by Rav Hillel Fendel.
We conclude the first Book of the Torah this Shabbat with Parshat
Vayechi. Unlike every other portion in the Torah, Vayechi is "closed
off," meaning it begins neither on a new line in the Torah, nor even after
a break of nine spaces. Why is this? Why is there no break between last week's
portion of Vayigash and Vayechi?
Rashi gives two answers. One is that Vayechi begins with Yaakov on his
deathbed, seeking not only to bless his sons but also to reveal to them the End
of the exile – but it was “closed off” (concealed) from him and he was unable
to do so.
The second explanation is also based on the fact that Yaakov's death was
near, and once he died, "the eyes and the heart of Israel [Yaakov's
descendants] were 'closed' because of the misery of the Egyptian slavery"
that began, in a way, with Yaakov's death.
What can be the connection between the suffering of the slavery and
Israel's closed, darkened eyes? Rav Chaim Druckman often explained that the
meaning is that the children of Yaakov became blinded to the very fact that
their Exile, along with its suffering, had begun.
This ties directly into the last verse of the previous Torah portion,
which succinctly sums up the Israelites' new situation in Egypt as follows: "Israel
dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they acquired a
stronghold there, and they were prolific and multiplied greatly." Let
us explain the connection between this verse and Israel's oblivion to their new,
developing situation.
The classic commentary Kli Yakar (by R. Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz,
rabbi of Prague for 15 years until his death in 1619) explains that this entire
verse "is condemnatory of Israel." He says that they never should
have put themselves in the position of settling so comfortably in a foreign
land: "G-d had decreed upon them that they would be foreigners in [Egypt],
yet they sought to be permanent residents there, in a land not theirs.
They were so strongly entrenched in Egypt that they did not want to leave, and
many wanted to stay even when they were already enslaved."
It is now clear: Because of their attachment to their seemingly good
lives in Egypt, they forgot about returning to the Land promised to their
forefathers – and did not even notice the suffering that was about to fall upon
them.
The parallel to today, and to recent decades, is striking. The Ohr
Same'ach, for instance – Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, who died in 1926 – bemoaned
in his Torah commentary that there were many Jews in his time who had grown
accustomed to their lives and comforts, both spiritual and material, in the
Diaspora, forgot their origins, and felt that "Berlin is Jerusalem." This,
he wrote, would last for a while – until their lives would be shattered and
they would again be exiled. He thus "foresaw" the Shoah that began
only some years later, while others of his time did not even realize what was
already beginning to happen to them – just as the sons of Yaakov did not
realize what was happening to them.
In a similar manner some explain the Fast of the Tenth of Tevet that we commemorated
this week. As is known, most of our prophetically-prescribed days of fasting
mark one aspect or another of the destruction of the Holy Temple and the Jewish
national presence in the Holy Land. The Tenth of Tevet is different: It marks not
the destruction, but the beginning of the Babylonian siege on the Holy City,
some seven months before the actual razing of the Temple. When the siege
started outside the city walls, most Jews did not feel a thing! They
went on with their lives as usual – and this raises the question: Why should a
day of fasting be instituted for such a non-event?
The answer is as we have said: As we see in the lack of separation
between Vayigash and Vay'chi, between the blinding of Israel's eyes and their
failure to see and feel the onset of the suffering of Egyptian bondage – the
beginning of all tribulations and Exiles is our blindness to what is
developing, and our difficulty in realizing our own role in bringing them on.
Let us not repeat the same errors made by our ancestors more than
a few times in our history. It should be easier now than ever to grasp that the
Diaspora is no longer our home. Not only does the Holy Land and the State of
Israel need the entire Jewish nation to return, the returning Jews need the
Land and the State!
Never again may we make the mistakes of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt, of the
Jews under the Bablonian siege, of our recent ancestors in Europe less than a
century ago – and of some Jews living today, in 2026, throughout the
comfortable countries of the West.
