Leave Behind Your Best
Parashat Vayechi, Genesis 47:28–50:26
By Rabbi Stuart Dauermann
Children don’t miss a beat. They observe things about us we don’t see in ourselves, in the process being imprinted with both the good and the bad. This is unavoidable. And yes, this can be troubling.
This week’s parasha reminds us all is not lost. Not only do children observe us in all our messy glory, we ourselves may choose to impress upon them the best we have learned in life. We can leave to friends and family the best we know, our purest gold.
Ya’akov does this, while bestowing a blessing on his grandsons, Efraim and Manasseh. David H. Stern beautifully paraphrases the intent of Torah’s words in B’reisheet/Genesis 48:16, where Ya’akov says of his grandsons, “May they remember who I am and what I stand for, and likewise my fathers Avraham and Yitz'chak, who they were and what they stood for.”
In Jewish terms, what Ya’akov is doing here is leaving a tzava’ah, commonly termed “an ethical will.” In such a statement, whether in person, in writing, on video, or digitally, one records for one’s family and friends a record of what we have learned about life with God, and our weightiest values, admonishing them to remember in their living the best lessons from our life.
It is one thing to leave a will that specifies who gets the jewelry after we are gone. But in a tzva’ah one passes on treasures more lasting and precious than these.
The tzva’ah is a penetrating form of intergenerational mentoring, where we function as elders in our social system. In From Age-ing to Sage-ing, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller highlight this towering intergenerational role in which “elders come to terms with their mortality, harvest the wisdom of their years, and transmit a legacy to future generations. Serving as mentors, they pass on the distilled essence of their life experience to others. The joy of passing on wisdom to younger people not only seeds the future, but crowns an elder’s life with worth and nobility.”
Although the task may sound morbid to some, crafting a tzava’ah is an excellent way of shaping a personal vision statement. It is a way of reminding yourself of what your life is about when you are at your best. The process is good for you, and even better for others. So have at it! Here are some bases to be covered:
Shalom Bayit and Shalom Mishpacha (peace within the family). Many of us know how ugly things can get when a loved one passes on. Often this involves fights over property, but it may also involve long-simmering issues that come to the surface under the stress of losing a peace-keeping loved one. In making a tzava’ah, it is wise to anticipate such tensions, to circumvent needless competition, and to admonish loved ones to walk in peace with each other. This is a time to use one’s personal gravitas to hold family members accountable for respecting your wishes and to enhance the honor of the family.
Final Arrangements. This includes everything pertaining to your passing, whether you want a Do Not Resuscitate order, the disposition of your remains, whether you wish to donate your organs, who you want officiating at your funeral and burial, the people you especially want there, what you may wish to be said at your funeral and burial, the how and where of the disposition of your body, the nature and location of the meal after your funeral, instructions about shiva and shloshim (how you wish your family to observe the week and the month after your passing), what you want on your tombstone, and any arrangements pertaining to your passing from this world to the next. These kinds of arrangements are not only for your satisfaction; they also relieve your loved ones of the task of making all these decisions themselves, at a time when they are not at their best.
Emotional and Interpersonal Matters. Some people and some relational issues may warrant being directly addressed. This is especially true of people with whom you sense or know you have unfinished business, or unresolved relational matters. In crafting a tzava’ah you may wish to address these matters in a publicly read document, or, more likely, in private communications, whether videos, recordings, or written materials. Here is where you can do so much good and remove overshadowing clouds from the people and generations that succeed you.
Your values and your faith. Here you will want to speak about your relationship with God in a manner that will comfort, instruct, encourage, and perhaps gently challenge those who survive you. What have you learned from and about God that you would want to stress and pass on to those you love? And what of your values? What have you learned is most important in life? What is worth remembering and serving, worthy of sacrifice? And what is not worth living for? What have you learned from others past and present that you want to highlight and see perpetuated?
As with Ya’akov blessing his grandsons, take time so that people might remember who you were and what you stood for, and what you learned from others that should not pass from human life and memory.
This is what Paul did with Timothy, as recorded in 2 Timothy chapter 4, part of Paul’s tzva’ah:
I solemnly charge you before God and the Messiah Yeshua, who will judge the living and the dead when he appears and establishes his Kingdom: proclaim the Word! Be on hand with it whether the time seems right or not. Convict, censure and exhort with unfailing patience and with teaching.
For the time is coming when people will not have patience for sound teaching, but will cater to their passions and gather around themselves teachers who say whatever their ears itch to hear. Yes, they will stop listening to the truth, but will turn aside to follow myths.
But you, remain steady in every situation, endure suffering, do the work that a proclaimer of the Good News should, and do everything your service to God requires.
For as for me, I am already being poured out on the altar; yes, the time for my departure has arrived. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. All that awaits me now is the crown of righteousness which the Lord, “the Righteous Judge,” will award to me on that Day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for him to appear.
That was Paul’s tzava’ah to Timothy. What is yours to those you love?