RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:VAYECHI:MOSHIACH:JEWS

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:VAYECHI:MOSHIACH:JEWS

 

 

Parasha Vayechi: Genesis 48:01-50:26

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

 When I woke up this morning I could've sworn it was the Judgment Day

This 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 said "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 (Hertz) read: "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 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 also 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 C.E. 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) make 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 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 grappled 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 still being discussed from 200 to 500 C.E. 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 boardroom. We cannot 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 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
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC;Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

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