One of the most awe inspiring parts of parenthood, to me, is the privilege we have of bestowing blessing on our children. Whether consciously or not, we bless our children all the time, with the love we share with them, with the bits of wisdom we have the opportunity to impart, with the opportunities we have to lead by example, with the confidence we show in them. Sometimes, we have the opportunity to bless them more explicitly, with words of blessing from our tradition of from our hearts. When my husband and I named each of our children, we thought carefully about the blessings that each part of their name could bring them. Those blessings were all about our hopes and dreams, dreams for children whose personality we had only begun to glimpse. Blessing an infant is easier in a way than an older child whose strengths and challenges you know well.
Each year I work with parents of first graders and third graders on writing a blessings to place in the front cover of their child’s sidur or chumash, a blessing that is personalized for the child and for the moment. I remember writing the sidur ceremony blessing for my first child, wanting to acknowledge who he was, and bless him with what he would need as he grew. Most of the school sidur ceremony blessings are written in English, but since we speak Yiddish with our kids at home, we wanted the blessing in his siddur to be in Yiddish as well. As we set about writing the blessing, we wanted to call out our son’s admirable persistence in achieving his goals. Unable to find the best Yiddish word for persistence in the dictionary, we turned to social media. On facebook the prevailing consensus was “akshonesdikayt”, a word more commonly translated as stubbornness. I pushed back, asking if there wasn’t a word with more positive connotations. The answer: In Yiddish the connotations of stubbornness are positive.
In parshat Vayechi, we reach the end of Beresheet, the book of Genesis, and with it the end of the era of the patriarchs and matriarchs. Jacob sensing that his death is imminent, calls his children to him in order to impart some final words of wisdom. He gathers his children as a group, but addresses each one individually. Some of the messages foretell a bright future, others harshly recall a dark past and warn of future pitfalls. Jacob’s final words to his children are honest, if not entirely positive.
As I read this passage, I want to hear Jacob tell his children about the best qualities within each of them, about what they can achieve if the draw upon their greatest strengths, but Jacob doesn’t shy away from acknowledging their faults. We might even wonder, reading these words if they constitute blessings at all. The Torah follows Jacobs final words to his children with this verse: “All these are the twelve tribes of Yisrael: and this is that which their father spoke to them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them.” (Gen. 49:28) Some commentaries suggest that after the words we read, Jacob continued by blessing each child individually, with other words not recorded in the text. But the plain meaning of the text would suggest that the words that we have were the blessing.
So how do we resolve our discomfort with Jacob’s blessings? Remember that the earlier patriarchs managed to bless only one child in each generation with their legacy. They evaluated their children, and the one who was most worthy received the blessing. For Isaac, there was only one blessing to give (or one good blessing), and though he intended to give it to Esau, it worked for Jacob, too. Jacob’s blessings are innovative. He is the first to manage to bless all of his children, and each blessing is tailor-made for the recipient. Does Jacob share my ambivalence about publicly acknowledging a child’s struggles along with their strengths? If he does, he determines that the risks are worth the benefit of showing the child that we know them, love them and accept them, faults and all. Jacob welcomes all of his children into his legacy, each according to his blessing.
We, in turn, inherit that legacy, and with it the example of Jacob, who teaches us to know our children, to see where their strengths and challenges may lead them in the future and to help them to use each of their characteristics for the best. May we learn from Jacob to value what each child brings to our family and our community, and may we see the positive connotations in all that we know about them, blessing each one according to their own blessing.