The weekly reading for the week of 9 Tevet, 5764 - January 3, 2004 Parashah: Vayigash Genesis 44:18 to 47:27; Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:15-28; Brit Chadashah: Ephesians 2:1-10


The Bagel: Chai-high or the best life. Parashat Vayigash concludes the story of the famine in Egypt. Not only is Jacob and his family delivered, but all of Egypt was granted life as well. It was the G-d given wisdom of Joseph that preserved life in Egypt. Preserved life meant that Israel could go on in existence. It meant that Egypt could also continue its existence. The famine threatened to destroy both. All of the intrigue of Joseph and his brothers was overshadowed by the bigger picture. G-d was preserving life through the sufferings of Joseph and error of his brothers. The life there in Egypt was one that enabled the Jews to live in the midst of Egypt, a foreign and pagan land.

The Haftarah reading transports us into the future. What seemed like a long time in the Parashah for Joseph and his brothers to be reunited was a short time of just a few years for them to be separated compared to the separation of the tribe of Judah from the tribe of Joseph. That tribal separation began at the split of the Davidic monarchy after Solomon's reign ended. Judah and Benjamin became the kingdom of Judah, while Joseph and the other tribes became the northern kingdom of Israel. Ezekiel was given the promise that one day that split would be mended which is shown by the object lesson of the two sticks. They will become one stick in the hand of Adonay.

It is likely to be a future scenario because the Davidic monarchy ceased during Ezekiel's time and never recovered to this day. But also the tribes, including Joseph, got absorbed under the rubric of "Jew," that is, pertaining to Judah. In Hebrew "Judah" is "Yehudah," while "Jewish" is "Yehudit" or "one of Judah." The distinctions of the tribes became clouded under this rubric. The last reason is found in the text: "Thus they shall remain in the land which I gave to My servant Jacob and in which your fathers dwelt; they and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, with My servant David as their prince for all time" (Ezekiel 37:25 Tanakh JPS). Jewish history is checkered with times of persecution, and that occurred mostly out of the land. Thus the Haftarah reading emphasizes "empowered life," where Jews can live unmolested by persecution and exile. That is a life that is higher than just existing among gentile nations. It will be the time of glorious rule of the Messiah. The Davidic monarchy will be restored. The desert will blossum like a rose.

It is the intervening life that is described in the reading of the Brit Chadashah that makes the difference between a preserved life that is little more than survival and the glorious life under the benevolent rule of the Messiah. The life described in the reading is the "saved life." This is the life that deals with the issues of the soul and of eternal life in heaven. Without this life being preserved or living in Messianic protection is ultimately meaningless. A saved life is reunited with G-d, the fount of all life.

The other two classes of life keep what is physically alive. The life that saves, takes a spiritually dead individual and does a miracle of inner, spiritual resurrection. This life also forms the basis for the future resurrection of the body from the dead. It also is the basis for Israel's national resurrection and empowerment.

When the soul is transformed and redeemed it is the highest life or the best life: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-7 NASB).

Cream Cheese Rocky Mountain high is no comparison to the heavenly Chai!


The weekly reading for the week of 9 Tevet, 5764 - January 3, 2004 Parashah: Vayigash Genesis 44:18 to 47:27; Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:15-28; Brit Chadashah: Ephesians 2:1-10