 | At some point (maybe many points), life teaches us that what we see depends on how we see. So it is with our perspective on life itself. Few of us go through life deeply inhabiting the ultimate truth of our own mortality. But once we do, the very limits of our lives can help imbue them with greater richness and meaning. If we let them. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Vayehi 5785 (2025)
This week's Torah portion is one of two named for life. Called Vayehi ("He lived"), this Torah portion ultimately leads to Jacob's death and the end of the Book of Genesis. The other Torah portion is Hayyei Sarah ("The Life of Sarah"), which begins with Sarah's death and burial.
It's telling that Torah's two portions named for life include a lot about death. We humans are wired to know that life is finite. And some of us will stop reading right here.
But please bear with me: this writing is about living, not dying.
The impulse to turn from our mortality is normal: nearly all of us do it. This avoidance is hard-wired. Life impels us to live, make our way, and filter out of day-to-day consciousness the certainty that someday we will not live. After all, if we spent our lives laser focused on our own mortality, we might never fully live.
Yet spirituality urges us to truly know our own mortality. The Psalmist recounts our length of days, then implores us (Psalms 90:12):
Vayehi 5785 (2025)
This week's Torah portion is one of two named for life. Called Vayehi ("He lived"), this Torah portion ultimately leads to Jacob's death and the end of the Book of Genesis. The other Torah portion is Hayyei Sarah ("The Life of Sarah"), which begins with Sarah's death and burial.
It's telling that Torah's two portions named for life include a lot about death. We humans are wired to know that life is finite. And some of us will stop reading right here.
But please bear with me: this writing is about living, not dying.
The impulse to turn from our mortality is normal: nearly all of us do it. This avoidance is hard-wired. Life impels us to live, make our way, and filter out of day-to-day consciousness the certainty that someday we will not live. After all, if we spent our lives laser focused on our own mortality, we might never fully live.
Yet spirituality urges us to truly know our own mortality. The Psalmist recounts our length of days, then implores us (Psalms 90:12):
| לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃ | Count our days, so we will be caused to know, and we will be brought to a heart of wisdom. |
What makes us count our days? Something shifts our focus. Maybe it's slow and subtle, or something sudden like an accident, illness or death itself. Either way, we are changed. As the medieval ibn Ezra taught, we become an inner "prophet" of our mortality (ibn Ezra, Ps. 90:12 [Hebrew only]). And in life's ordinary course, ideally it happens long before.
So it was with patriarch Jacob (renamed Israel) in this week's Torah portion.
Israel lived 17 years in Egypt under his son Joseph's care, then suddenly we read (Gen. 47:29): ויקרבו ימי-ישראל למות / Va-yikrevu y’mei-Yisrael lamut. “When the days approached for Israel to die" – not the man but his days, his sense of time, his sense of his time.
Torah doesn't say what happened, as if to underscore that "how" ultimately doesn't matter. What matters is the awareness. Nor does Torah say "when" – only that it happened before Jacob became ill "some time later" (Gen. 48:1). What matters is that we shift our perspective, ideally long before our final days.
At some point – maybe many points, because often we need to learn this lesson more than once – life teaches us that what we see depends on how we see. So it is with our perspective on life itself. Few of us deeply inhabit the ultimate truth of our own mortality. But once we see – really see, deeply, personally – that our lives will end, our lives are bound to change.
Immediately after his perspective change, Jacob underwent the steps that Jewish spirituality maps for what became the Aging to Sage-ing Movement (book, organization). After Jacob spoke his mortality awareness, he planned his own final arrangements (Gen. 47:29-31) then performed life review, speaking his sense of his life’s meaning (Gen. 48:3-4). Life review evoked an expanded awareness and lifted consciousness above routine.
Expanded consciousness, in turn, inclined Jacob to invoke angels and blessing (Gen. 48:16). From that place, he gifted his sons an ethical will (Gen. 49:1-28) – not a legal will bequeathing possessions but a download of values, our true legacy for our loved ones. (Here's a national news article about me teaching on ethical wills.)
Only after that did Jacob give final instructions (Gen. 49:29-32) and die (Gen. 49:33), launching his family's aninut, Judaism's pre-burial stage of grief (Gen. 50:1). Joseph made arrangements (Gen. 50:2-6), much as survivors make arrangements immediately after a death. After burial, the family entered aveilut, grief's next stage, with a seven-day shiva (Gen. 50:7-14).
Each is a step in a timeless journey. The point of it all isn't to die. The point of it all is to live. Truths can become clearer. Gratitude can become more palpable. Love can becomes more intimate. Relationships can become richer. Old wounds can heal.
It is living in the bright light of mortality that opens the Psalmist's "heart of wisdom." Only then can we truly make the most of our lives – not by hiding from our mortality but by harnessing it. It was Israel's perspective change that lifted his awareness above routine to transmit blessing for his beloveds and ultimately fulfill his calling to become a blessing.
So for him, so for us all.
So it was with patriarch Jacob (renamed Israel) in this week's Torah portion.
Israel lived 17 years in Egypt under his son Joseph's care, then suddenly we read (Gen. 47:29): ויקרבו ימי-ישראל למות / Va-yikrevu y’mei-Yisrael lamut. “When the days approached for Israel to die" – not the man but his days, his sense of time, his sense of his time.
Torah doesn't say what happened, as if to underscore that "how" ultimately doesn't matter. What matters is the awareness. Nor does Torah say "when" – only that it happened before Jacob became ill "some time later" (Gen. 48:1). What matters is that we shift our perspective, ideally long before our final days.
At some point – maybe many points, because often we need to learn this lesson more than once – life teaches us that what we see depends on how we see. So it is with our perspective on life itself. Few of us deeply inhabit the ultimate truth of our own mortality. But once we see – really see, deeply, personally – that our lives will end, our lives are bound to change.
Immediately after his perspective change, Jacob underwent the steps that Jewish spirituality maps for what became the Aging to Sage-ing Movement (book, organization). After Jacob spoke his mortality awareness, he planned his own final arrangements (Gen. 47:29-31) then performed life review, speaking his sense of his life’s meaning (Gen. 48:3-4). Life review evoked an expanded awareness and lifted consciousness above routine.
Expanded consciousness, in turn, inclined Jacob to invoke angels and blessing (Gen. 48:16). From that place, he gifted his sons an ethical will (Gen. 49:1-28) – not a legal will bequeathing possessions but a download of values, our true legacy for our loved ones. (Here's a national news article about me teaching on ethical wills.)
Only after that did Jacob give final instructions (Gen. 49:29-32) and die (Gen. 49:33), launching his family's aninut, Judaism's pre-burial stage of grief (Gen. 50:1). Joseph made arrangements (Gen. 50:2-6), much as survivors make arrangements immediately after a death. After burial, the family entered aveilut, grief's next stage, with a seven-day shiva (Gen. 50:7-14).
Each is a step in a timeless journey. The point of it all isn't to die. The point of it all is to live. Truths can become clearer. Gratitude can become more palpable. Love can becomes more intimate. Relationships can become richer. Old wounds can heal.
It is living in the bright light of mortality that opens the Psalmist's "heart of wisdom." Only then can we truly make the most of our lives – not by hiding from our mortality but by harnessing it. It was Israel's perspective change that lifted his awareness above routine to transmit blessing for his beloveds and ultimately fulfill his calling to become a blessing.
So for him, so for us all.
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