JANUARY 12 • 2023 | 39

Ancestral History 
Revelations
I

n Hebrew, a single letter 
can mean a thousand 
words. This is true of the 
vav that opens the book of 
Shemot: v’eileh shemot b’nai 
yisrael ha’baim mitzraymah, et 
ya’akov ish u’veito ba’u. Many 
of our translations erase 
this vav, translating 
this verse, “Now these 
are the names” (OJPS 
translation) or “These 
are the names” (NJPS 
translation). 
A more accurate 
translation is, “
And 
these are the names of 
the children of Israel 
who journeyed to Egypt 
with Jacob, every man 
and his household 
came.” Though opening 
a sentence, let alone a whole 
book, raises grammatical eye-
brows, our sages understood 
that every letter in the Torah 
begs to be interpreted. 
In 11th-century Spain, Ibn 
Ezra noted that this vav cre-
ates a narrative connection 
between Bereishit and Shemot, 
between the story of Jacob’s 
family and their descendants 
in Egypt. One hundred and 
fifty years later, also in Spain, 
Ramban elaborated on Ibn 
Ezra’s observation, seeing 
the vav as an allusion to the 
closing chapters of Bereishit 
in which we learn that Jacob 
brought all his offspring down 
to Egypt with him. Bereishit 
46:8 and Shemot 1:1 open with 
the identical phrase, v’eileh 
shemot b’nai yisrael ha’baim 
mitzraymah. From the redun-
dancy in these verses, Ramban 
concludes that our vav is 
making a textual connection 
between the family of Jacob 
coming down to Egypt and 

the beginning of the exile of 
the people of Israel.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 
also teaches on this connec-
tion between Bereishit and 
Shemot, explaining that the 
entire book of Bereishit is the 
story of a family. Until 
that family learns to get 
along with one another, 
they cannot function as 
a nation. He explains 
that this verse reveals 
the transition from 
Jacob’s sons to the nation 
of Israel. This isn’t the 
only possible interpreta-
tion, but the biblical par-
allelism in its structure 
makes it a compelling 
argument.
I’d like to suggest that 
the lesson we draw from this 
vav is that each of our stories 
is irrefutably linked to the 
stories of those who come 
before us. Every human comes 
from somewhere. One painful 
human truth our Torah exhib-
its throughout Bereishit is that 
the hurts we experience in life 
most often come from those 
closest to us, not those most 
distant. There is nothing easy 
about looking first to ourselves 
and to our family systems for 
healing. In fact, it takes our 
Torah 50 chapters just to reach 
a tenuous peace among the 
family of Israel. 
Nonetheless, we begin our 
next book, Shemot, as a fam-
ily that is ready to become a 
nation. May we learn from our 
ancestral stories that healing 
and growth is not incidental to 
the larger story of redemption, 
 
rather it is the whole point. 

Rabbi Blair Nosanwisch is a rabbi 

at Adat Shalom Synagogue in 

Farmington Hills..

SPIRIT
TORAH PORTION

Rabbi Blair 
Nosanwisch

Parshat 

Shemot: 

Exodus 1:1-6:1; 

Isaiah 27:6-

28:13, 

29:22-23.

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