Today’s parasha deals with the death of Jacob, and also of Joseph. The bulk of it is Jacob giving blessings to his sons and grandsons while on his deathbed.
Usually when we study the Torah, we look at the words, of course. But today I want to look closely not so much at the words, but at the spaces between the words. Parashat Vayechi is interesting because usually when a new Torah portion begins, there is a space, a paragraph break between the portions, but in this particular parasha, there isn’t.
There is an ancient tradition in the transmission of Torah in Judaism that regulates the spaces in the text of the Torah. These spaces are called Petuchot and Stumot. It’s hard to see them in our Chumash because the editors of Etz Hayim divided up the text into readable paragraphs. But if you look carefully at the text, you’ll see the letter peh and the letter samech at the end of many lines – these indicate how the text would look in a Torah scroll. The Peh means it’s a petucha, which is a typical paragraph end where there is blank space until the end of the line. The Samech means it’s a stuma, which is like a tab, a blank space in the middle of the line.
If you read Torah, you’re familiar with these blank spaces in the text because they help you find your place. (it’s why 2 weeks ago, we had a hard time finding the place – because Mikketz had no breaks in it) And some of the breaks in the Torah’s text are very famous, like those in the Song at the Sea of Reeds – the text is broken up with many spaces to show that it’s a song rather than prose.
Besides this practical function of the spaces in the Torah text, the rabbis read meaning into the spaces in their interpretation of Torah. Rashi asks the question: What was the purpose of these breaks in the text? Rashi’s answer: liteyn revach leMoshe l’hitboneyn ben parasha l’parasha u’vein inyan l’inyan – to give Moses space to contemplate between each portion and each topic. (Lev.1:1) All the more so, Rashi says, do regular people like us need time for contemplation between subjects. It’s a beautiful little teaching Rashi offers about our need for breaks. There’s only so much we can do, take in, learn, think about, without needing a break for rest and reflection. We need time to contemplate and integrate what we’ve learned – even Moses needed that, so God gave him the Torah with periodic little spaces in it, Rashi’s saying.
So why does this Torah portion begin without a space? Why is it smushed up right against the portion that came before without any break? It’s very unusual, so the rabbis have to comment. This parasha, as you heard, tells of the death of our patriarch Jacob and his deathbed blessings for his sons and grandsons. We’re ending the stories of the patriarchs and moving, beginning next week, to the story of our exodus from Egyptian slavery. So, Rashi explains that this parasha begins “closed” because with the death of Jacob, “the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed because of the suffering of the enslavement that was beginning.” So, even though it’s not until next week’s parasha where a new Pharaoh takes over who enslaves the Israelites, Rashi explains here that already their oppression started as early as the death of Jacob, that already with the death of Jacob, the Egyptians started to impose hard labor on the Israelites.
What does Rashi mean by this – that our eyes and hearts were closed? Rashi is saying that tzarat ha’she’ebood, the constriction, the suffering, the pain of enslavement, oppression, terribleness can lead us to close our eyes and our hearts. It’s almost the natural response, Something hurts or you see something terrible, you want to close your eyes. Even the Torah closes in and leaves no space to think, to breathe, to see clearly.
The Torah is reflecting, once again, our lives, our experience – and not even only in the words of the text – but in the spaces, in the very structure of the layout of the words on the page! – There are times of spaciousness – revach lehitbonen, space to contemplate, and there are times of closedness, of constriction, when our eyes are closed.
We need that spaciousness, Rashi says – if Moses needed it, all the more so do we regular people, which is why we need Shabbat, quiet time, moments of prayer, reflection, We need time to stop going, going, going, doing a million things, to think and to feel and to open our eyes and our hearts.
If your life was the Torah, would it be a closed parasha or an open one? How do you create the openings?
Congregant comments:
Gail suggested that we close our eyes not just instinctively, but we close our eyes because there are things we’d rather not see. We choose to ignore that which we don’t want to face.
Myrna agreed that perhaps we closed our eyes to the impending enslavement, as we did before the Holocaust, not wanting to see what was about to happen, and perhaps the spaces in the Torah are there for us not just to contemplate, but also to act.
Marty referred to the psalms and said that when we are suffering, we are in a narrow place (Mitzrayim) and aren’t able to see the suffering of others and the pain in the world around us because we become so constricted by our own suffering.
Matt looked to the end of last week’s parasha to see what came right before the closed beginning of this parasha and found that it said that Israel held property in Egypt and were fertile and increased greatly. So, perhaps the closedness came from prosperity and growing too satisfied with what we had.
Conclusion:
If you look at our reading today, each time Jacob blessed one of his children, there was an opening in the text, a little paragraph break before the blessing. It’s as if the layout of the Torah itself is suggesting that in order to offer blessings, you need to have space, whether it’s quiet time to contemplate or space to open our eyes and act. It’s difficult for us to be a person who can bring blessing to another when our eyes and hearts are closed tightly, but when we create a little space like Moses had and like Jacob does in this parasha, we can offer blessings to our world.
Shabbat Shalom - May we have a Shabbat of openings and spaciousness.
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