{"id":40502,"date":"2018-09-18T12:53:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T09:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=40502"},"modified":"2022-04-13T23:32:49","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T20:32:49","slug":"remembering-with-advantages-jacob-retells-his-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/remembering-with-advantages-jacob-retells-his-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering With Advantages: Jacob Retells His Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":50634,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[490,523,368],"acf":{"old_id":"40502","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36663,"related_cahpter":"50","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"From Creation, to bones, to procreation","content":"

\u201cThis week\u2019s reading ends the book of Genesis with the death of Joseph,\u201d he continued, \u201cJoseph the righteous. It\u2019s odd to end this book with bones in a coffin. It began with the grandeur of the creation of the universe, and now the last image Genesis offers us is the bones of Joseph. I want to focus on how this image gets us to the next book, the book of Exodus.<\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t always know why God puts us in narrow places. Mitzrayim<\/em>, Egypt, literally means narrow, constricting; but even when God puts us into these places, God allows us a way out. Even though Joseph is in this place of immense constriction, he is able to say, on naming his son Ephraim, \u2018God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.\u2019 That paradoxical fertility is the crux of the human condition. For who can say he is in an ideal setting, a place that is not in some way an affliction?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGenesis ends with a coffin containing the bones of Joseph, yet Exodus begins with births, the swarming and teeming masses of Jews being born–a multiplication on a vaster scale than the fertility amidst affliction of Yosef.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the differences between father and son is in a chance Jacob has to retell his life story, his personal journey. At the beginning of the portion he blesses all his sons, and then the sons of Joseph. As he is blessing Joseph\u2019s sons, Jacob does something peculiar. He switches his hands so that his right is on the head of the younger and his left on the older. In essence, in this moment, Jacob is re-enacting the primal scene of his life, his wresting of the birthright from his older twin. Jacob\u2019s blessing of his grandsons retells the struggle between himself and Esau as a smooth transition with acceptance by both parties that the younger son of Joseph, Ephraim, should precede the older, Manasseh. In Jacob’s new version of his life, there is no enmity between the brothers. He gives the blessing to the one he designates, and they both accept the verdict, without hatred or bloodshed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe beauty of history is that it can be shaped with hindsight. Shakespeare, in Henry V, speaks of the ability to \u201cremember with advantages.\u201d In reviewing his life, Jacob reshapes his primal scene of impersonating Esau to gain his father\u2019s blessing and removes the violent urges of the shunned older sibling. Jacob is given the ability to re-envision his life, re-enact it in a new form, much as Joseph is able to tell and retell both his own life and the lives of others through dream interpretation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what that future is, or how to ultimately decode it. But when the future comes, when we are able to decode our dreams, I hope we will say with Joseph, \u2018God turned it to good.\u2019 The ability to say, whatever happens, God turned it to good, that is my beracha<\/em> for each person here. Shabbat Shalom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(excerpted from Beth Kissileff, <\/span>Questioning Return<\/span>, <\/span>Mandel Vilar Press, 2016, by courtesy of the author).<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"Remembering With Advantages: Jacob Retells His Story","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"From Creation, to bones, to procreation","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"old_create_date":"","links":false,"send_noty":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50634"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104002,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40502\/revisions\/104002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}