Tag Archives: familial blessings

So Rabbi, you just told me you have some breaking news about grandparenting. What is that?

Adam Mintz (01:02.529)
We became grandparents for the fourth time last night, thank God. So this is a topic you didn’t even know, and this is the perfect topic for today. So I’m excited to talk about grandparenting and share with Sharon. I’m sure she’ll have some important insights on this grandparent discussion.

Geoffrey Stern (01:20.622)
Well, fantastic. And that actually does put this conversation into context. To put it into further context, I did a little research about the importance of grandparenting, both for our tradition, but in terms of transmitting tradition, ethics, moral codes in general. And I came up with an amazing article in Mosaic Magazine. It was called American Jewry’s Great Untapped Resource Grandparents. And in it, he says that there is really no limit to American Jews adults attesting to relationships with grandparents far more positive than those with their parents. The one who wrote the article is called Jack Wertheimer, who’s a very well known sociologist and educator, and he’s at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and he says being repeatedly struck by the number of applicants for the rabbinate, citing grandparental influence on their eventual decision to become actively committed members of the Jewish clergy. There’s been a study done of birthright Israel alumni, and the connection to Jewish grandparents is an important predictor of a wide variety of positive Jewish attitudes and practices in later years. There have been other studies where those whose grandparents accompanied them to synagogue and other Jewish settings are likeliest to feel strong attachments to Israel and to the Jewish people. And in general, Lisa Miller did a study called The Spiritual Child And she says that grandparents are key coordinates on a child’s spiritual map. And that is in addition to anything to do with Judaism. I think what we’re going to do today is to explore the powerful impact of grandparents on the educational pedagogic paradigm. So we are in Genesis 48, and this is a famous story of where Joseph blesses his grandchildren, Ephraim and Manasseh. And I have to say, Rabbi, I think most of us are focused on the fact that Jacob moves his hands from right to left and favors the younger

Geoffrey Stern (03:50.012)
over the older. And as a result, we have missed a critical element of this story. So I’m going to cover all the verses and you will see that there is a switch, but that’s not the focus of this year’s podcast. So in 48.1, it says, some time afterward, Joseph was told “your father is ill”. Rabbi, we kind of discussed when Abraham came to bury Sarah.

He also got the message and it was clear he was not living with Sarah. I think it’s pretty clear from this that Joseph was not in regular touch with his father. He had to be told.

Adam Mintz (04:30.828)
Seems clear. Right. And by the way, this is the first person who gets sick in the Torah

Geoffrey Stern (04:36.237)
interesting.

So he took with him, Joseph took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. When Jacob was told, your son Joseph has come to see you, Israel, which is another name for Jacob, summoned his strength and set up in bed. You know, not necessarily something that you would do for someone who comes to visit you on a regular basis. Clearly, he’s possibly very proud of his son, who is the viceroy of Egypt, but also there’s a

a less than familial relationship between the two. And Jacob said to Joseph, El Shaddai who appeared to me at Lutz in the land of Canaan blessed me and said to me, I will make you fertile and numerous, making of you a community of peoples and I will assign this land to your offspring to come for an everlasting possession. In verse five it says, now your two sons who were born to you in the

land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt shall be mine. Ephraim and Menashe shall be mine no less than Reuben and Shimon. Rabbi, I had never focused on this before because this is the first Switcheroo that we get here. Forgetting about who gets the blessing of the firstborn, what he’s saying to Joseph is, these are not your kids.

anymore. I will I will reckon to say I will reckon to say he’s adopting them. You could look at this from a legal point of view and say yes he compares them to Reuben and Shimon. In a sense Joseph doesn’t get a portion in the land of Israel. Instead his two sons get two portions and that’s from a legal point of view. But I think if you look at it from a literary and compassion / emotional point of view he’s really saying to Joseph

Adam Mintz (06:08.548)
You’re my kids, that’s absolutely right.

Geoffrey Stern (06:37.138)
If I’m taking these sons, I’m adopting them, they’re going to be mine. in… No, go ahead.

Adam Mintz (06:41.304)
W- Go on.

was just gonna say it seems to me that Jacob is making the same mistake he made a bunch of chapters ago where he favored Joseph and got everybody in trouble and now he favors Joseph again by choosing Ephraim and Menashe they’ll be no less than Reuven and Shimon. Think how Reuven and Shimon feel about that.

Geoffrey Stern (07:05.764)
So he’s doing that and then he’s going to pick the younger son. So he’s picking Joseph, the youngest son, over Reuven and Shimon and the other brothers and…

Adam Mintz (07:13.293)
Right. There’s a lot of stuff going on here.

Geoffrey Stern (07:16.428)
It never ends, but the focus of today’s discussion is this nuance that I had never really focused on before, which is he is bypassing Joseph. He’s saying your kids are going to be my kids. But then he puts a condition in verse six. He says, but progeny born to you after them, meaning after Ephraim and Menashe shall be yours. They shall be recorded instead of their brothers and their inheritance.

Adam Mintz (07:19.14)
Fuck.

Geoffrey Stern (07:46.274)
So from a legal point of view again, Rabbi, you’re making the case, Joseph, don’t go ahead and have a bunch of more kids and all of a sudden we’re going to have 14, 15 tribes of Israel. This deal only reflects on a Ephraim and Menashe but if you don’t look at it from a legal point of view, he’s talking about a special relationship that he wants to create with these two boys and only with these two boys. There’s something unique about these two boys and we’re going to look at the rabbinic

to get a sense of where they fell. But it just becomes the drama is here already and we haven’t even gotten to favoring one son over the other. He says, I do this, meaning I’m favoring your children because when I was returning from Padan, Rachel died, my favorite wife, to my sorrow while I was journeying in the land of Canaan. And then all of a sudden in verse eight it says,

Israel asked, who are these? And Joseph says to his father, these are my sons who God has given me here. So again, the commentaries are a little taken aback that on the one hand, he’s already stood up at the side of his bed and reckoned with Joseph. He’s already talked about the sons of Ephraim and Menasha, but when he actually sees them, he doesn’t recognize them. Again, I could make the same point that I made at the beginning. Maybe he hasn’t spent a lot of time with them.

Adam Mintz (08:54.277)
you

Adam Mintz (09:13.643)
Right.

Geoffrey Stern (09:15.502)
So he says, bring them to me, he said, now that I may bless them. Now Israel’s eyes were dim with age. He could not see. So Joseph brought them.

Adam Mintz (09:26.435)
Like his father, by the way, Isaac also had a problem, right?

Geoffrey Stern (09:30.104)
Yep. Yep. So Joseph brought them close to him and he kissed them and embraced them and said Israel again That’s another word for Jacob said to Joseph I never expected to see you again and here God has let me see your children as well Rabbi, I’m gonna go out on a limb here Clearly, this is part of the narrative He truly didn’t expect to see those sons but I’m going to go on a limb because what I’m going to say is

Adam Mintz (09:48.559)
What?

Geoffrey Stern (10:00.02)
that there is a certain magic to becoming a grandparent. You experienced that last night when you had the fourth, there’s a sense of wonderment. It never is a sense of entitlement. It’s just an amazing thing, I think, that grandparents have when that next generation is born. Clearly, Jacob had more reasons than most of us for having that sense of wonder and amazement, but I think it captures something.

And he says Joseph then removed them from his knees bowed low with his face to the ground. Joseph took the two of them, Ephraim with his right hand, Israel to Israel’s left and Menashe with his left hand to Israel or Jacob’s right and brought them close. to you. So now there’s a lot of focus on the order of that he set them. I’m gonna just move to the end game because what he did was he actually favored the younger

Adam Mintz (10:30.503)
great.

Geoffrey Stern (10:59.682)
over the older, we’ve seen that before. And then he said, he blessed Joseph saying, the God in whose ways my father Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day, the messenger who has redeemed me from all harm, bless the lads. In them may my name be recalled and the name

of my father Abraham and Isaac. So he’s kind of…

Adam Mintz (11:32.775)
That’s remarkable, by the way. And he blessed Joseph saying, right? He didn’t bless the boys. This is the blessing of Joseph is that he blesses both of his sons.

Geoffrey Stern (11:44.452)
There’s clearly the connection is always going to be there between the son and the grandchildren. You can’t have one without the other, but ultimately he says in them, meaning in the grandchildren, my name will be recalled, which is fascinating. And then he goes on and says in verse 20, so he blessed them that day saying,

You shall Israel invoke blessings saying, God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh. Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh. he says, This, when I said in the intro that this is one of the iconic blessings in Judaism right up there with the priestly blessing, it’s because it is identified in the text by Joseph saying,

is how you shall bless your children. If we open up a siddur and we look to what happens on Friday night, it says, may God make you like Ephraim and Menashe. Every father says to his children, my God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah to the daughters. And then he goes on in this siddur, may the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord shine his countenance upon you. It combines the priestly blessing

iconic priestly blessing with this blessing for Ephraim and Manasseh. I think the priestly blessing is easier for us to understand. It’s a universal blessing. May God grant you peace. May he lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Adam Mintz (13:29.735)
Well, and it has nothing to do with parents and children, right? It’s just like, if you give a blessing, you might as well give the generic general blessing.

Geoffrey Stern (13:39.556)
So it is remarkable, yes and no. I don’t think it’s remarkable that this blessing of Menashe and Ephraim has achieved such status because it’s identified in the text of the Torah itself is with this, you shall bless. But nonetheless, we should be at the edge of our seats because this is the preeminent blessing that a parent blesses their children. We’ve clearly identified it as a blessing of a grandparent.

Let’s just kind of survey the rabbinic literature on this. Rashi says, and Israel strengthened himself, he said, although he is my son, he is king, and I will do honor to him. Rabbi, typical pride of a parent in their child who has been successful, even if he doesn’t call very often.

Adam Mintz (14:27.443)
Mm-hmm.

Right, that is correct. Okay, that’s I mean if your son is a viceroy, you’re gonna be proud.

Geoffrey Stern (14:35.056)
you

So there’s so much here that if you look through the lens of a grandparent-child-grandchild relationship really strikes you. So they shall be mine, Jacob says about these two boys. They shall be counted amongst my other sons to receive a portion in the land each for himself. So again, there is a combination of the legalistic implications, but also he says these are going to be counted as my children.

this place. So if you recall, they get into this kind of dance between the fact that Menashe and Ephraim were born in Egypt. So he said he showed them the contract of the betrothal and the contract of marriage evidence that their mother had adopted the faith of Israel and that this her offspring were of their faith. So there’s obviously a little sensitivity in terms of the rabbinic tradition to the fact that nowhere does it say that Joseph

married an Israelite or someone who converted to Judaism. Clearly it’s an anachronism, Rabbi. There is no need for this. But it raises the sensitivity again of a grandparent who looks at his child who might have drifted away, who might have married someone who wasn’t necessarily his first choice. In this case, clearly extenuating circumstances. But the grandfather is trying to now get

into the picture, even if it’s a little late.

Adam Mintz (16:11.038)
I think that that’s 100 % right. That is interesting. That is unnecessary to bring that whole thing up. But somehow that shows a little uncertainty or ambivalence about the situation. Good.

Geoffrey Stern (16:25.924)
Good.

So now we’re looking at Chibbah Yeteirah on the Torah. I don’t think this is a very old commentary. I actually think it might even be someone who was in the same age as Rav Kook in Israel. But he says under the verse, now your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you shall be mine. This commentary says that were born to you since at

At that moment, I, Jacob, did not know if I would see you again. Nevertheless, they are mine. Another explanation, Jacob said they are mine and not yours, since he requested that Ephraim and Manasseh should inherit from him and not Joseph, since only the remainder, additional children of Joseph, which are your progeny, born after them, shall inherit from Joseph. So he’s really kind of a shortcutting the whole inheritance procedure and say,

Geoffrey Stern (17:33.582)
And then he says, to Deuteronomy 25-6. This is where it gets interesting. In Deuteronomy it says,

Geoffrey Stern (17:56.098)
This commentary is bringing an example of the Levirate marriage of Yebum where someone’s God forbid brother passes away without children. The person is to marry that brother’s wife and the children then will continue the name. He’s really, I guess, codifying what it is that Jacob is doing. He is literally legally creating these children as his own.

Adam Mintz (18:26.48)
That is interesting. The law of Yibum, Levirate marriage, you know, that show that is real ownership. That one brother takes the place of the other, right? So he’s trying to say that this is an official act. This isn’t just symbolic. I think, Geoffrey that’s what he’s sensitive to. This isn’t just symbolic. This is real.

Geoffrey Stern (18:48.92)
And I’m going to say I miss this. I’ve been reading the Parsha for many years. I miss this whole move. The Or HaChaim says, this is why Jacob was quite precise when he says, Li hem your two sons are really mine, just as Ruben and Shimon are mine. He wanted Joseph to understand that he did not look at his sons as his grandsons, but as his real sons. Fascinating, fascinating.

needing stuff here.

Adam Mintz (19:20.141)
Really fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern (19:22.936)
So In Genesis 48,

Well, no, I’m going to move on here. Yeah, we had that already and I was wondering where it went. This Chibbah Yeteirah gets into it and I think Rabbi, you and I will detect a little modernist approach here based on our enlightenment, I guess, experience of assimilation and losing one’s children to the faith. But let’s see what he has to say. He says, and notice that a Ephraim and Menasha that were born

Adam Mintz (19:30.274)
We had that already, right?

Adam Mintz (19:54.861)
What?

Geoffrey Stern (19:58.686)
and grew up in Egypt before Jacob and his brothers came, nonetheless. they were not assimilated. This was not the case with the children born to Joseph afterwards that were born after Jacob and his sons were already in Egypt. So this commentary says, have you ever heard of the children born after Ephraim and Menashe Not so much. Do we have a tradition that many Jews, Israelites stayed behind in Egypt and didn’t participate in the Exodus? Yes. Who might they have been? They might have been

Joseph’s further kids. He says, in truth, this should not be surprising since when Joseph was by himself in Egypt, he worked hard to instill his values in the hearts of his children since who else would do it? So he’s trying to explain why Ephraim and Manasseh were different than the sons and children that he had afterwards. And what he’s saying is, know,

Geoffrey Stern (20:58.368)
other person to convey the tradition, Joseph felt the pressure and the onus. He said, it says in Genesis 41 actually, that Joseph felt lonely. God has made me bear fruit in the land of my affliction. Accordingly, all his children felt like strangers. So when Joseph was all by himself, he went ahead and he focused on transmitting the tradition to his children, Ephraim and Menasha. In contrast to

to Joseph’s children born after Jacob and his sons came. Joseph no longer worked very hard in educating the rest of his children and he also felt the ease and luxury of Egypt and the rest of his children felt similarly So this rabbi is relating to and commenting on these texts from the guise of assimilation in a foreign land and the kind of dynamics of

when it is that we invest in our children when we don’t. One of the things I thought of Rabbi is many Israelis say they don’t really have to work at their Judaism in Israel because it’s all around them. And when they move to the States and they’re all alone, they all of a sudden invest. It reads right from this script. It’s kind of fascinating, but again, it gets to the dynamic between the first, second, and third generation, does it not?

Adam Mintz (22:10.201)
Right.

It’s more a challenge.

Adam Mintz (22:25.776)
Yeah, it really does. That’s so interesting. The idea of what’s the difference between the third generation and the second generation? What’s the difference between relationship with children and relationship with grandchildren? It’s the old line, right? If I wouldn’t have known how good they were, I would have had my grandchildren first.

Geoffrey Stern (22:43.908)
heard that that is a great line. So at the very end of our portion, it says, Joseph lived to see children of the third generation of Ephraim, the children of Machir son of Menashe who were likewise born upon Joseph’s knees.

Adam Mintz (23:02.575)
Again, a third generation.

Geoffrey Stern (23:05.198)
Yes, so this is where I focused on this and I must say that my local Chabad rabbi Yehuda Cantor pointed this out to me. We were discussing grandchildren. So in the Chizkuni it says the word gam also is meant to include Ephraim and his children in what is described. How are we to understand the practice? So he’s trying to understand what grandchildren are, great grandchildren. Joseph only saw Ephraim’s

grandchildren, whereas he did not leave to serve Menashe’s great grandchildren. We know this from the descendants of Joseph. The rabbis now are starting to get into something that we come across all the time. It’s always saying, dor shelishi and dor revi’i, the third generation, the fourth generation. Rabbi, that’s a thing. And we’re going to see where it is a thing. The Rabbeinu Bechayah says,

that truly it’s interesting that some of the descendants, because Menashe and Ephraim don’t really stick out in Jewish history much after this moment of glory, but the daughters of Tzalachat do seem to have come from Mechir, the son of Menashe. So we do follow up on the genealogy here, but the Shadal, my old friend Shmuel David Luzzatto

puts everything into perspective. He says,

the third generation is great grandchildren such as in the 13 attributes In Exodus 34 where it says God keeps loyal to the thousand generation bearing iniquity, rebellion and sin yet not clearing the guilty calling on account the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons and upon sons to the third and fourth generation. So there’s a play here and it

Geoffrey Stern (25:34.726)
has made me read these verses totally different than I have before. Because in the past, I always thought about, how can you punish children for their parents’ crime? Or how can you punish grandchildren for their grandparents’ crime? But Today, I’m not worried about the ethics. What I’m focused in on is how strongly the Bible connects these generations one to the other. And how, in a sense, what it’s saying

is that the impact of grandparents, even great grandparents, can have a strong bearing on their grandchildren. It’s a different way of reading it.

Adam Mintz (26:16.221)
Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting that he feels a need to prove that Shilashim is grandchildren, right? He seems to say that that’s, know, the Torah everywhere in good things and in bad things talks about a third generation. There’s parents, there’s children, and then there’s grandchildren.

Geoffrey Stern (26:34.404)
Yep. There’s definitely.

Adam Mintz (26:35.718)
I want to go back before you finish this up, I want to go back to something. And that is the fact that this week’s parasha begins with grandchildren and ends with grandchildren. That Joseph saw a third generation, you know, Bnei Machir. What do you make of that? You know, it almost seems as if this, the end of the book of Genesis,

wants to emphasize the continuation of the generations and therefore it’s most the book of Genesis isn’t about sons but here we move to grandsons.

Geoffrey Stern (27:11.97)
I think it’s a great question. think that ultimately, if you look at the book of Genesis, it’s the story of the patriarchs and the matriarchs. And normally we would say the patriarchs are three generations. But ultimately what happens in this context is it’s three slash four, because in fact we go Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Menasseh and Ephraim. But the point I think that it’s saying

is if you look at Genesis from the perspective of a book establishing the patriarchal tradition, the Ma’aseh Avot, the stories of our ancestors upon which everything is based, what it’s saying is exactly what the topic of this conversation is. You can end it when you get to that third or fourth generation. The story of our people was defined by this three slash four generations.

each one of these characters had to play a decisive role. think the Rabbeinu B’chayah actually puts it into the context that I’m trying to get at. He says, verse threatening the sins of the fathers will be visited upon their sons or later generations presumes that the sons or grandsons will continue in the evil path their parents had walked before them. In other words, biological relationships are presumed to be meaningful up to and including

the fourth generation, not beyond that. When in a patriarchal society, the senior members of the family is concerned about his offspring, he does not include such concern the fifth and subsequent generation. normally, as I said before, when we talk about these sins, we get all bent out of shape in terms of the punishment for something that our ancestor did and you didn’t do. But I think what this parsha is giving us

is a lens to look at it to see the importance that generations have to play. And those generations have to go beyond. think if we do research anthropologically, we’ll see that in the old country, many people got married and lived with their parents. I think the impact of parents, grandparents on children as we started by, has the potential, I should say, of being extremely significant.

Geoffrey Stern (29:41.426)
I must say that when I’m in Israel, I go to the demonstrations. I’m always surprised how old they are. All the people are there. They’re my age. I think in Israel, the older generation is trying to be heard. I’m not sure what the story is there. I think in our generation here in the States, there’s a different dynamic. But I think in all of these dynamics, the takeaway from the blessing that we have on Friday night,

and the take away from this, Parsha, that you have to have all those generations to get the full picture. I can personally say my grandfather, he was the guy who said, who wants to come to Shul with me? And I raised my hand and that was the beginning of my journey. I had a very special relationship with my grandfather. I see how my father had an amazing impact upon my kids and their

Adam Mintz (30:22.422)
.

Geoffrey Stern (30:41.202)
And it was all by example. It wasn’t by anything that he necessarily had to say. And I think that is profound.

Adam Mintz (30:50.055)
That is absolutely profound. This is a great topic and this is perfect for us. And you know, we’ll use this this weekend as we celebrate our grandson, the fact that this is the parasha of grandchildren. And it really makes you think about the importance of that third generation. So thank you so much. Mazel tov to everybody. Shabbat shalom and chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek as we finish the book of Genesis.

Geoffrey Stern (31:15.994)
Shabbat Shalom and Mazel Tov to you Rabbi and I’ll see you all next week.