Is Blessing Deserved?
Reflections on Merit and Grace
Noticing Joseph’s sons, Israel asked, “Who are these?” And Joseph said to his father, “They are my sons, whom God has given me here.” “Bring them up to me,” he said, “that I may bless them.” Now Israel’s eyes were dim with age; he could not see. So [Joseph] brought them close to him, and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, and here God has let me see your children as well.” (Genesis 48:8-11)
Jacob’s eyesight is so weak at the end of the Book of Genesis, in parashat Vayechi (47:28–50:26), that he doesn’t recognize the faces of his own grandchildren. According to Chizkuni, he identifies his son, Joseph, only by the sound of his voice. It’s ironic that Jacob proclaims, “I never expected to see you again [Joseph], and here God has let me see your children as well” —at the very moment that he can’t see. The cryptic line can mean many things, depending on inflection. Is Jacob giving thanks for what he had—even though he no longer has it—or is he saying that nothing is going to stop him from enjoying what he has now, not even his failing body?
The word lirot, “to see,” can also mean “to perceive,” and in this sense Jacob’s statement is perfectly ordinary. It is the presence of his children and grandchildren that Jacob feels, even if his aphasia prevents him from grasping the details. Jacob isn’t giving thanks for visual perception (or spiritual perception a la “the mind’s eye”) but simply for perception. The word lirot also appears with an ambiguous meaning when the Torah describes the people’s experience of revelation. The people “saw the voices” (roim et hakolot) at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:18). On one interpretation, the people’s experience was synaesthetic. On another, the text simply tells us that the people heard thunder, with roeh being figurative. Like Jacob, the people are witness to a presence that, at the same time, is beyond their visual comprehension.
There is a connection between the fact that the God of the Torah cannot be seen and should not be depicted visually and the fact that Jacob and Isaac are visually impaired when they bestow divine blessing at the end of their lives. The discovery of iconoclasm as a form of both theological and political resistance has implications also for interpersonal relations. Just as we can’t know God, we can’t really know other people, whose mystery must remain in tact. In failing to perceive which son is which, Isaac and Jacob teach us that blessing comes when we transcend objectification. The face is a window to the soul, but it, too, can be a distraction: “grace is deceptive and beauty is empty” (Proverbs 31:30). Looks can deceive, and not just in the superficial sense. This distrust of the world of appearances is why the ancients, across cultures, depict bards and oracles as blind.
There is another layer to Jacob’s words when he says, “and here,” (v’hinei). Does Jacob refer to the actual moment in which he speaks? Does he refer to the physical presence of his progeny right then and there? Or is “and here” a reference not to the present moment, but to the entire arc of his life up until that moment? Whatever “and here” means is confusing. Through Jacob’s dim eyes we are brought to a moment in which confusion and clarity co-mingle.
Jacob’s deathbed-blessing scene recalls that of his father, Isaac. But is Jacob now, like his father, being tricked into giving a blessing? What does the Torah mean to teach through the parallel? Perhaps the Torah seeks to contrast Jacob with his father. The biggest difference it seems, is that Isaac has only one blessing to give, while Jacob has twelve. For Isaac, the blessing cannot be divided. For Jacob, it must be. Rashi, citing a Midrash, offers a twist on the scene that may help us us further:
AND ISRAEL SAW JOSEPH’S SONS — he wished to bless them but the Divine Presence departed from him because he saw that from Ephraim would be born the wicked kings Jeroboam and Ahab, and from Menashe Jehu and his sous (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayechi 6). AND HE SAID “WHO ARE THESE?” — Whence come these who are unfit for blessing?
With Isaac, we get the sense that even though Jacob tricks him, he learns in the process that Jacob is the proper recipient of his blessing. Even if Jacob pretends to be Esav, the joke is on Jacob, since Isaac is only pretending to be deceived. Isaac, likewise, discerns that Esav is undeserving of the blessing even as the text, on its surface, portrays Esav sympathetically, as a victim. Isaac changes his mind (and comes to see what his wife, Rebecca, knew from the start)—the way classical commentaries explain this is that he discerns Esav’s line to be deficient.
“But if Esav is to be disqualified on the basis of his posterity, why not apply the same standard to Ephraim and Menashe?” intimates Rashi. In Rashi’s hands, Jacob’s inability to recognize his grandchildren is figurative, moral. Really? You want me to bless these people when I know how it will turn out for them? “Yes, I do,” replies Joseph. At its most radical, the Torah moves away from the meritocratic model, where blessing is deserved, to a gracious model, where blessing is granted even to the undeserving. Here are two models of social justice: one says justice means fairness, means paying people their due, and one that says justice means something like a safety net, or an egalitarian principle—Efraim and Menashe won’t shine like Judah, but should they be denied their “human right” to a blessing?
G.A. Cohen writes that the tension between dignity as earned and dignity as innate is not simply one that divides libertarians (who we expect to favor meritocracy without state intervention) and socialists (who we expect to favor a state that intervenes to establish egalitarian outcomes) but one that divides 19th and 20th century Marxists themselves. For one wing of Marxism, work and labor are noble (“I’ve been working on the railroad”). For another, human dignity has nothing to do with work. For one, governments should establish jobs programs (a la the New Deal); for another, governments should simply redistribute wealth (as in Universal Basic Income.) For one, the holy war is between unions and capitalists; for the other, the goal is for everyone to enjoy more leisure (if only everyone could be aristocrats). The former celebrate struggle (vis a vis a dialectical philosophy of history); the latter aim for utopia, an end of history, in which there is no more struggle and the blessed simply get to retire.
The question of whether blessing—however defined—is earned or not is a question from which none are exempt. It’s also a question that, in practice, can’t be answered in absolutes. The intermixing of grace (chen) and effort (hishtadlut) is one of the great mysteries. Some people are apparently graced even with minimal effort; others work hard and can’t catch a break. But for ourselves, we must acknowledge the role of both. In the example of two patriarchs, we get one model that denies blessing on the basis of an ethic of personal responsibility and another that affords it on the basis that every child deserves a blessing no matter what.
On an allegorical level, these models describe not social and state policy, but the relationship of the self to itself. How do we respond to the Esav within, the Efraim and Menashe within? As the secular new year starts, do we seek to withhold blessing from those aspects of ourselves we’d like to improve (as in the tough love model) or will we improve precisely by loving ourselves unconditionally and embracing even our flaws (the radical acceptance model). We can tell stories in which the former is motiving and the latter enabling. We can also tell stories in which the former is damaging and the latter freeing. By giving us two models, the Torah in its wisdom, places the burden of choice and interpretation in our hands.
The notion that Jacob could bless people precisely at the moment that the divine presence departed from him is simply amazing, eerie, almost like a negative prophecy. I feel ambivalent about it. On the one hand, the text is kind of anti-heebie-jeebie, because it’s saying that even though Jacob’s intuition was telling him he was in the presence of evil or darkness, he didn’t let them get in the way of finding blessing nonetheless. On the other hand, it’s a standard that’s not only difficult to uphold, but that may be destructive—why give blessing to predators and perpetrators? Why embolden regimes that are tyrannical? Perhaps Jacob is being tricked, after all? Who would bless someone knowing its end will be destructive?
In fact, this may be the point of Jacob’s blessing—that its validity does not depend on consequence, is not dependent on outcome. Either Jacob blesses out of radical optimism, or because he hopes that free will can triumph over fate, or else because he doesn’t want to condemn the entire line simply because of some bad actors. Should the Ephraim and Manaaseh before him be sacrificed because of the waywardness of their descendants (a sci-fi version of should the children pay for the sins of the parents?)
The Talmud teaches a principle—at once dangerous and inspiring—that “even sinners of Israel are righteous.” Does this mean that sinners have the potential to change? Does it mean that sinners have a core that—contra Christian theology—remain unblemished, an “original purity”? Does it mean that for all their flaws, the Israelite people as a whole remain a good moral bet? Any are possible (and more)—but all are are perplexing. Jacob’s bestowal of blessings at the end of a book is a wink at history, a challenge to us: though you are wayward, be blessed.
Seforno claims that blessings (and curses) are only efficacious when the one giving them can see what they are blessing. Thus, Bilaam, must look out at the tents of Israel, from a vista. He can’t just bless in his living room with the people far away. And yet, Jacob and Isaac both give blessings when their sight is challenged. A skeptical interpretation is that the Torah is casting doubt on the efficacy of their blessing, as if they didn’t know what they were doing. But my preferred reading ventures in the opposite direction. Despite or because of their dim sight, they were able to see more impressionistically. They knew exactly what they were doing—in a nondual act, they were blessing the good and the bad together. They saw that virtue and vice, strength and weakness, light and shadow, are entwined.
Rather than give his blessing only to those in whom he found a divine presence, Jacob gave out blessing even in the face of divine absence. As moderns, for whom the presence of God is not (always) obvious, we need Jacob’s example. To bless even when the blessing is unearned runs many risks, in practice. To reserve blessing only when it is deserved and the divine presence felt may leave us in a world with no blessing at all.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy, Healthy 2021,
Zohar Atkins @Etz Hasadeh
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About the name: Deuteronomy 20:19 teaches that when one conquers territory, one should not cut down the trees, because trees, unlike people, cannot run way. Read spiritually, the image-concept of the “tree of the field” represents that which we must preserve in the face of great cultural, political, and technological upheaval and transformation. As the world becomes more and more modernized, it becomes even more necessary to secure our connection to the wisdom of the ancient past and to ways of being that give our lives irreducible meaning.
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