Vayechi -- 5776

Photo:  Wilsen Way.

The Book of Genesis concludes this week, and a family saga draws to a close.  With the death of Joseph, the Hebrew story branches out: from the travails of a single family to the travails of an entire nation.

“Joseph lived 110 years,” we are told in Genesis 50:22.  “Joseph died aged 110 years,” we are told again, four verses later.  Since no new information is revealed in the second line, we may either consider it redundant, or a powerful insight with which the Torah is enticing us by only revealing it partially.  Why say both “Joseph lived…” and “Joseph died…”?

When someone dies, their death overshadows all else.  Whether our loved ones are taken suddenly or after a prolonged illness, and whether their death is a tragedy, a blessing, or something in between, we who are left behind see only loss, the silhouette of a life.  When Jewish mourners pour dirt into the grave and rip the black kriyah ribbon, we ritualize these profound truths.  What’s missing in the world cannot be filled in. The tear in our lives cannot be mended.

We grieve and, in time, our lives find new shape.  We craft a new normal.  We come to remember the person we loved for who they were, and can think of more than the way they died.  Through memory, their life returns to our consciousness.  We fill in the fullness of their being, and we weave old fabric into something new.

Edyth Mencher, rabbi and psychotherapist, once told me that, paradoxically, “we need to remember in order to forget.  We need to forget in order to remember.”  How we live and how we die are not the same.  Our lives are far more than their end.