Genesis How to Live Amidst Alienation and Exile

Since the US election two months ago, and over the course of the devastating war in Israel and Gaza, I have been plagued with a feeling of alienation. In both America and Israel, the gap between the way the world is and the way I believe it should be grows ever wider. And, despite significant effort on my part, I don’t know how to fix things—how to bridge the ideological, social, and spiritual divides that make progress so elusive.

This state of affairs may last for a long time. So I find myself asking the questions: “When the world feels upside down, what is the right way to live? Can we still find joy in a world of despair?”

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Veyechi, and its commentaries offer some compelling answers.

The parashah describes the end of Jacob’s life as he settles in the land of Egypt. After living his adult life in the land of his ancestors, Jacob spends his final days in Egypt, reunited with Joseph and his family in peace.

The parashah opens, “Vayechi Ya’akov b’eretz Mitzrayim…”

And Jacob lived (vayechi) in the land of Egypt for seventeen years, and Jacob’s days, the years of his life, were a hundred and forty seven years. (Genesis 49:28)

The commentators question the word “Vayechi,” as in “Jacob lived in the land of Egypt.” We might expect the text to say, “Vayehi Ya’akov b’eretz mitzrayim / And Jacob was in the land of Egypt,” which is how the Torah describes most of the other sojourns of our ancestors. Why use the verb lechayot (to live) here?

In order to explore this question, I want to share a commentary by the Sfat Emet, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger, the 19th Century Polish Chassidic master, as translated by Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler. Rabbi Leib Smokler’s annotations on her translation are marked in brackets in standard font, and my annotations are marked in brackets and also italicized and starred.

The Torah could have said “And Jacob was in Egypt…” [instead of Vayechi … “And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt”].

The essence of this specific addition was the aspect of life that was possible [for Jacob] even in the land of Egypt [where he lived in physical galut or exile from the Holy Land, as a ger, a foreigner].*

The word ger [stranger or foreigner]* is related to “maaleh gera” [the term from kashrut meaning chewing the cud, referring to an animal that brings its food up more than once].

A person who is called a ger is also one who elevates him/herself.

The ger finds a point of holiness that was lodged among the nations…

This also relates to the exile in Egypt about which it is said, “For your children will be strangers [gerim],* etc.” [Genesis 15:13], for the meaning of this was to extract the point of holiness that was lodged in Egypt.

As the Sfat Emet teaches, the Torah uses the word vayechi specifically to point out that life was possible even in Egypt, outside of the land of Israel, where Jacob is a stranger or “ger.” Using a play on word roots, the Sfat Emet asserts that the ger (stranger or foreigner) is one who elevates him/herself, like a cow brings up its food more than once by chewing its cud—gera.

He argues that, like the cow lifting up its cud, the purpose of living as a ger is to lift up the sparks of holiness lodged in galut, in exile outside of the Land of Israel. For the rabbis, being in galut outside of Israel is more broken than existence within the Land of Israel. Precisely for this reason, it is in galut that we have the greatest opportunity to unearth a hidden holy shard and reintegrate it with God, thus participating in tikkun olam, the cosmic repair of the world.

In other words, Jacob lives most fully in the land of Egypt as a ger, because it is in galut (exile) outside of the Land of Israel that he can find and heal what’s broken.

In Egypt, distanced from the pain of Jacob’s family struggles—with his brother Esav, his father-in-law Lavan, and his embattled children—Jacob stops chasing after blessings, and starts giving them. In this new place, even in galut outside of Land of Israel, Jacob is able to live fully because he is able to connect with the Source of Life.

In her 2015 article, “From Alienation to Integration: Learning to Live,” Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler brilliantly interprets the Sfat Emet,

As the book of Breishit ends and we head toward Shemot, the book which details Jewish captivity in Egypt, …[the Torah] endows us with a spiritual charge in perpetuity: to learn how to be gerim so that we too might learn to live with awareness and sacred vitality wherever we might find ourselves.

Rabbi Leib Smokler and the Sfat Emet teach us that even in hard places, and davka (specifically) in hard places, it is up to us to find and elevate what is holy.

In this reading, Jacob transforms his physical galut from the Land into an opportunity for spiritual and emotional healing, and as Rabbi Leib Smokler argues, “renders Egypt too [as] a place for God and for ultimate redemption.”

Yet, even for those of us whose challenge is not physical distance from the Land, but rather is a spiritual and emotional galut from our core notions of what our countries should be, I believe the message still holds.

Wherever we are, we have an opportunity to become a channel for holiness and healing, both in our communities and in the cosmos.

In this historical moment, I offer two invitations for how we might seize this opportunity for holy healing:

When we witness troubling governmental actions, what if we searched for opportunities for kindness, generosity, and solidarity? What if, in the face of adversity, we hug our children, donate to a legal aid fund, or show up to a community meeting to be there for our neighbors?

What if each week, we looked to the people in our lives and offered someone a blessing—a genuine prayer or hope for healing and thriving?

In this way, I hope this time might allow us to live fully—lechayot, to make our lives a channel between this brokenness and a better time to come.

Rabbi Margie Klein-Ronkin ’11 serves as Executive Director of the Essex County Community Organization (ECCO), a multi-faith network that unites people across lines of difference to address the root causes of injustice. By centering the voices of those in pain, ECCO helps community members become leaders who organize for policy change, and draw on our sacred traditions to place human dignity at the center of public consciousness. A graduate of Yale, Margie is the founder of Kavod Boston, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial community led by young Jews, committed to each other and to building a liberated world for all people. Co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (Jewish Lights), Rabbi Margie has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, CNN, and Newsweek for her faith-based social justice work, and was invited to the White House for her leadership.

Explore Graduate Programs Support Our Work Tamid Adult Learning Classes