The Blessing That Is Interpretation

On Joseph's Blessing in Vayechi

And [Jacob] blessed Joseph, saying, “The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day—The Messenger who has redeemed me from all harm—Bless the lads…” (Genesis 48:15-16)

He blessed Joseph. Scripture does not relate the contents of this blessing. (Seforno)

He blessed Joseph. We do not find a blessing addressed to Joseph here. Nachmanides says that by blessing Joseph’s sons Jacob actually blessed Joseph. This does not really appeal to me as it does not explain why Jacob did not say some words which would apply to Joseph individually. I believe that the very word vayivarech was Jacob’s way of telling Joseph that he would remain blessed henceforth…The wording may also be explained that Abraham received the keys to blessings. Isaac received those keys after Abraham had died and he handed them to Jacob before he sent the latter to get himself a wife. At this point Jacob bequeathed these keys to his son Joseph. (Orach Chayim)

Genesis concludes with Jacobs’ final blessings to his children. Not all of these blessings appear to be wonderful, and some, like Reuben’s, even include curses. What all share in common is that they are written in elusive poetry, whose precise meaning is open. Jacob presents these blessings as prophecies of what will come of each line, but like all oracular statements, the actual referent of the statement can only be known in the fullness of time. “Life is lived forwards but must be understood backwards” (Kierkegaard). Most enigmatic of all the blessings is the blessing that Joseph receives. For the Torah jumps from telling us that Jacob blessed Joseph to telling us the contents of Jacob’s blessing for Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. This lacuna leads commentators in different directions. Is Joseph’s blessing simply elided? Is it that Joseph’s blessing is bestowed upon and through his children? Or is Joseph’s blessing categorically distinct from the other blessings?

In one telling, Joseph is a bit of a lost cause who is skipped over in favor of his children. In another, it’s quite the opposite—the children represent a double portion of blessing with Joseph getting a kind of special treatment: two of his sons count as if they were the peers of their uncles. In both tellings is the idea that blessing is multi-generational, that the real blessing is not a possession for an individual but something that needs transmission. In Joseph’s case the emphasis on transmission to his kids appears contrarian, as they have spent their lives in Egypt—they, too, get a blessing and get to count as part of Israel despite their exilic position. Said even more strongly, Joseph’s foray into Egypt not only saves his family, but leads to a proliferation of blessing for his line. Exile and alienation can be a multiplier of blessing.

I prefer the interpretation of the Orach Chayim that Joseph’s blessing is a meta-blessing: in contrast to the others who receive blessings, but don’t know what those blessings mean, Joseph receives the ability to interpret the meaning of a blessing. His blessing is to be an interpreter. Joseph’s brothers receive poems, but Joseph receives vision and understanding of what the poem means.

If we abstract a bit, we see two streams of religion in the split between Joseph and his brothers, both of which are blessed. One is a kind of unconscious force that has emotional appeal but is not available to our cognition. A kind of chok. The other is more rational, mishpat, signified by “the keys to the blessing.” If you have a blessing but no key to it, you are still blessed. But if you have the key to it, you become more active in bringing it about, channeling it, and sharing it. Joseph is a ruler who uses “public reason,” going beyond his own particular roots to help society at large, even a society that is the rival of his own. The blessing of the Israelites remains particular to the clan, but the key to the blessing may correspond to the universalistic impulse within Judaism to share the abundance with the world rather than simply keep it in the family.

It is fitting that Joseph is skipped over, because the one who has the key to the blessing is in some sense not part of the family, not like the others who just get blessing, but no key. Joseph has always been an outcast, but now we see both the price and the value of being one. As with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, you can’t get a blessing and have the key to it—the key is the blessing, just as the velocity becomes the position. For Jacob to skip Joseph in favor of his children is to make a distinction between Israel as tribe and Israel as “light unto the nations.” Joseph gets two portions and none, because he is both the pride and savior of the tribe and other to it.

In the case of Isaac and Jacob, succession is fraught and zero-sum. The choice of one son excludes the other from the Abrahamic covenant. But in the case of Jacob, the Torah takes a diversified approach. Not only will there be twelve distinct inheritors, but there will be two types of ways to inherit—one that involves the preservation of what has been given (traditionalism) and one that involves the transportation of it into new cultural landscapes (syncretism). In both cases, a blessing flows. But the key to the blessing, if we follow Orach Chayim, is given to the one who doesn’t hide the blessing or shield it, but uses it to motivate new adventures, new translations, new methods, new audiences. Psychologically, this path is lonely. And politically it is not always advisable. But without those who seek the key, the blessing will remain vulnerable and shallow.

Joseph must interpret not just Pharaoh’s dreams, but Jacob’s prophecies. There is a blessing in just reading the Torah, but there is a special blessing in seeking to understand it. There is a blessing in just following the Torah, but there is a special blessing in seeking out its principles. That search takes the form of the Gemara, which seeks reasons, in contrast to the Mishna, which scholars call apodictic law, because it doesn’t justify itself. Joseph’s travels, forced out by his own brothers, make naiveté impossible. But they also enlarge the scope of the blessing. A key with no blessing to elucidate would also be unsustainable — we need both the traditionalist and the syncretist wings in this family.

If Joseph’s risk is assimilation and insufficient camaraderie, the risk of the brothers is barbarism conducted in the name of group loyalty. We don’t get a resolution to these competing types, but rather a pluralistic ending: both are needed, even as they clash.

Out of one blessing transmitted to and through Abraham come many—Genesis begins with the blessing to be fruitful and multiply and ends with the fruitful multiplication of blessing itself. Jacob’s family proves fecund not just in quantity but in diversity. That is perhaps the humanistic lesson of pru urvu (‘be fruitful and multiply”): the commandment is not just to reproduce, but to do so as individuals, to reproduce that which cannot be reproduced because it is unique.

Shabbat Shalom and Chazak Chazak V’nitchazek,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh