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PARASHA VAYECHI
GENESIS 48:01 TO 50:26
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
"Blessings and Determinism"
This week's parasha ends the book of Genesis. We find our people in
the Land of the Pharaohs. We find that Jacob dies at the conclusion of
this Torah portion. Before his death, Jacob blesses the two sons of
Joseph as well as his own twelve sons.
To Judah, Jacob says "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a
scholar from among his descendents until Shiloh arrives, and his will be
an assemblage of nations"(Gen 49:10 Art Scroll Edition). Other
translations (Plaut) read, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor
the ruler's staff from between his feet, so that tribute shall come to
him, and the homage of peoples be his."
Still others read (Hertz), "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between
his feet, as long as men come to Shiloh, and onto him shall the
obedience of the peoples be." The King James version states, "The
scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his
feet, until Shiloh comes: and to Him (capital H) shall be the obedience
of the people."
Why are there so many translations? What has been read into this passage
by so many over the centuries? What can we derive from this verse for
ourselves?
In Talmud Sanhedrin, Chapter 11, the sages argue about the validity of
the Messiah in Judaism, who he will be, how he will arrive, if he
already arrived, and when he would arrive. One of their proof texts is
this very verse. On daf (folio) 98B, Rav Shela's student interprets
Shiloh as referring to the Messiah on the basis of the verse from
Isaiah 18:7 , "a gift (tribute) shall be offered to God" which the
Midrash renders into "all nations are destined to bring a gift to Israel
and the Messianic king." The word Shiloh is formed by the two Hebrew
words for "gift" and "to him". The Ramban (Nachmonides) says that Jacob
promises Judah in this verse that the kings of the Jewish people will
emerge exclusively from his tribe, until the advent of the Messiah, who
will rule not only over all of the Jews but of all the nations.
By the scepter not departing from Judah, Jacob is predetermining that our
kings will be from the Tribe of Judah. (Of course our first king was
Saul, from Benjamin's tribe). However, it set up the "divine right" of
the Davidic line from the tribe of Judah to be not only our kings, but
our Exilarchs in the Diaspora in Babylon. Many of the Rosh yeshivas
during the time of the writing of the Mishna traced their lineage to
King David. According to Talmud Sanhedrin (daf 5A), Hillel and Judah ha
Nasi were from the Davidic-Judah line.
Onkelos' Aramaic Translation of the Torah (Targum) renders "until Shiloh
arrives" as "until the messiah arrives, to whom the kingdom belongs."
This Torah version was written in 90 CE. This verse is THE primary
Torah source for the Talmudic belief (and it was not a unanimously held
rabbinic belief at the time) in a Jewish messiah. The rabbis
consistently referred to it in their debates with the church leaders in
the middle ages.
The lines that follow (Gen. 49:11-12) help give
allusions to the messiah as a man of peace (the Talmud says one of his names will
be the prince of peace) by the symbols of the donkey and the vineyards.
We can see from the above that this verse pushes some hot topical
buttons. The Talmudic sages, living under the harsh Roman thumb, in the
centuries following the destruction of the second Temple and the total
loss of independence of Judea, looked for hope in a redeemer. There
were no new prophets. They had to work with the texts that where
available to them. Their background was Pharasitic, as the Sadducees
denied the oral law (Mishna-Gemorah-Talmud) as divine and did not believe
in any bodily resurrection.
The rabbis in Sanhedrin grapple with these
issues. They tried to justify the suffering of our people and of the
martyrdom of our great sages by speaking of the world to come and of the
bodily resurrection. They also debated the idea of a messianic leader to
come and save us. They even agreed upon the idea, that in every
generation, a great sage will be martyred and will die for the sins of
those in his generation!!
These rabbis were not just dealing in the time of a few Jews who were
following a cult of Jesus. They were writing the Talmud up to 500 C.E. from 586 B.C.E. The
sages had to contend with forces of Christianity combined with the power
of Constantine's new Rome in what is now Istanbul. While the written
Mishna was being discussed from 200 to 500 CE in what we call the
Gemorah, the Nician creed (which delineated the Trinity) went into
effect less than a hundred years after Judah ha Nasi redacted the oral
tradition.
We therefore can see how different people at different times translated
this verse to meet their philosophical needs. The Traditionalists via the
Art Scroll edition are very Moshiac oriented. Rabbi Plaut,
representing the post World War Two Reform movement, set his translation up to
completely mirror the Davidic line of flesh and blood kings, but to
delete references to a divinely sent messiah- savior.
How does this battle for wording, translate into our lives in
this third millennium? Simply put, we as individuals need to pick up the scepter promised
to us. We need to lead using honest and ethical values whether we are at
home, at work, at play, or in the synagogue board rooms. We can not
stand idly by while we are needed to do justice. We need to be excellent
parents and spouses. We also need to be kind and giving adult children
to our own elderly. We are all the Children of Jacob, the People of
Israel, and we have all taken the name of the tribe of Judah by
calling ourselves Jews.
The royal staff is in our hands, in no matter what position we find
ourselves. Let's all do our best to be the most honest and ethical we
can be in what ever we do. This is what God wants from us. We all have
sparks of our own savior inside each of us. Let us each vow to hold on
to this scepter, and let its golden glow be a light unto others.
Shabbat Shalom!!
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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