Rabbi Julie’s sermon for Parshat Vayechi, January 11, 2025
When I was in college, my grandmother would write to me every few weeks. Her letters were handwritten on stationary in an elegant, loop-filled cursive that embodied a penmanship common for someone born at the turn of the century, in the early 1900’s. Though my hand-writing was a paltry simplification of hers, I knew how to write a handwritten letter. After all, email had just been invented and I didn’t know anyone in my parents generation, let alone my grandparents generation who used it. And long-distance phone calls were still quite expensive. In those days, college students actually checked their mailboxes everyday and I looked forward to receiving those letters. They were filled with the most mundane details. Dear Julie, Today I had lunch with Aunt Alma and went to my exercise class in the swimming pool. But they were also filled with so much love. It was my grandmother’s way of saying, I miss you, I’m thinking of you, I’m proud of you, I love you, even though those words were never actually written on the page.
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This week’s Torah portion, va’yechi, marks the end of the life of our ancestor, Jacob and his son Joseph, bringing the entire patriarchal narrative to a close and completing sefer b’reisheit, the Book of Genesis. It contains a powerful deathbed scene where Jacob calls his sons, including Ephraim and Manasseh who he has just formally adopted from Joseph, to gather around him so he can share his final words. It’s tempting to call this section, the blessing of Jacob, but given what he actually says to his sons, criticizing and cursing some of them rather than blessing them, Ibn Ezra recognized long ago that it is more fitting to call this section the final testament of Jaocb[1]. According to Biblical scholar, Nahum Sarna, this section is the “first sustained piece of Hebrew poetry in the Torah” combining “three literary genres: the deathbed blessing familiar to us from earlier patriarchal narratives, the farewell address found later in the Bible as in the Book of Joshua, and the tribal poem found in Deuteronomy and Judges.[2] Written in the double repeating form of all Hebrew poetry, this extended poem is quite difficult to understand, full of double-entendres and obscure meanings.
Throughout this section, the names “Jacob” and “Israel” each appear five times, representing that Jaocb is both the father of these individual sons and the father of the tribes they represent. Each tribe is addressed in a different way, sometimes clearly referring to the lifetime of one of Jacob’s sons and at other times referring to the tribe’s future legacy. This phenomenon was fully recognized by the medieval Torah commentators. According to Sarna, modern scholarship has added almost nothing to this analysis, “except the medievals treat these [future predictions] as prophetic whereas the moderns would be generally inclined to view them as retrojections from later historical reality.[3]
* * *
Jacob’s final words to his sons have always troubled me, for I wonder how it impacted Reuven, Shimon, Levi, and Issachar, when they were all so harshly criticized at the very end of their father’s life. Jacob’s deathbed words feel like a missed opportunity to impart core values, express love, or at least bring his scattered children closer together. And my grandmother’s letters have always left me wishing she had shared more about her core beliefs or her life story, or given me advice about how to live my life.
While I can read between the lines of her words and my memories, I wish I had a letter I could treasure with her wisdom and insights, now more than 25 years since she died.
* * *
In medieval times, there was a unique body of Jewish literature that emerged called ethical wills. These were not written by scholars, they were written by everyday people to their families offering practical, autobiographical, and personal insights and advice. According to contemporary Rabbi, Elana Zaiman, “the style of these letters varied from “objective and reserved to more personal and reflective, from a commanding (at times even admonishing) tone to a more gentle tone…Many authors asked for or offered God’s blessings. Some told stories, shared personal experiences, or provided historical information. Some asked for or offered forgiveness. Some stated their ultimate truth.”[4]
These ethical wills, written from the 1000s to the 1800s, were primarily written by parents to their children and powerfully for the time were written by both men and women. I remember studying the ethical will of Gluckel of Hameln when I was in college.
A mother and businesswoman who lived from 1646 to 1724 in Germany, she wrote a memoir to her twelve children after the death of her first husband. Her ethical will contained this guidance, “The best thing for you, my children, is to serve God from your heart, without falsehood or sham, not giving out to people that you are one thing while, God forbid, in your heart you are another.” Her practical advice continues, “ Above all, my children, be honest in money matters, with both Jews and Gentiles, lest the name of Heaven be profaned. If you have in hand money or goods belonging to other people, give more care to them than if they were your own, so that, please God, you do no one a wrong.”[5]
* * *
Rabbi Elana Zaiman, the first female rabbi in a family spanning six generations of rabbis, was deeply impacted by an ethical will her father wrote as part of a class he was teaching at the synagogue where he served as rabbi. After the class, he compiled a booklet of the letters, all anonymous, and when she was fourteen, he gave her the booklet and invited her to guess which one he had written. This ethical will was particularly powerful to her because in it her father admitted his weaknesses, in this letter, her father was more vulnerable than she had ever known him to be.
This inspired her, years later as a rabbi, to lead countless workshops about writing ethical wills and eventually to write a book. As she traveled around the country, she realized the term ‘ethical will’ was both confusing and off putting. She also wanted to expand this concept away from a ritual from parents to children near the time of death to a vehicle for expressing values, love, and appreciation at all stages of life, in all kinds of relationships. Inspired by ethical wills, Rabbi Zaiman encourages us to write ‘forever letters’.[6] After reading her book, the Forever Letter, I suddenly thought to myself, I could write one of these letters to my mother for her upcoming birthday or for my twins when they leave for college. Our B’nai MItzvah parents could write these letters to their kids and vice versa. The possibilities are endless.
Rabbi Zaiman’s book makes the case that writing letters is a lost art and an opportunity to clarify our values, write what we find hard to say, heal relationships, understand ourselves better, and state our ultimate truths. The forever letter can also influence how we will be remembered. The book, The Forever Letter, also offers practical advice on how to do it, addressing points of resistance and suggesting writing prompts to get us started.
And most powerfully for me, she radically expands the concept of the ethical will into one that applies to our lives at every stage, including “becoming a parent, grandparent, reaching a special birthday, coming of age, graduating, entering college, falling in love, marrying, giving birth, receiving a job offer, retiring”. Rabbi Zaiman also includes difficult junctures such as “getting laid off, divorcing, receiving a life-threatening diagnosis, living through the death of a loved one, or when we, ourselves are dying.” We don’t have to wait. She encourages us to write a ‘forever letter’ at any time.”[7]
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If our forefather Jacob had read chapter six of Rabbi Zaiman’s book and heeded her advice on what to avoid before gathering his sons to share the final words in this morning’s Torah reading, he might have avoided some key pitfalls, such as favoritism. Perhaps instead, he would have written something poignant and timeless to unify his twelve sons and the twelve tribes of Israel, like one of my favorite paragraphs from Rabbi Elana Zaiman’s father’s ethical will. I have made one change, modifying the word mother, to mothers, for Jacob’s sons were born to Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah, and l have kept the word Jews even though it’s anachronistic. Listen to her father’s letter and imagine the words coming from our forefather Jacob, on the cusp of the opening of the Book of Exodus:
Your mother[s] and I tried hard to teach you that we were different…that you are different…as Jews, and therefore as people. You learned, too, that difference has its price. I hope you are convinced, as we are convinced that being a Jew is well worth that price; and when you feel, as you will sometimes, that it is not, that you realize that you are you, and you have no alternative.”[8]
May we all find a way to take pen to paper, or to type, if we must, letters to our loved ones at critical moments in our lives – well before we near the end our lives – writing ‘forever letters’, inspired by Jewish ethical wills, leaving a tangible, invaluable gift[9]. Shabbat Shalom.
[1]Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary Genesis, p. 331.
[2] Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary Genesis, p. 331.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Elana Zaiman, The Forever Letter, p. 3.
[5] Gluckel of Hameln, The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, p. 2-4.
[6] The Forever Letter, p. 9-12, 4-5.
[7] The Forever Letter, p. 2.
[8] The Forever Letter, page 12.
[9] Ibid, p. 18.
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