Grandparents

פרשת ויחי

Listen

Every Friday night we re-enact one of the most moving scenes in the book of Bereishit. Jacob, reunited with Joseph, is ill. Joseph comes to visit him, bring bringing with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Jacob, with deep emotion, says:

"I never expected to see you again, and now God has shown me your children as well."

Gen. 48:11

He blesses Joseph. Then he places his hands on the heads of the two boys.

He blessed them that day and said, “[In the time to come] Israel will use you as a blessing. They will say, ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’”

Gen. 48:20

So we do to this day, with these very words. Why this blessing above all others? One commentator (Yalkut Yehudah) says it is because Ephraim and Manasseh were the first two Jewish children born in exile. So Jewish parents bless their children asking God to help them keep their identity intact despite all the temptations and distractions of Diaspora life.

I heard however a most lovely explanation, based on the Zohar, from my revered predecessor Lord Jakobovits of blessed memory. He said that though there are many instances in Torah and Tanach in which parents bless their children, this is the only example of a grandparent blessing grandchildren.

Between parents and children, he said, there are often tensions. Parents worry about their children. Children sometimes rebel against their parents. The relationship is not always smooth.

Not so with grandchildren. There the relationship is one of love untroubled by tension or anxiety. When a grandparent blesses a grandchild they do so with a full heart. That is why this blessing by Jacob to his grandchildren became the model of blessing across the generations. Anyone who has had the privilege of having grandchildren will immediately understand the truth and depth of this explanation.

Grandparents bless their grandchildren and are blessed by them. This phenomenon is the subject of a fascinating difference of opinion between the Babylonian Talmud and the Talmud Yerushalmi. The Babylonian Talmud says the following:

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said, “Whoever teaches their grandchildren Torah is regarded as if they had received the Torah from Mount Sinai, as it is said, ‘Teach your children and your children's children.’”

Deut. 4:10-11; Kiddushin 30a

The Talmud Yerushalmi puts it differently. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi used to listen, every Friday, to his grandson reciting the weekly parsha. One week he entered the bathhouse, and after he had begun bathing he remembered that he had not yet heard the weekly parsha from his grandson. So he immediately got up to leave the bathhouse... They asked him why he was leaving in the middle of his bathing, since the Mishnah teaches that once you have begun bathing on a Friday afternoon, you should not interrupt the process. He replied, “Is this such a small thing in your eyes? For whoever hears the parsha from his grandchild is as if he heard it directly from Mount Sinai” (Yerushalmi Shabbat 1:2).

According to the Talmud Bavli, it is a great privilege is to teach your grandchildren Torah. According to the Talmud Yerushalmi, the greatest privilege is to have your grandchildren teach Torah to you. This is one argument about which no grandparent will have the slightest difficulty saying that both are true.

My late father, of blessed memory, had to leave school at the age of 14 to begin working to support his family, and as a result he never had the full Jewish or secular education that he would have wanted. I remember from my childhood that - as we walked home from shul on a Shabbat morning - I would be full of questions. “Dad, why do we do this?” “Why did we do that?” My father always gave me the same answer, and that was the answer that changed my life. He said, “Jonathan, I didn’t have a Jewish education, so I can’t answer your questions. But one day, you will have the education that I didn’t have. And when that happens, you will teach me the answers to those questions.”

The greatest gift you can give a child or a grandchild is what you empower and allow them to teach you. As parents, we strive to give our children everything. There’s one thing we sometimes forget to give them which is the chance for them to give something to us. And that, frankly, is the most important thing there is.

Give your children and your grandchildren the space to give to you. Let them become your teachers and let them be your inspiration. In doing so you will help them become the people that they were destined to be, and you will help create the blessings God wants them to become.

With an exquisite sense of symmetry, just as we begin Shabbat with a grandparent’s blessing so we end it, in Maariv, with the words:

May you live to see your children’s children - peace be on Israel.

Psalm 128:6

What is the connection between grandchildren and peace? Surely this, that those who think about grandchildren care about the future, and those who think about the future make peace. It is those who constantly think of the past, of slights and humiliations and revenge, who make war.

Jacob lives a life fraught with conflict and troubles. He knew of revenge and war, of grudges and strife. But he died serene, and full of blessings. And before he died, he blessed his children and grandchildren.

To bless grandchildren and be blessed by them, to teach them and to be taught by them – these are the highest Jewish privilege and the serene end of Jacob’s troubled life.


questions english 5783 Around the Shabbat Table
  1. How can the story of Yaakov blessing Ephraim and Menashe inspire us to maintain our identity in challenging environments?
  2. How can the experience of being in exile - as with Ephraim and Menashe - impact a family's cultural and religious identity over time?
  3. How do you think blessing one's descendants influences family traditions and values across generations?


With thanks to the Schimmel Family for their generous sponsorship of Covenant & Conversation, dedicated in loving memory of Harry (Chaim) Schimmel.

“I have loved the Torah of R’ Chaim Schimmel ever since I first encountered it. It strives to be not just about truth on the surface but also its connection to a deeper truth beneath. Together with Anna, his remarkable wife of 60 years, they built a life dedicated to love of family, community, and Torah. An extraordinary couple who have moved me beyond measure by the example of their lives.” — Rabbi Sacks

More on Vayechi

On Not Predicting the Future

Jacob was on his death-bed. He summoned his children. He wanted to bless them before he died. But the text begins with a strange semi-repetition:…

When Can We Lie?

After the death of Jacob, Joseph’s brothers were afraid. Years earlier, when he had revealed his true identity to them, he appeared to have forgiven…

Moving Forwards

The book of Bereishit ends on a sublime note of reconciliation between Jacob’s sons. Joseph’s brothers were afraid that he had not really forgiven them…

Family, Faith and Freedom

If you want to understand what a book is about, look carefully at how it ends. Genesis ends with three deeply significant scenes. First, Jacob…

Transforming the Story

The scene that brings the book of Genesis to a close is intensely significant. Joseph’s brothers were terrified that, after the death of their father…

What it Takes to Forgive

Joseph forgives. That, as I have argued before, was a turning point in history. For this was the first recorded act of forgiveness in literature.…

Jewish Time

Different cultures tell different stories. The great novelists of the nineteenth century wrote fiction that is essentially ethical. Jane Austen and George Eliot explored the…

Generations Forget and Remember

The drama of younger and older brothers, which haunts the book of Bereishit from Cain and Abel onwards, reaches a strange climax in the story…

The Last Tears

At almost every stage of fraught encounter between Joseph and his family in Egypt, Joseph weeps. There are seven scenes of tears: 1. When the…

The White Lie

Is it permitted to tell a white lie? If a murderer is at large, brandishing a gun, and his intended victim takes refuge in your house,…