The Midrash tells us that Yaakov sought to reveal to his sons what would be in the end of days, but that the Divine Presence left him and he was unable to continue. Because the Divine Presence left, Aviva Zornberg tells us that Yaakov suddenly feared that his bed wasn't complete, meaning that he was perhaps like his father and grandfather who had produced impure offspring in addition to pure offspring. Yaakov feared that he too had provided some impurity. Despite the reassurance of his children, doubt had entered his mind. He wondered: did he miss something? Was he an inadequate father? Suddenly, he wonders at the "coherence" in his life. In Zornberg's words, "the readability of his life is in question."
Along these same lines, Zornberg continues, the Sfas Emes tells us that Yaakov wanted to reveal the end, meaning "communicate the idea of ultimate harmony" - not the time and circumstances of redemption. Similar to his own loss of coherence, the Divine Presence left and he was unable to communicate to his children that, despite how hard, confusing, lonely, and long the exile would be, that ultimately its coherence would be clear. The Divine Presence left him; he couldn't tell it over. In Zornberg's words, "they will have to live its absurdity and its pain, its apparently fruitless yearnings, without intoxicating visions of harmony to sustain them."
But then Yaakov blesses them each. He says, "I know the Big Picture won't make any sense, but here's who you are." After all, how much do we depend on contexts or on what is to come for our happiness?
We are without a vision of what harmony will look like. We know only that it is forward. And we know that the path to that unknown destination is each of us ourselves. I am my path.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |