Vayichi. Making Sense of our Challenges.

With parashat Vayechi, we close the Book of Bereshit, the story of the genesis of the people born from whom the twelve tribes, the sons of Yaakov-Israel, are born.

At the opening of it, we witness a strange scene: as Yaakov has decided to adopt as his own the two sons of Joseph: Menashe and Ephraim, when he blesses them before his death, he performs a strange gesture:

Israel stretched out his right hand and placed it on the head of Ephraim, though he was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh. He deliberately crossed his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn.(Genesis 48:14)

וַיִּשְׁלַח֩ יִשְׂרָאֵ֨ל אֶת־יְמִינ֜וֹ וַיָּ֨שֶׁת עַל־רֹ֤אשׁ אֶפְרַ֨יִם֙ וְה֣וּא הַצָּעִ֔יר וְאֶת־שְׂמֹאל֖וֹ עַל־רֹ֣אשׁ מְנַשֶּׁ֑ה שִׂכֵּל֙ אֶת־יָדָ֔יו כִּ֥י מְנַשֶּׁ֖ה הַבְּכֽוֹר:

What follows is a kind of strange dance between Yaakov and Yosef:

the son trying to restore the natural order of things by “correctly” repositioning his father’s hands, and the father persisting in his act.

It is indeed a blessing that once again challenges—yet again in the history of Israel—the primacy of the firstborn, which Yaakov intends to pronounce.

Why insist on blessing the younger before the elder?

The Hasidic answer of the Kedushat Levi, as is often the case in midrashic and mystical readings, frees itself from the literal story of sibling rivalry offered by the pshat, and instead focuses on the notions of “before” and “after,” offering a profound teaching relevant to each Day and Age : how can we, humans, approach life’s challenges.

From the parable of the inverted blessing of Joseph’s sons, he teach one of the fundamental principles of Jewish thought regarding the human condition. This teaching, he takes from the Talmud, in tractate Megillah:

השם יתברך מקדים רפואה למכה

“The Holy One, blessed be He, prepares the remedy before the blow.”(Megillah 13b)

The Kedushat Levi offers this drasha on inverting the order of things from the very meaning of the names of Yaakov’s grandsons.

The older is named Menashe—“ki nashani”, “for God has made me forget my suffering.”

The second ise named Ephraim—“ki hifrani”, “for God has made me fruitful.”

The sufferings of the yeridah, the descent that Joseph experienced—first in the pit into which his brothers threw him, then in the prisons of Egypt—were not only erased by the aliyah, the equally spectacular ascent that brought him to become the viceroy of what had first been his land of enslavement.

His sufferings were not merely forgotten (Menashe); they were transformed into fertilizer (Ephraim), enriching the soil of his heart and making his life flourish.

Such is the vocation of suffering in a Jewish perspective, but also in other world wisdom traditions—if only one chooses to make something of it.

This is what the Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh, a survivor of the Vietnam War, teaches in his book From Mud to Lotus: We can learn the art of transforming suffering by choosing to see the fertilizer in the challenges life brings us.

It is also what psychologist Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the concentration camps, passed on to us through his method of logotherapy:

the art of transforming the desperate cry of “why?” into an affirmation of direction.

When “why?” becomes “for what?”, the cry of despair can becomes a luminous path of inquiry, through which we look at life with curiosity, as we ask ourselves:

for what new path, and for what new good, did this misfortune come to disrupt the established order of things in my life? What new doors of strength, resilience, insight and compassion, can the very things which have hurt me, open in me?

To do this, one must accept—like Joseph did—to transform the question of protest into inquiry

One must commit to an alchemy that turns refusal into curiosity, withdrawal into openness, until the exploration of new meaning opened by misfortune transforms the question into an affirmation.

This was last week's teaching, in Parashat Vayigash. When Joseph told his brothers not to blame themselves for having sold him into slavery, because by now he had understood that it was God who had sent him there for the good, he is exemplifying this path of resilience.

Yes, we all have the capacity to transform peat into fertilizer for the gardens of our lives—if only we choose to make our misfortunes the fertile soil of our growth.

This is the hand extended by the Divine to dance with ours; and even if its invitations are often difficult to decipher at first, we all have that capacity.

And here is when comes the second question to which the Kedushat Levi answers in his commentary of Parashat Vayiechi this week:

What could help us make sense of what happened to us. The talmudic teaching that "God sends the remedy before the Blow", suggests that we are not alone in this path of resilience. Gods Kindness is expressed through this gift:

Placing Ephraim, “God made me flourish,” before Menashe, “God made me forget (that I suffered)” is, according to the Kedushat Levi, an illustration of the Talmudic reminder that the remedy is given before the blow.

Just as Jewish mysticism teaches that teshuvah—the capacity to return to our true nature, to our deep connection with the Source of Life—existed even before the world was created, the Talmud reminds us that the remedy is already given.

What a paradigm shift—and what an invitation to see our misfortunes differently!

Often, when life’s challenges strike us—God forbid—we search frantically for solutions, as though everything rested solely in our hands, as though it were up to us alone to find the answer.

Jewish mysticism reminds us that it doesnt have to be this way. And Jewish wisdom invites us to make the opposite movement: we don't need to rush forward, the Kedushat Levi, with the Talmud, seem to whisper us. We don't need to live in a constant state of bracing ourselves, or respond to life's challenges with not the urgency to find solutions. We can take what the Zen tradition calls “the step back". We can pause, become receptive to the solution that is right there, under the surface of things.

We can make ourselves available to the healing that is already given, even if it is not yet palpable. It is only ours to notice, to uncover, to reveal, and to activate healing in our lives, the healing that is everywhere already, around us and within us.

Of course, on the surface of things, it will still be up to us to make choices and take action.But we can do so from a place where, deep within ourselves, we know that the remedy is already there.

In a way, this is an illustration of the beautiful midrash according to which, in our mother’s womb, we knew the entire Torah—all the guidance of the Source of Life was transmitted to us before birth.

And then as we were born we simply forgot. In that perspective, Man's life journey becomes a path of relearning, of reclaiming a wisdom that, deep down, had always already been there within us- as our birthright

For us, wisdom is not so much an acquisition as a re-membering—a teshuvah. A return to what is already here.

As a new civil year begins, with its share of beautiful trials sent to us to help us grow, this is a good moment to remember the treasure we carry with us within ourselves.