Drash on Parashat Vayechi
Cantor David Bentley
Brisbane Progressive Jewish Congregation

This time of year can often be a quiet one as many of us enjoy summer holidays before heading back into the hurly burly of another year at work or school.  In a way it is a useful, quiet transition from one secular year to the next as we recharge our personal batteries and prepare for whatever lies ahead.  But transitions are not necessarily easy.  Whilst they may promise new rewards, they can also  bring uncertainty or fear.

Our Torah portion this week is, fittingly, also a transitional one.  With Parshat VaYechi we see the deaths of both Jacob and Joseph and the conclusion of the Book of Breshit, Genesis.  But we also see the promise of what is to come: Jacob delivers death-bed predictions as to what awaits his offspring many years into the future.

These predictions do little to comfort Jacob's sons, however.  We are told that the older sons feared this transition.  They believed that Joseph, without the restraining influence of their father, would now finally extract retribution for the wrong they did many years before when they sold him into slavery.  Joseph's response however is much the same as he had made to them when they were first re-united: that this was part of the Divine Plan.

Yet when Joseph was first cast into slavery, and later when he was unjustly jailed, we can only imagine what dark feelings he must have experienced.  Surely it was only as he was called upon to prepare Egypt from the coming famine that he began to sense some glimmer of his destiny; and then when he finally saw his brothers again, only then could the fulness of it have been revealed to him.  Similarly, when the famine first struck, Joseph's brothers could have had no inkling that this terrible event was to be the instrument of a joyful reunion with Joseph.

2011 was a difficult year for many in our region, starting with widespread floods and bushfires and a devastating cyclone in Australia and followed soon after by the New Zealand earthquakes.  While most were able to return to their lives and routines quickly, many thousands of people across the region continue to be affected.  Communities are still rebuilding, families are still living in temporary accommodation, the emotional impact of loss is still being dealt with by some.

Like Joseph when first cast into slavery, like his brothers when first experiencing the grip of the famine, it is perhaps too early to see past the enormity of the natural disasters we experienced a year ago.  Yet we may hope that in time, as with Joseph, we may come to see some good in the situation.  Then we will know that the transition is complete.