helps us live towards the midrash’s view of Torah as a guide for peace.
Shavua Tov & Happy New Year - May we all Realize Peace, Health, and Blessing in 2026,
Rabbi Evon
