Vayeishev 5772

Following decades of adventure, “Jacob now settled in the land of his father’s sojourning, in the land of Canaan.  This is the family history of Jacob… ” (Genesis 37:1-2).  From such an opening, we might have expected this week’s parashah, Vayeishev, to continue with Jacob’s story.  Instead, the drama shifts sharply to his sons, especially Joseph:  “This is the family history of Jacob: when Joseph was seventeen years old, he would tend the flock alongside his brothers.”  The focus is now squarely on the next generation.

Within the context of the Torah, it is good that Jacob has returned to Canaan, the land where his father and grandfather, Isaac and Abraham, lived, the land promised to him.  Can it have another meaning, too?  We could also imagine that Jacob is now settling into the life his father lived, the life his father wanted him to live, rather than his own?  That’s what Isaac did when he was young man--he re-opened his father’s water wells rather than create his own.  Perhaps this is why the narrative of Jacob’s life is now, largely, over:  he is no longer pursuing his own adventure.

When we live the lives our parents establish for us, we are not truly living our own lives.  Rather we are merely treading water, killing time until the next story can begin.  When we seek to determine the path of our children’s lives, we deny them the opportunity to create themselves, to figure out who they are in the world.

“’Be who you are, ‘ said the Duchess to Alice, ‘or, if you would like it put more simply, never try to be what you might have been or could have been other than what you should have been.’”