Parashat Vayehi: On Life and Death

The popular song goes: Am Yisrael Chai, Od Avinu Chai, “The nation of Israel is alive, our father is still alive.” Who is Avinu¸”our father?” In the song, the word probably refers to our Father God. But the word also picks up on a repeated line in the Yosef story: HaOd Avi Chai? “Is my father still alive?” (45:3. See also 43:27). Here the father is Yaakov, and it is Yosef his son asking and asking about whether his father is still alive.

Is Yaakov our father still alive?

Yaakov Avinu lo met. Yaakov our father did not die, is the remarkable statement of the Talmud (Taanit 5b). What? But it says that he died? Well, no. As Rashi points out, the word met, dead, is never actually used with reference to Yaakov. The Torah says simply Vayigva vaye’asef el amav, “He breathed his last and he was gathered to his people,” but there is no mention of the normal concluding term used for Avraham and Yitzhak, vayamot, “And he died.”

Vayehi Yaakov. And Yaakov lived. So begins the parsha which ostensibly tells of Yaakov’s death. According to the Talmud, then, the parsha is aptly named; in some sense Yaakov never died but continued to be Vayehi, to live.

Perhaps Yaakov’s death is like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s feigned death during the siege of Jerusalem in 69 CE. The story is told (BT Gittin 56a) that, in order to get out of Jerusalem and bargain with the Roman general Vespasian to save the rabbinic academy of Yavneh, Rabban Yochanan pretended to be sick and die so that he could get past the guards at the gate in a coffin. His own feigned death symbolized the end of an era of Temple-based religion. Was it a true death for the Jewish people? No. He made sure of this by creating a new life of Torah on the other side, by serving as a bridge figure—like the coffin that crossed the city threshold -- from one era to the next.

Yaakov needed to do the same for his children. Here they were on the cusp of a period of great national suffering in Egypt. Was this a true death? Would Yaakov and his ancestors and traditions die during this period? No. Just as Rabban Yochanan’s death was not real, so Yaakov’s was not. Why? Because the Jewish people are survivors. There can be no death where there is memory, continuity, tradition. The Jewish people survived the destruction of the Temple just as they survived the era of Egyptian enslavement. Why? Because Yaakov avinu lo met. Because there is this memory of an earlier period. There is continuity and connection, even across devastating events in Jewish history. There is often seeming death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s coffin and like the deaths at the close of the book of Genesis. But somehow the spark is kept alive, the memory is preserved.

Why is Yaakov Avinu lo met? Because we remember him. Because we read about him in the Torah. Because we carry him with us across the thresholds of history’s twists and turns, just as his sons carried him across the border between Egypt and the land of Israel. As long as there are Children of Israel , Children of Yaakov, passing on his traditions, then his death, like Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s, is never final, but simply a bridge to a new era.