An Ode to Grandparenting and Jewish Continuity

The opening of this week's Parsha, the final portion of the book of Genesis, is a deathbed scene— the first recorded Biblical instance of a gradual decline in health, as opposed to sudden death, allowing for the presence of his beloved family members to gather in love and bid farewell. Often, this has become an opportune moment to muster one's last remnant of energy to communicate one's wishes and hopes for the future of the family.

Here too, the last Patriarch expends the last bit of his waning life force, attempting to gird them with the courage to rise to the upcoming challenges and seize the destiny that awaits them.

Ironically, that very destiny would require them to move beyond the very structure of the Patriarch/Matriarch family dynamic that he presided over and was now addressing—in order to blossom into a full-fledged nation.

The details of who was present there shed important light on how he set the tone to achieve that transition.

By way of a slight introduction: there is something that feels somewhat off-balance here in this unfolding scene. The text seems to be going out of its way to highlight the presence of his grandchildren from his son Joseph: Menashe and Ephraim. The text is tricky in the way it diverts our attention to his seeming desire to give preferential treatment to the younger son over the older (really no mystery there from a karmic perspective, a good and validating karma outcome that is, but I will let you figure that one out) as an effective literary move to distract us from the fact that they are even both in the room in the first place and getting an outsized share of Jacob's attention—“They are mine, these two,” meaning to say, though they are grandchildren, I value and cherish them as children. (For those grandparents in the room, you can relate, I’m sure.)

With one deft move in highlighting the grandparent's role over his primary parent identity, he permanently encompassed all the future generations into what would become a nation family.

And here is the best part for me. In doing so, he was also pointing out that though our destiny requires us to move into “nationhood,” we are always and will always be “Mishpacha”: a large, boisterous, and frequently cantankerous extended family.

In establishing Jacob as the Grandfather Patriarch (unlike Abraham and Isaac, who had no recorded biblical communication with their grandchildren) or, as he is affectionately known, the “ZAKEN,” Israel the old one, or “Yisroel SAVA”—which sounds incredibly similar to Israel SABA (grandfather in Hebrew)— he demonstrated the inclusionary instinct that would link every Jew of every generation together as a nation long after we had branched out into our own individual families. In that way, like a paradigmatic preview of Sinai, every Jew through history knows that “we are unto Jacob as Reuven and Shimon,” or as the Talmudic law in Yevamot 62b states, “Bnai Banim Haray Haym Kebanim, grandchildren are as children.”

That bedside was indeed a mini Sinai, and thanks to Jacob we were ALL as present there as we were—every Jewish Neshama soul, past, present, and future—at the foot of Mount Sinai.

The Rebbe was the living embodiment of that fundamental principle. He shattered the conventional hierarchical caste culture of Judaism by legitimizing and enfranchising every Jew, no matter the level of knowledge, or observance. He did this by sending emissaries to reach every Jew on the planet and notify them that they are members in good standing of Am Yisroel, the Jewish nation, as a result of being part of Bnei Yisroel, the children and grandchildren of Israel.

He told us to spread the word that we are all Mishpacha; we are all part of one extended family because we share a Zayde who was the grandfather of us all.