Genesis - Cycle One - 4728-5026 - VaYechi

As we read the final parasha of Genesis we see this: Someone is almost always dying. Not surprising. Torah is people and people die. In the end, it’s graceful. We seem ready. But wait a second. Graceful? Ready?

Let’s look at real life. We all have a story and this is mine:

I walk in the room. I see it blending, his body on the bed, the slivers of sunlight, the grimace on his face, the hand, the eyes, the skin, the arms, the legs. After staring I curl up on the carpet making non human noises and my heart is grabbing my throat and my kids are growing up fatherless in Connecticut then in Oregon. In the noises I am alone and a my husband is dead. There’s pain here as you write it and as you read it. Now, let’s try it Torah style. (John) died of illness in a motel during his fifty fifth year. Though (John) wasn’t old he lived a full life. (His wife Chava and her children) mourned him deeply.

So much is left out, even the names. Why? Maybe we only need the basics of experience. The bones. Maybe death is expected.

So let’s look at Jacob’s death, expected or not. Let’s look at what might have happened. Jacob feels small on his bed. He sees a sliver of sunlight from a crack in the tent. He’s not living as long as his fathers. This world is closing. He shuts his eyes. Hebron, he thinks. The living must take my body from Egypt to Hebron! He calls for Joseph and later bows to him with humility. His son has sworn to care for his body, guiding his soul out of darkness into the divine cycle.

Soon Jacob gets sick, weak, blind. It is Israel who begins to see…not the tent, the sun, not God in this place. He sees Joseph, his grandchildren, the passage to the divine through his flesh and blood, how to fold into the radiance. One day the Shechinah will dwell among us, he thinks. Exile is the means to be freed from exile. He’s thirsty. He drinks. It’s like a river flowing down his throat. He must act fast. He blesses Joseph’s sons, adopting them as his own. He remembers Esau and focuses on the youngest, Ephraim. He then blesses his sons, lets the blessings be seen. Even Reuben, Simeon and Levi. All are needed to create the gateway to the divine, the structure through which he (and we) will travel. He places his hands on their heads, tries to be coherent, giving boundaries, a piece of himself. Joseph should be final, extending out to the heavens like Ein Sof. But Benjamin is needed there for protection. What should he do? As he speaks only Joseph seems to understand. The brothers shift back and forth and raise eyebrows. Some wander back to work, to wives. Then Israel breathes his last. It’s like a sharp drop of water. He is Jacob and small, plunging into the focus of all vision, into the radiant and tiny center of God. Much of this comes from Rashi, the Zohar and the Talmud. Now, let’s bring those works to my late husband and his death in a motel in Los Angeles California in 1999. I walk in the room. The place is lit up and spinning. Memories of the 60s I guess. Memories from the man lying dead on the bed. His soul has just risen from his being and is reciting lines of beat poetry. Words are circling around his body, dialogue from plays. There are a million vibrations reaching in filaments from his heart to mine. I think of spheres within spheres. Heartaches within heartaches. Layer after layer. What’s at the center, John had asked. He was driving his bright red sports car to rehearsals that day. Light, I had said. Ibsen says there’s nothing, he had responded. To hell with Ibsen, I had said. To hell with ashes to ashes.

I sit on the floor and stare at a dead hand. The gold wedding band. Is that, I wonder, the center of the sphere, the radiant spinning? There’s a dream I once had. A spirit had placed gold blocks into my soul. I think of this now. A spirit? Yeah right, John had said. Yeah right. That’s the enter here, I realize. It’s a yeah right day. A yeah right universe. With a yeah right spinning sensation in my eyes. I see a tight layer of vibrations now, my youngest children, ages 3 and 4. Their love smells like rain transforming to diamonds, as happy as pink bubble gum. The spinning won’t stop. I move outward to the actors in his plays, to the playwrights, the directors, the designers, the trustees, the experimental doo‐das. Levels of consciousness, or so it has been called. And the two older children, their love smells like acres of green grass, swords and shields of Kings and Queens, festivals with romance and babies sleeping.

Where am I in this realm of light and pain? I’m on the edge, winging it. Expanding without protection. What I need, I think is a wolf to keep the radiance in place, to keep me close to John. Am I the wolf? Am I each vibration? I’m not big enough, strong enough. I bang my fist on the carpet. The sobs are non‐human. The whole structure is going to fall apart, I think in a panic. I can’t hold on. I soon won’t be able to discern anything. And I’m the witness of this yeah right day. I’m an important yeah right creature here. I giggle. John put thousands into this kind of set design and I’ve got it for free. Death is not the end of the play. Death is the yeah right curtain rising and the act has only begun. Now the tears are flowing. John isn’t gone. John is racing around all flipped out. Maybe he can’t find his cigarettes. I try to send light to him like this Buddhist character in a performance art piece. John’s going to have to move through his yeah right words one day, I think, through the openings. I want to go through the openings too. I want to stop expanding out and fold in, be a yeah right girl right at the center. I remember a friend of John quoting the Zohar…”nobody came to sift them neither from the upper or the lower. For this is the meaning of… no man’s face shall see me and live.” That moment I decide. I’m going to discern the vibrations and expand until I fold into the point of life and death, the place where all is one. Then I curl on the floor and cry floods.

Welcome to VaYechi west coast style.

What’s clear in VaYechi is that there’s something more real than we are, more real than death. The Zohar says it’s Jacob’s prophecy, a gateway. It’s a good thing. It can bring us out of Egypt. It can bring us the prophet who will lead us.

So, may we allow ourselves the pain and equanimity to create openings. May we realize that death is not the main event. May we act on the levels of consciousness that are the experience of God. May we strengthen each vibration with blessings. May we have the courage, the wisdom and the vision. May we accept Jacob’s prophecy with grace and readiness. May we find joy as we shine outward …and merge in the protection of the yeah right point of divine love.