26 | JANUARY 9 • 2020 

I

n the 49th of Genesis’
 50 
chapters, our patriarch Jacob 
assembles his 12 sons and 
declares: “Agidah lakhem et 
asher yikra etchem b’
acha-
rit hayamim” — “I will tell 
you that which shall befall 
you in the end of days.
” 
 What Jacob proceeds to 
tell them, though, includ-
ing a few generalizations 
about the future, is mostly 
a series of strange poems 
and animal imagery. 
Anyone anticipating a 
vivid description of the 
future is certainly disap-
pointed.
Parashat Vayechi is the 
only weekly portion of the year 
that does not begin following a 
blank space in the text. It is not 
unusual for the Torah reader to 
have a bit of difficulty finding 
the opening word, vayechi.
Commenting on its strange 
placement in the Torah scroll, 
Rashi, quoting Bereishit Rabbah, 
explains that just as this Torah 
section is “closed” (i.e. hard to 
locate), so, too, the details of the 
future are closed to Jacob.
Though Jacob wanted to 
explain the future, God prevents 
him from doing so explicitly. 
Which leads to the question: 
Why would God not want a par-
ent to let his/her children know 
what lies ahead?
#1 – They won’
t believe us 
anyway. Try telling your children 
what to do and what will happen 
if they don’
t listen. Enough said. 
There’
s a memorable scene in 
Oliver Stone’
s JFK, in which a 
woman is tossed from a car in 
Louisiana by two men on Nov. 
20, 1963. She tells the police 
officers who pick her up and the 
doctors at the hospital where 
she is treated for bruises that 

the men in the car are going 
to Dallas to kill the president 
two days later. She correctly 
describes the future, but no one 
believes her.
#2 – Predicting the 
future might negatively 
impact the way we live. 
What if Jacob had clear-
ly identified the events 
that would occupy his 
children’
s destiny? These 
include slavery, exile, 
Crusades, pogroms, 
Holocaust, in addition to 
personal pain, illness and 
loss.
Would knowing the 
future alter the path of 
Jacob’
s children away from 
Judaism? Would we, too, change 
our life’
s decisions if we knew 
our future? Would an artist still 
embark on a new creation, if he/
she knew for sure that it would 
not be well received?
#3 – Even “guaranteed” future 
might not come true. Look how 
many individual futures did not 
follow logic. Abram, the son of 
an idol maker, grew up to be the 
first Jew. Joseph, sold into slav-
ery at age 17, later became the 
second most powerful person 
in Egypt. Moses, barely surviv-
ing drowning as an infant, was 
raised in Egyptian royalty then 
gave it all up to be the leader of 
his people.
While some might find it 
interesting to “see into the 
future,
” we have learned that 
doing so is neither realistic nor 
helpful. Instead of predicting 
the future, our goal should be to 
make the future happen. 

Rabbi Elliot Pachter is the rabbin-
ic adviser at the Frankel Jewish 
Academy, and rabbi emeritus at 
Congregation B’
nai Moshe, both in 
West Bloomfield.

Parshat 

Vayechi: 

Genesis 

47:28-50:26; 

I Kings 

2:1-12.

Rabbi Elliott 
Pachter

Spirit
torah portion

Knowing What Will Be

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