“What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see."
-Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton (2015)
My father-in-law, of blessed memory, was a complicated person. And complicated people, as many of us know, tend to leave a complicated legacy in their wake. This man had a personality the size of Texas, and he could fill any room he entered with song, funny stories, or wall-rattling rants. To give you just a taste: he dedicated much of his adult life to honoring World War II veterans, working with the Army Air Force Round Table in Cheshire and driving a vintage war jeep down Route 10 in countless parades and ceremonies. On July 4th, he often delivered an impassioned reading of Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech on the Cheshire Green, and he once improvised a 10-minute-long imagined monologue of a Civil War soldier next to the man’s tombstone as part of the “Spirits Alive” Halloween event. He was a Mason, a race car driver, a pilot, a loving grandfather, an actor, a swing dancer, and a singer who never missed the opportunity to perform. When I close my eyes, I can still picture him standing by the piano at the now-defunct Jake’s Tavern in Wallingford, giving Frank Sinatra a run for his money as he crooned and belted his way through showstoppers like “That’s Life” and “I Did It My Way.” Exhilarating.
Being human, however, my father-in-law had his share of flaws, and these occasionally appeared with the same flare and intensity as his positive qualities. So, you can imagine that the impression he left on the world before passing away in 2018 was… messy.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, brings the book of Genesis to a close with another complicated legacy, this one foundational to our shared family story. Jacob, on his deathbed, chooses to bless Joseph’s younger son first over his older son, upending the natural order of things for reasons that are never clarified. Jacob then addresses his own sons, bestowing on each of them what the Torah calls blessings but the post-Freudian crowd can easily identify as a series of future complexes. Using convoluted and sometimes confounding metaphors, Jacob’s last words to his sons are a mixture of pride, disparagement, and perhaps even thinly veiled hatred for some as he delivers a series of opinions and predictions that have left generations of scholars scratching their heads.
Judah will cleanse his robe in the blood of grapes? Because of their violent reaction to the rape of Dinah, Simeon and Levi will be scattered in Israel? Issachar will be subjected to forced labor? Dan will be a snake on the road? Benjamin is a wolf that rends, in the morning devouring the booty? What are we to make of this crazy (yet highly colorful and entertaining!) list of “blessings”?
Perhaps we can find in this portion an important truth about human nature: legacies are rarely simple, nor are they ever perfect. Jacob’s so-called blessings reflect the unresolved messiness of his relationships with his sons, recalling moments of raw humanity that are woven throughout the larger narrative of Genesis. Israel’s legacy is a messy one, and that imperfection is part of our shared story as well as the foundation of our growth.
In the end, the most meaningful legacies challenge us to wrestle with their complexity. They ask us to sift through contradictions, cherish the good, learn from the bad, and carry forward something that makes us better. A life doesn’t need to be perfect to be unforgettable—or to shape the people who carry its legacy forward. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give our own legacies is to embrace their imperfection? After all, perfection makes for a boring story, and who wants to read that book?
Shabbat Shalom!
Rebecca Abbate, flawed human extraordinaire
