Our children’s blessing

The book of Genesis ends with a tender scene.

Jacob is dying. His son Joseph, now Egypt’s viceroy, takes his sons, Efraim and Menashe, to the ailing patriarch’s bedside.

Jacob hugs the boys, he kisses them, and he blesses them. And Jacob’s blessing is, admittedly, strange.

Jacob speaks of a “God whom my ancestors, Abraham and Isaac, walked before, and who watched over me throughout my life.” An “angel who guarded me from all evil”  (48:15-16.)

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It seems like a pretty inaccurate description of Jacob’s life.

God “guarded [Jacob] from all evil”? Really? Jacob’s life was difficult, filled with betrayal, struggles, and tragedy.

Jacob fled home from Esau. He settled with Laban, who repeatedly tricked and exploited him; and eventually he flees Laban too. Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, whom he toiled to marry, struggled with childlessness and then died in childbirth. His daughter Dinah was attacked, his wife Bilha too. His children fight.  His favorite son, Joseph, disappeared, sold into captivity by his other sons, and Jacob lived much of his days mourning a son he wrongly believed he lost.

Indeed, when Jacob initially arrived in Egypt, and Pharaoh asked the patriarch to describe his life, Jacob provided what seems like a more accurate synopsis: “few and hard were the days of my life and they did not reach the days of my ancestors” (47:9).

Was Jacob simply trying to be delicate and paint a rosy picture to shield his young grandsons from life’s harsh realities?

No. I believe that Jacob’s outlook actually changed, and that his change was due to his grandchildren.

When Jacob looked at his grandchildren, his cynical outlook melted away and transformed to awe. He remarked to Joseph, the son he thought he had lost, that “for a time I thought I would never gaze upon your face and behold God has now even shown me your children” (48:11-12).

Our lives — including our successes, failures, pain, suffering, and missteps — all mean different things depending on where we stand in the broader historical story, and that meaning is heavily defined by what type of family we create.

Jacob’s grandchildren redefined his life. They gave purpose to his challenges and meaning to his pain. They enabled Jacob’s life to end on a positive, redemptive note.

Jacob came full circle. He began his life believing that blessings come from parents. He ended it realizing that perhaps the most profound blessings come from our children.

***

Jacob’s story has particular resonance for me.

When I think of Jacob’s life, and particularly his description of his hardships, I think of my maternal grandmother, Batya Haronian — or Savta Batya as I affectionately knew her — whose first yahrzeit we commemorated last week.

Savta Batya was an extraordinary woman. She married, had children, and was widowed suddenly as a young woman. She was left alone with seven children, the youngest of whom was an infant. She was a homemaker with no work experience and a large family that had lost its breadwinner. She was a single mother in Iran in the 1960s — a deeply conservative, male-dominant, family-centric country about to undergo enormous political upheavals. And she carried a deep sense of love and longing for her husband, which stayed with her for the rest of her life.

Yet she carried on. She settled in Israel, something her husband had always dreamed they would do. She found work as a cleaning lady in Israel’s Knesset, and was known to many of Israel’s most famous politicians, including Menachem Begin, whom she adored.

But her greatest accomplishment was her family — a family of which she thankfully lived to see several generations. Her family spans the spectrum religiously, politically, geographically and professionally, yet remains loving and tightknit. Her love knew no boundaries.

When I consider my savta’s life, I think of Jacob’s blessing and the “redeeming angel” that embodies God’s grace. Of the unseen hand that guides our ships, as it did hers, through oceans of challenges.

And I think of her personality.

My savta was a beautiful person filled with overflowing love, which I felt every time I met or spoke to her.  I miss her profoundly.

Yet I take comfort in the knowledge that Savta’s life, like Jacob’s, ended with sunshine and happiness. With beautiful paintings, gardens, and ghor mesabzi, and a remarkable family that shares the warmth and goodness that she embodied, and that reflects everything she meant.