After Yaakov’s passing, his descendants travel to Chevron to bury him in the Machpelah Cave, as he’d requested. They’re accompanied by a whole procession of Egyptian ministers and citizens.

Yosef’s brothers are sure that he has secretly held a grudge against them all along and was only keeping up appearances of peace for their father’s benefit. They’re worried that now that Yaakov has passed, Yosef’s cordiality has expired, and he will kill them. When they confront him about it, Yosef cries. He can’t believe his brothers really think that. Yosef understands that no matter what they did to him, everything happened because G-d wanted it to, and he therefore holds no resentment towards his brothers. He comforts them and tells them that he will take care of them in Egypt, where he serves as viceroy to the Pharaoh.

Then Yosef realizes that he is near death. It’s kind of morbid how long our ancestors spent talking about their impending deaths, but I guess they’re wiser than we are? Like his father before him, he requests that his bones be buried in Canaan, in the Machpelah Cave. He tells his extended family, the Israelites, that G-d will remember them and take them out of Egypt, and then he, too, passes away. But instead of burying him in Canaan, they embalm him, and he remains in Egypt.

Parshat Vayechi brings up a lot of thoughts about atonement and forgiveness. I often wonder about repentance, and the purpose of regret. Once you’ve atoned for your sins and wiped them away, is there any use to regretting these mistakes?

Shimon and Levi sinned against the people of Shechem with good intentions; Reuben, too, sinned with good intentions, and he spent the remainder of his life repenting for his mistake. Still, they did not get blessed along with their brothers at Yaakov’s deathbed. Regardless of whether they regretted what they’d done, the mistakes had been made, and there was no undoing of them. This teaches us to take our actions with the weight they deserve, to not expect that we’ll simply repent later on for what we did. In the moment, we must be sure we are doing the right thing.

But after Yaakov’s death, when Yosef’s brothers apologize him, the Torah is reassuring us that no matter how bad our mistakes, there’s no use torturing ourselves for it. Sure, there are negative repercussions as a consequence of the things we do wrong, but either way, whatever happens fits into G-d’s plans.

The structure of these two ideas fits together nicely. Shimon, in specific, had originally argued that they should kill Yosef. Reuben had failed to save him. When even Yaakov did not fully forgive them for the sins they’d done in the past, they may have turned to hopelessness. How much more can I repent? How can I fix what I did if there’s no going back in time? But Yosef’s assurances that he had long forgiven them must have assuaged it somehow. Sure, there’s no fixing the past. But if Yosef could forgive them, then at least they could move on towards living an unburdened future.

Ideas like this are a big part of why I love learning Torah. Even just thinking about it is soothing, reassures you that no matter how badly you messed up, moving on towards the future is possible.

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Yosef’s oldest brother, Reuben, interjected, suggesting they just throw him in a pit instead, intending to come back for him later. So they threw him into a pit, but he didn’t get the chance. Before Reuben got the chance to come back and get Yosef out, an Ishmaelite caravan passed by, and the other brothers decided to sell him to them. They faked his death, spilling goat’s blood on the colorful coat their father had made for him, and on they went with their lives.

This is the part Hebrew school teachers always brush over, so I suppose I will too. Yehudah, another of Yaakov’s sons, had three sons of his own, and throughout a series of events, two ended up dead and he ended up marrying a woman named Tamar who he met at the side of a road—such a meet-cute. King David and his dynasty are descended from the family tree of Yehudah and Tamar, and so will Mashiach. (Mashiach now!)

Cut to: Yosef, taken to Egypt, sold to a man named Potiphar as a slave. He worked his way up through the ranks, earning respect, but also earning unwanted attention. Potiphar’s wife was enamored with him, infatuated, and started throwing herself at him; he rejected her advances and ran away. Spiteful, she spun the story around so she’d be seen as the victim, and for his crimes, Yosef was imprisoned.

In prison, Yosef gained a bit of a reputation as a dream interpreter. Two men, the baker and the butler of the Egyptian Pharaoh, both recently imprisoned, asked for his help interpreting their dreams. He tells the baker he’s going to be killed, tells the butler that he’s going to be pardoned, and asks the butler to remember him once he is released. The interpretations come true just as he predicted they would, but once the butler is released, he forgets about Yosef and goes back to his life.

In this week’s parsha, we see dreams of glory and dreams of the most mundane, dreams causing strife and dreams resulting in death and dreams resulting in freedom. What’s in a dream? What is a dream?

I love dreams. I rarely dream vividly, and even more rarely do I remember a single thing I dreamt, so when I do remember my dreams, I get childishly excited.

I hate dreams. My passions are ever-changing, the future unknowable, my goals abstract and undefined. “What are your dreams?” people ask me, “What are your goals?” And I have nothing to say but a small “I don’t know.” 

From Yosef’s dreams early in the parsha, we can learn to dream big. He dreamed of glory, of kingship, of being recognized for his greatness. Spoiler alert, it came true. We learn to have goals, aspirations. But we can also learn from his brothers’ reactions to his dreams that some things are best kept quiet. We learn not to be too cocky, not to spread word of our dreams or goals around people who don’t especially care about our success.

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“Atem nitzavim hayom,” the parsha begins. “You are standing today,” said Moshe Rabeinu to the Jewish nation, “all of you, in front of G-d.” The entire nation, regardless of age or career or social status, stood in front of G-d, making a covenant with Him, heavens and earth serving as the two witnesses. If we do the wrong thing, we will be punished for it, deeply and painfully. But if we return from the bad that we did, G-d will welcome us back with figurative open arms and redeem us from the exile. He’ll bring us back to our Holy Land, increase our population, make it easier for us to serve Him with love; the curses we bore while not following G-d’s plan will be inflicted onto our enemies and all who oppressed us. 

The entire nation was gathered together, the great with the not-so-great with the ugly with the bad, because the Torah is not in the heavens, nor across the seas. It’s not something so lofty and spiritual that only the greatest religious leaders among us are able to reach; it is a requirement for every Jew. You can think you’re dumb and incompetent and unable to fulfill very much, and yeah, this can be true, but even so, you are required to help uphold our side of the covenant, just as much as all the smart and competent and cool Jews are.

The topics mentioned in this week’s parsha are timely, more relevant this week than any other. Next week is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish year, wherein we accept G-d and crown Him as our King. The holiday isn’t just about the food, (although, let’s be real, Rosh Hashanah food slaps,) but about accepting responsibility. We’re warned with preemptive curses, consequences and disasters we’ll face if we abandon G-d and don’t follow His covenant, then bribed, almost, with blessings, a promise that we’ll be freed from exile as soon as we repent and return to Him. It’s heavy—and that’s because being Jewish is heavy. (I repeat—Jewish food slaps. There’s no way to get through holiday after holiday without racking up a few extra pounds on the way.)

Every so often, a parsha begins in the middle of a chapter. Parshat Nitzavim, starting in the ninth verse of Chapter 29, is one of them. It feels almost poetic; you don’t get your own beginning and rather have to start off where someone else left off. Correcting someone else’s mistakes, finishing someone else’s story. In a sense, it teaches us that beginnings are kind of overrated. That our beginnings are out of our control. We don’t decide where we come from, you know? We can’t pick our parents, or our day school, or how religious we’re raised, or any negative situations we are forced to go through early in life. All we can control is what’s next. One day a shift happens, and we become adults, and all of a sudden we’re responsible for what happens next in our lives. Maybe this is a fun little Easter egg G-d hid in every parsha that starts in the middle of another chapter. Maybe this is His way of telling us that the situations we are born into are not an integral part of our stories, and that what defines us is what we choose to do next.

This parsha, as mentioned earlier, is an intense one, to say the least. It’s one of the ones that makes me look away, sit back in my seat, take a bunch of shallow breaths, and freak out that I’m not doing enough. That I’m not serving G-d as well as I should be, that I’m not ready to accept G-d and His covenant wholly, that I’m not ready for all the responsibility that being a member of the Jewish nation entails.

Maybe, though, maybe that’s where the earlier thoughts come in. Maybe it’s okay that I’m not perfect, or I’m not serving G-d as well as I should be. Because we all start somewhere, and the point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to take the beginning we were born into, whichever beginning that may have been, and do good with it. Take your beginning, and be more than what you were.

So I’ll ignore where I was up until yesterday. What will I do to make my today more meaningful?

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