Vayechi
Genesis 47:28-50:26
I Kings 2:1-12
After her husband’s death and funeral, the widow was putting her husband’s affairs in order, which included arranging for an appropriate gravestone. She chose the inscription “May he rest in peace” and placed the order.
Regrettably, a few days later, she learned that her husband had more than just a “working relationship” with his secretary and, what’s more, he had left a generous portion of his estate to her. Enraged, the widow stormed out to the stone works and ordered the stonemason not to inscribe the words she had chosen.
“It’s too late,” he told her. “I just finished chiseling the legend into the granite.”
Upset and furious, the widow looked around at other stones and her eyes rested on one of them. She asked the artisan, “Is there enough room to add a few more words?” He said that there was, if the additional words were not too long.
“Then,” she said pointing to another inscription, “add that line from that stone over there.”
So her unfaithful husband got a gravestone that read: “May he rest in peace…until we meet again.”
This anecdote raises a question few people ever consider: How do I want to be remembered after I am dead? Few of us, however, like to confront our mortality unless an awakening propels us to consider the meaning of our lives.
Such was the case with Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune by licensing to weapons-makers his formula for powerful explosives. When Nobel’s brother died, one newspaper mistakenly printed the obituary for Alfred instead of his brother. It identified Alfred, the inventor of dynamite, as the man who made a fortune enabling armies to achieve efficient means of mass destruction.
Nobel was so horrified by the grim depiction of him as a merchant of death and destruction that he devoted his fortune to establish awards for accomplishments in fields that would benefit humanity. He ensured that he would be remembered for the Nobel Prizes, not for the invention of dynamite.
Most people will never know what others will write or say about them after they are dead, but Vayechi, this week’s Torah portion, bids readers to pause and think about just such a thing. In this portion, Jacob, on his deathbed, reviews his life that included the theft of brother Esau’s birthright and blessing; the deception of his father, Isaac; cruelty to wife Leah; and the pitting of his children against one another. Nevertheless, because he tried to make amends for many of the wrongs, he is remembered not as Jacob, the reprobate, but as Israel, progenitor of the Jewish people.
Unfortunately, Jacob’s children did not follow his lead and he castigated sons Simeon and Levi, who murdered Shechem and all the men of his tribe in retribution for the rape of their sister Dina, even though Shechem had fallen in love with and had hoped to marry her:
“…when angry (Simon and Levi) slay men…/ Cursed be their anger so fierce,/ And their wrath so relentless./ I will divide them in Jacob,/ Scatter them in Israel” (Gen. 49:5-7).
The Haftarah for Vayechi portrays David’s dying words to his son, Solomon. Although David had coveted Bathsheba and arranged the murder of Uriah, her husband, David, nevertheless, admonishes Solomon: “If your descendants are scrupulous in their conduct, and walk before Me faithfully, with all their heart and soul, your line on the throne of Israel shall never end” (I Kings 2:4). Unfortunately, Solomon did not always heed his father’s words.
Sociologist Barbara Myerhoff interviewed an elderly woman who recalled Sabbath candle blessing rituals: “When I make the movements, circling the Sabbath candles, calling their holiness to me, covering my eyes, then I feel my mother’s hands on my smooth cheeks.” Comparably, an elderly man remembered: “Whenever I say Kaddish…I chant and sway, and it all comes back to me. I remember how it was when my father, may he rest in peace, would wrap me around in his big prayer shawl. All that comes back to me, like I was back in the shawl, where nothing bad could ever happen.”
Whereas we may not have input into what our obituaries will say, we can contribute to what others will say about us by the lives we lead and the legacy we leave. If we carefully consider what our lives mean, we can look forward to the expression zechrono (zechronah) l’verecha (“May his (or her) memory be for a blessing”) being appended to our names after we are gone.