This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on January 3, 2026.

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There’s something about the start of a new year that invites both hope and honesty. We make lists, set intentions, and imagine fresh beginnings, while quietly carrying the weight of what came before. Years don’t arrive with a clean slate; they arrive with history. Families. Communities. Stories we didn’t choose but nonetheless inherit. Parashat Vayechi, the closing chapter of Genesis, understands this deeply. It is a parshah about endings that shape beginnings, about blessings given with eyes wide open to imperfection. 

Vayechi finds Jacob at the end of his life. He gathers his children and grandchildren, blesses them, and offers words that are as much reckoning as they are hope. This is not a sentimental wrap-up. Jacob reopens old wounds, names past failures, and still insists on blessing. He crosses his hands to bless Ephraim over Menashe, disrupts expectations, and reminds us that the future is not a simple extension of the past. 

When Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons, Joseph tries to correct him. The elder should receive the greater blessing. Jacob refuses. He sees something Joseph does not. The Torah tells us, sikeil et yadav—he crossed his hands deliberately. Jacob is not confused or nostalgic. He is intentional. He knows this family’s story too well to pretend that legacy is neat or linear. Blessing, in his world, is not about perfection. It is about possibility. 

This feels especially resonant as we step into a new year. We inherit imperfect legacies, personal and communal. We carry the gifts of those who came before us alongside their mistakes. Judaism never asks us to erase that complexity. Instead, it asks us to bless within it. To tell the truth about where we’ve been and still say yes to where we’re going. 

Jacob blesses his progeny, knowing exactly who they are. Some are impulsive. Some are violent. Some are capable of greatness and harm in equal measure. And still, blessing. Not denial. Not absolution. Blessing as responsibility. Blessing as charge. 

As we begin this new year, Vayechi offers a quiet but powerful invitation: let what you inherit retain all its honest imperfections and complexities. Acknowledge the broken pieces without letting them define the future. Bless what is, even as we commit to shaping what could be. We are not asked to be perfect inheritors of our past, only faithful stewards of what comes next. May this year be one where we cross our hands when needed, bless with courage, and build forward with wisdom earned, not despite our imperfect legacy, but because we’ve learned from it. 

A few weeks ago something strange happened in my home. Duncan was out of town attending a conference. It was one of those Shabbat days when my kids would have to spend more time at Neveh, their second home, than at our home. We had Tot Shabbat, Kiddush Club, and a bat mitzvah service in the morning, and then we were heading back for a fun PJ Havdallah that night. And, strangely, Shiri and Matan were as close to angels as they’ve ever been. They played together, laughed together, and overall were helpful and fun to be with. After a full day of togetherness, we got home and they ran upstairs to set up a “sibling sleepover.” If you’ve got a sibling or are a parent of siblings, you know how rare this can be. 

Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Vayechi, is the final portion in the first book of the Torah. This book has shared the narrative of multiple sibling relationships, all of which were fraught with rivalry and general discontent. The end of the book, however, contains several blessings in it, including the well-known blessing of Jacob to his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe. This moment is the source of a traditional blessing given to children in Jewish homes, especially on Shabbat:

For boys, the blessing is:
יְשִׂמְךָ אֱלֹקים כְּאֶפְרַיִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה
“May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.”

For girls, a parallel blessing is often used:
יְשִׂמֵךְ אֱלֹקים כְּשָׂרָה, רִבְקָה, רָחֵל וְלֵאָה
“May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.”

This tradition comes from Jacob’s statement in Genesis 48:20:
בְּךָ יְבָרֵךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר, יְשִׂמְךָ אֱלֹקים כְּאֶפְרַיִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה
“By you, Israel will bless, saying: May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.”

This blessing is significant because Ephraim and Menashe were the first siblings in the Torah to live in harmony, without recorded rivalry, symbolizing unity and peace—values central to Jewish tradition.

I have spent many hours with families as their loved ones transition from the world of the living to the next world. In a vast majority of these moments, the family will reflect on the life of the person they love who is now gone. They’ll talk about their favorite memories of their loved one, the way they lived their life, the funny anecdotes. In all of these conversations it seems that when the individual who is dying or has died had a decent relationship with their family, the living family members try to make meaning out of the death by fixing purpose to the life that was lived. “He did so much, I’m glad his suffering is over now.” “She was fierce and adventurous all the way until her last days.” “They wouldn’t want to live a life in a poor state of health; I’m grateful they died with dignity.” 

There are also times when a family is simply not ready to let go. Sometimes, even when a loved one is physically unable to care for themselves or communicate their needs, the family will pursue every avenue to prolong the physical presence of their loved one on the earth. I find these moments to be the most challenging. When we’re born we have no ability to adequately communicate our needs or care for ourselves; it takes relying on others to learn how to exist in the world. Self-reliance is one of our most valued freedoms. There is dignity in being able to care for ourselves and contribute in some way to the world around us simply through our own personal agency. This leads me to question, what does it mean to live?

This week we read Parshat Vayechi, the last in the book of Genesis. The text begins with Jacob’s request that he not be buried in Egypt, and continues with Jacob blessing each of his sons in his final hours. It ends with Joseph making a similar request of his kin to bury him back in Israel when they finally leave Egypt.

The parshah opens with the simple words “and he lived,” referring to Jacob and his life. Earlier in the Torah, Jacob made the decision to wallow in grief after he assumed his beloved son Joseph had died. Jacob, in essence, was simply waiting to die. When we read this word “lived” here, the Torah seems to suggest that things turned around for Jacob, sharing that after he was reunited with Joseph, he had a renewed will to live and as such, didn’t let any moment simply slip away. One commentator theorizes that not only did Jacob live, but he was honored and treated with dignity. The dream of a life well lived.

The inescapable truth of life is that one day we will die. The time in between is all that we’re given, and it’s up to each of us to decide what it means to live a full life. From a practical standpoint, hopefully we will all follow the example of Jacob and Joseph and make our wishes known to those who will carry on after us. But when it comes to “living,” the intent should be on its fullness, however you interpret that. This time of year, when it’s easy to find It’s a Wonderful Life on television (including a 24-hour marathon of the film), we can get caught up in trying to live up to some unknown standard of wonderful. However, what we’re all really seeking when our time has come is that people will say, “It was a full life.”

My mom is in town visiting this week, and spending time together now reminds me of that feeling when I saw her for the first time after the pandemic had kept us apart for so long. Of course I missed her hugs, her caring presence, and the face-to-face conversations, but I didn’t realize just how much I missed her until I had to wait the 45 minutes it took Duncan to drive her home from PDX. That wait was excruciating, and that first hug was like something I had never experienced before.

There was a sense of familiarity with the feeling of sending my oldest to Camp Solomon Schechter for six days. I knew what missing a parent felt like, but I had no idea what it felt like to be the parent waiting to be reunited with my child. And similarly, it was the 90-minute drive home, while I waited patiently for her arrival, that was the hardest part of her time away. The human condition is set to miss and yearn for loved ones, and we are acutely aware of this because we feel it so deeply.

This week we read Parshat Vayechi, the last in the book of Genesis. The text begins with the request of Jacob to not be buried in Egypt, and continues with Jacob blessing each of his sons in his final hours. This text ends with Joseph making the request of his kin to bury him back in Israel when they finally leave Egypt.

Throughout the last number of Torah portions, we’ve seen the reactions as family members reunite after time apart: Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and then more intimately Jacob and his son Joseph. Each one is described with intense emotion and connection. In the past, I don’t think I truly understood the emotional charge of a long absence of physical presence. It seems like I’ve lived a lifetime since my father and grandparents passed away, and I miss them immensely, but I know they’ll never be back for a hug. 

In Parshat Vayechi, as we see Joseph “fling himself upon his father, weep and kiss him” when he dies, we are reminded of the emotional intensity in the space between physical presence and physical separation. The longing I felt in 2020 to hug my family, and the week of longing for my own child, gave me new perspective on how much that closeness really means.

One of the questions that I often struggle to answer is the one that asks why I believe in God. Yes, sometimes I question God, but I always believe in God. Why do I let that faith guide me in the world? The reason it’s hard for me to answer is because in a certain sense, I’ve never had the choice. I mean, yes, I could’ve chosen not to observe Judaism and gone off on my own different path than my family, but it was never a choice I considered. I believe in God because I was raised in a family that believes in God, and it was instilled in me that belief in God is hopeful and reinforces the sense that the world is bigger than me or this moment. Belief in God connects me to my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, all the way through our lineage to Abraham. Put simply, I believe in God because I do. For me, that’s compelling enough. 

This is not to downplay or denounce the very real crises of faith people experience. Many wonder if God exists, if God has ever existed, and why it even matters. In our Torah portion this week, we get the notion of why it matters, and we receive the reasoning for transferring this belief from generation to generation. 

This week we read Parshat Vayechi, the last in the book of Genesis. The text begins with the request of Jacob to not be buried in Egypt, and continues with Jacob blessing each of his sons in his final hours. This text ends with Joseph making the request of his kin to bury him back in Israel when they finally leave Egypt.

Toward the end of the Torah portion, we read about the grandfather’s blessing. Joseph takes his children Ephraim and Menashe to his father Jacob for their blessing. As Jacob blesses the children he says, in chapter 48, verse 16, “In them may my name be recalled, and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac.” The blessing he invokes upon his grandsons is that they may find faith in the actions of their forefathers (our forefathers) and that that faith will benefit them with strong belief in God.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad, comments on this verse to say, “The most valuable legacy we can leave our children and grandchildren is bequeathing to them the faith that sustained us.” In other words, the transmission of faith supersedes transmission of material wealth. As far back as the Torah, we learn that blessings and family values are what matters.

Parshat Vayechi reminds us that it’s not just our faith that makes up our Judaism, but equally important is where that faith comes from and how it’s passed down. Interestingly, the Gregorian calendar has given us this parshah twice in 2021 (once in January and once in December). I hope you’ll take this extra push to reconnect with our faith and possibly get closer to the answer of why you believe. And then, of course, pass it on.