End of the Road

“…And Yaakov’s days, the years of his life, were a hundred forty-seven years.” (Bereishis 47:28)

The Torah is divided into paragraph-like passages, called parshiyos, which are separated by spaces. The word “Vayechi” begins a new parshah, yet there’s no space between the last word of Vayigash and the first word of Vayechi, thus creating a “closed-off” parshah.

Rashi explains that toward the end of his life, when Yaakov wished to reveal the end of the final galus to his sons, the answer was closed off, hidden from him. (Rav Moshe Wolfson)

It must have been the road that jogged my memory. I was driving along a back road that twisted through trees laden with autumn leaves in oranges, yellows, and browns. I was heading with my boys to a yishuv behind Yerushalayim to buy a catfish, fish food, and other aquarium necessities. The boys were chattering, and I was mentally calculating how much time I could allow them to enjoy the huge tanks of fish in the store before we had to get back for supper.

Rabbeinu Bechaye says that Yaakov looked at the names of the Shevatim and saw that the letters ches and tes were absent. If there was no chet — sin, among his children, he could reveal the time of the Geulah. However, Yaakov then saw that there was no kuf or tzaddik either, and he concluded that the keitz — the end — couldn’t be revealed.

A person’s name contains his mission in This World. The mission of the Shevatim was not to know the keitz; nothing would be accomplished by knowing when the galus will end.

As I slowed to a curve in the road, my mind suddenly jumped to another road, lined with similar russet-colored colorful trees, a road I’d traveled daily years ago, to and from my teaching job in Baltimore. Bais Yaakov’s stately campus was a good 20-minute drive along a back road that curved gracefully through a dense forest where the seasons were carved in the leafy archways above.

At 23, in those days, I was considered an Older Single. I was happy and busy with my job, friends, family, and a myriad of extra activities. I’d just joined a sign language course, was doing kiruv in John Hopkins University, and all was bright that lovely autumn day.

But as I turned onto that winding road, for a moment the future seemed bleak, on a path of dating that would never end. I imagined one curve winding its way to another, and as I rounded it, I’d be faced with yet a third, the road forever curving, sometime gracefully, sometimes sharply, but never would I reach its end.