It is one of the hardest of life’s lessons to learn, a truth born only of challenges we all first encounter in childhood but that persist well beyond: The realization that being shouldered with responsibility needn’t bespeak lording but love.

Rashi comments on Hashem’s repetition of Yaakov Avinu’s name, calling out to him “Yaakov! Yaakov!” (Beraishis, 46:2), as a lashon chibah, a locution of endearment.

The full Midrash from which Rashi quotes, though, adds “lashon ziruz” –  a locution of motivation, a pushing to action. 

In last week’s parshah, the Midrash has Yaakov hinting to Hashem a desire for an end to the relentless challenges that had confronted him throughout his life, regarding Lavan, Esav, Rochel, Dina, Yosef, Shimon and Binyamin (43:14).

But in this week’s parshah, Hashem hints back that what might seem to be burdens are in truth opportunities, features, not bugs. Yaakov’s life was unimaginably hard. But by living it he became Yaakov Avinu.

With the term “Yaakov! Yaakov!” Hashem signals that being given the responsibility to shoulder challenges – ziruz – can be inseparable from, indeed an expression of, chibah – love.

And that is true not only when the “pushing” is coming from Above, but also when it’s coming from a parent, a spouse or a friend.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

The Hebrew word for “mourning” is introduced in Vayeishev to describe Yaakov’s response to the apparent death of his son Yosef: “Vayis’abel (Beraishis 37:34).

The word “eivel” — “mourning” — is composed of the same letters, in the same order, as the word “aval” — “however.”

“However” bespeaks an interruption of a thought.  And mourning — the facing of mortality forced by the death of someone close — is an interruption of life, of living, as we all do, without constantly thinking about death.

It’s interesting to note that the parsha includes not only the interruption of Yaakov’s life by Yosef’s disappearance – the source of his aveilus – but a striking interruption, too, of the narrative flow of the parsha itself, by the account of Yehudah and Tamar. 

And that narrative also presents yet another interruption, this one, of Yehudah’s life. He is suddenly, unexpectedly, forced to confront the reality of his responsibility for the fact of Tamar’s pregnancy. 

Tamar tells him, when he seeks to punish her, that he seems innocent and she seems guilty.  But, she continues, please recognize these personal items… (38:25). That, for Yehudah, is an aval – a “however” – moment too.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Yaakov’s middah – defining characteristic – is emes, truth, and so Rashi parses Yaakov’s misleading words to Yitzchak to make them true on some level.  For instance, allowing his father to believe it is Esav to whom he is speaking, Yaakov says “I am Esav your firstborn.” Rashi interjects a presumed pause in the sentence, rendering it “I am [the one bringing you food]; Esav is your firstborn” (Beraishis, 27:19).

Yet one misleading phrase still stands out: “Come eat of my hunted [food]” (ibid), says Yaakov, offering his father the goat meat he could mistake for game.  But it was neither Yaakov’s food – his mother Rivka had prepared it – nor had it been “hunted.” How was Yaakov not lying?

What occurs is that “hunting” is a word we’ve seen earlier, in the Torah’s description of Nimrod: “a powerful hunter” (ibid 10:9).  And there, Rashi explains that what Nimrod “hunted” and captured were people’s minds.  He used words and subterfuge to mislead, convince and amass followers.

Perhaps here, too, Yaakov was subtly, slyly, subtly “confessing” to his father that he was engaged in a psychological subterfuge, presenting himself as someone he wasn’t, offering his “hunting” to Yitzchak, his ability to navigate a tricky and untrustworthy world. Thereby demonstrating that he, Yaakov, too, was capable of dealing with that challenging world no less than his brother, something that, as the Malbim and others explain, Yitzchak had assumed was not true.

And so Yaakov was saying, in effect, “Accept my current subterfuge as proof that I can do what you have assumed only Esav is able to do.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

It’s human nature, when faced with something tragic, or even just disturbing, to say to oneself, “If only…”  

“If only I had done this… or we had done that… or not done this… or not done that, we could have avoided this outcome.”

But human nature can be misleading. A thought I once heard suggests that the repetition of the phrase, “the years of Sarah’s life,” in the first pasuk of the parsha, even though the pasuk had opened with “And the lifetime of Sarah was 127 years,” teaches us to resist our proclivity to imagine that things could have been different had we only acted differently.

We might think that had Sarah not been told (as per a famous Midrash) about her son having been bound on an altar, she wouldn’t have died at the moment she did, having been spared the shock.

But Sarah’s death was divinely ordained for that moment. “The years of Sarah’s life” were the years granted her. The proximate cause of her death wasn’t its ultimate cause. Its ultimate cause was Hashem’s will.

Post-facto calculi in such things are wrongheaded.

We are certainly required to do what is normative practice to preserve our health –  but only that. Someone, for instance, who suffered from  Covid when it was raging might kick himself for having worn only a simple mask, not an expensive, surgical-quality one.  Or for having spaced himself only 6 feet from others, instead of 10. But if one fulfilled the normative obligaton and still became sick, he is wrong to agonize over not having done more. He needs to recognize the ultimate determinant: Hashem’s will.  And then do what normative practice demands, to, with Hashem’s help,  recover.

But pondering “if onlys” is pointless.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran