By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Parshas Vayechi brings to a close Sefer Bereishis, the account of the creation of the world and the formation of our people. It is not merely the end of a sefer, but the conclusion of a foundational era, the period in which the avos and imahos forged the spiritual DNA of Klal Yisroel. From Adam and Chava, through Noach and his descendants, and onward to Avrohom, Yitzchok, and Yaakov, Sefer Bereishis is the blueprint for Jewish existence in every generation.
This week, the circle is closed. Yaakov Avinu, the last of the avos, grows old in exile. He gathers his children, gives them brachos that echo through eternity, and prepares for his passing. His final request is that he be buried in Me’oras Hamachpeilah, in Chevron, alongside Avrohom and Yitzchok. With that request, and with his passing, the era of the avos comes to an end and the long, painful chapter of Jewish exile begins.
Yet, the Torah introduces this final parsha with a word that seems, at first glance, jarringly out of place: “Vayechi — And he lived.”
Why does the Torah describe Yaakov’s years in Mitzrayim — a foreign land, steeped in immorality and destined to become the crucible of our suffering — as life? Why is golus framed not as decline, but as vitality?
The Torah does not waste words. When it says vayechi, it is teaching us something essential about how a Jew lives — and survives — in golus.
Meforshim raise an additional question. When the Torah records the lifespan of Avrohom or Yitzchok, it gives a single number, a total. With Yaakov, the Torah does something different. It tells us that he lived seventeen years in Mitzrayim. Why isolate that period? Why highlight those specific years?
The answer given by Chazal is striking: Those years were the best years of Yaakov’s life.
Yaakov’s life had been one of unrelenting struggle. Even before birth, Eisov sought to destroy him. He was forced to flee his parents’ home, suffered under Lovon’s deception for twenty years, and endured the death of Rochel Imeinu in childbirth. He experienced anguish at the actions of Shimon and Levi, heartbreak at the sale of Yosef, and more than two decades of grief, believing that his beloved son was dead.
Only after twenty-two years of mourning did Yaakov learn that Yosef was alive, and not merely alive, but ruling over Mitzrayim. At that moment, the Torah tells us, “Vatechi ruach Yaakov avihem — And Yaakov’s spirit came back to life.” His ruach hakodesh returned. He immediately set out to join Yosef.
Before descending to Mitzrayim, Yaakov stopped in Be’er Sheva. There, Hakadosh Boruch Hu appeared to him and reassured him not to fear the descent. Hashem promised that Yaakov’s descendants would become a great nation there, that He would go down with Yaakov, and that He would ultimately bring his children back home.
Yaakov understood what this meant. He knew that his journey to Mitzrayim would trigger the fulfillment of the gezeirah foretold to Avrohom: that his descendants would be strangers in a land not their own. He knew that golus was beginning. Yet, he went anyway.
Why?
Because Yosef was there, and because at times, life demands that we move forward even when we know that the road ahead will be difficult. As long as we remain tethered to Hashem and loyal to the truth, we can succeed and flourish.
The Torah then tells us that Yaakov lived in Mitzrayim for seventeen years — years so elevated that Chazal describe them as mei’ein Olam Haba, a taste of the World to Come (Tanna Devei Eliyohu, Perek 5).
How could exile feel like Olam Haba?
Yaakov resided in Goshen, a semi-autonomous region where his family could live together. What greater joy exists than living with one’s children and grandchildren, watching them grow, guiding them, and learning with them daily? Yaakov sent Yehudah ahead to establish batei medrash, ensuring that Torah would be the axis around which Jewish life revolved. Goshen became a spiritual enclave, insulated from the decadence and corruption of Mitzrayim.
For seventeen years, Yaakov lived surrounded by Torah, family, and purpose. During those years, Hashem spoke to him again. The Shechinah, which had departed during his years of anguish, returned.
That is why the Torah says vayechi. Because there he began living again on a higher level.
Yaakov Avinu was the av of golus. He was the first Jew to live long-term outside Eretz Yisroel, and in doing so, he taught us how to live in exile without being consumed by it.
When Yaakov bowed to Yosef, Chazal tell us that he was not merely honoring political power. He was acknowledging spiritual heroism. Hu Yosef she’omeid betzidko. Despite everything he had been through and despite all those years he spent living alone in a terribly immoral country, Yosef remained Yosef. He stayed righteous.
Yaakov recognized the magnitude of Yosef’s accomplishment. Yosef had not grown up in Yaakov’s home. He had been thrust into the moral cesspool of Mitzrayim, surrounded by temptation, isolation, and power, and he emerged unscathed. He built a beautiful Jewish home in golus. He raised children who were worthy of becoming shevotim.
This recognition was not incidental. It was pedagogical.
Yaakov Avinu’s guidance to his children — and to all future generations — was to create yeshivos, batei medrash, and schools where Torah and avodah anchor life; to build homes where shemiras hamitzvos and middos tovos are nurtured; and a family life that cultivates emunah and bitachon amidst the trials of golus.
Yaakov was teaching future generations how to look at children and students: not only at where they are, but at what they are contending with. He was modeling appreciation for effort, not just outcome. He was showing that success in golus requires a different kind of strength, and that those who remain faithful under such pressure deserve admiration.
Just as Yaakov Avinu ensured that his family would flourish spiritually despite the enticements and moral challenges of Mitzrayim, so must we equip our generation to thrive amid the pressures of the modern golus with love, discipline, guidance, and example.
It is difficult to be young. Young people today face relentless schedules, intense academic and social pressures, and nisyonos that prior generations never imagined. Days begin early and end late. Expectations are high. Failures are magnified. And all of this unfolds in the midst of a culture that actively undermines restraint, modesty, and commitment.
Yet, boruch Hashem, our young people want to succeed. They want to grow. They want to do the right thing.
Since Adam and Chava, temptation has been ever-present. Overcoming the yeitzer hara has never been easy. But adults derive strength from Torah, mussar, and years of experience. Children and adolescents cannot do it alone. They need guidance — loving, patient, consistent guidance from those who came before them.
This is chinuch.
Chinuch is not indoctrination. It is transmission — transmitting our mesorah in a way that the next generation can understand, internalize, and cherish. We begin when children are young, explaining mitzvos lovingly, modeling behavior, and setting expectations that are firm but humane.
Golus complicates everything, including chinuch. The distractions are louder. The influences are more aggressive. The line between inside and outside is increasingly porous. Keeping children focused on Torah and Yiddishkeit requires intention and attention.
This week, Rav Yaakov Bender came out with a book on chinuch whose title sums up our challenge as parents and mechanchim: Chinuch with Geshmak. In order to effectively inculcate our children with the truth of Torah, we have to do it with geshmak, with happiness and the joy of purpose.
The novi Micha tells us, “Titein emes l’Yaakov.” Truth was Yaakov’s defining trait. Emes anchored him through suffering and sustained him through prosperity. It was emes — clarity about Hashem’s role in the world — that allowed Yaakov to endure tragedy without despair and success without assimilation.
This lesson is more urgent today than at any time in recent memory.
We live in a world of illusion — the illusion of control, permanence, and acceptance. Jews have achieved unprecedented comfort in golus, particularly in the United States. We have wealth, influence, political access, and religious freedom. And yet, beneath the surface, something is cracking.
Anti-Semitism is surging, not in whispers, but openly. Synagogues are vandalized. Jewish students are harassed on college campuses. Jews are assaulted in the streets for wearing yarmulkas. Protesters chant for intifada in Western capitals. Terror apologists march freely while police stand aside.
And many Jews are stunned. How could this happen? We thought we belonged.
Yaakov teaches us that golus can be livable, even productive, but only if we never forget that it is golus. We have seen the success of that path throughout the ages and until this very day.
The Haggadah tells us, “Vayogor shom — And Yaakov sojourned there.” He did not settle. The Maharal and the Vilna Gaon explain that because Yaakov never sought permanence in Mitzrayim, his descendants merited redemption. Golus is survivable only when we remember that it is temporary.
Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin writes that as long as the Jews remained clustered in Goshen, the Mitzriyim left them alone. It was only after Yaakov’s passing, when the Jews began spreading out, becoming comfortable and assimilating, that trouble began. “Vayokom melech chadash.” Anti-Semitism followed assimilation like clockwork.
This pattern has been repeated throughout history.
The Netziv writes that when Jews maintain separation, spiritually and culturally, hostility subsides. When we blur boundaries, resentment grows.
We see this unfolding before our eyes.
Assimilation has reached unprecedented levels. Today, nearly three out of every four Jews marrying in the United States are marrying non-Jews. Many Jews have hitched their hopes to political movements that are openly hostile to Jewish values and Jewish survival.
For decades, American Jews felt safe. The United States was Israel’s staunchest ally. That began to erode under President Obama, continued during the Biden years, and has metastasized into open hostility among large segments of the Democratic Party.
President Trump reversed that trend during his first administration. He stood by Israel publicly and privately, recognized Yerushalayim, supported Israeli sovereignty, and treated Prime Minister Netanyahu as a partner. Many Jews felt secure with Trump in the White House, believing his friendship was genuine, because his actions proved it. He has continued to be a good friend to Israel in his second administration, as he demonstrated again this week at his meeting with Binyomin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago.
Yet now, anti-Semitism has found a foothold on the Right as well as the Left, and hostility toward Jews and Israel is becoming accepted in elite circles.
We live in an era of unprecedented Jewish comfort in the West — and unprecedented Jewish vulnerability. Anti-Semitism is no longer whispered. It is shouted through megaphones in public thoroughfares, shopping malls, and college campuses. Jews are assaulted in broad daylight. Jewish institutions are vandalized, firebombed, and require armed guards. Politicians issue statements. Police cite “free speech.” Prosecutors decline charges. The message is heard clearly by those who hate us: proceed.
Conspiracy theories fester. Crude stereotypes resurface. Figures with large followings traffic in nonsense about Jewish power and loyalty. Disturbingly, these voices are tolerated, and even defended.
The vice president, J.D. Vance, a man who has aligned himself with at least one of the loudest offenders, has made statements that should give Jews pause. His rhetoric, at times careless and at times troubling, raises serious questions about how he would wield power if elevated further. Silence in the face of anti-Semitism is not neutrality. It is complicity.
This is not about parties. It is about reality.
Yaakov teaches us that no government, no culture, and no era of prosperity exempts us from vigilance. Golus can be comfortable, but it is never permanent.
The path forward is the one Yaakov charted in Goshen: Torah-centered living, strong communal institutions, and moral clarity.
Three times a day, as we conclude Shemoneh Esrei, we ask, “P’sach libi b’Sorasecha — Open my heart to Your Torah.” Then we ask Hashem to thwart the plans of our enemies: “Vechol hachoshevim alai ra’ah meheirah hofeir atzosom vekalkel machashavtom.” These are not separate requests. They are cause and effect. When we cling to Torah and mitzvos, Hashem is there for us, regardless of where we are.
May we merit to follow in the path of Yaakov, living full Torah lives and enjoying much nachas, and may we merit to soon experience the end of golus with the geulah sheleimah.
