A Mixed Blessing
As we say goodbye to 2025, we also prepare to close the book on Bereishit / Genesis. This first book of the Torah contains within it the seeds for all things bright and beautiful, and all things evil crouching menacingly at the door. In other words, it is about the human condition. Ultimately, the story focuses on the family of Abraham and Sarah over four generations, recording faith and courage but also sorrow and strife.
Again and again the key family characteristic seems to be the necessity of separation. Until finally, at the very end of the book, the family comes back together and forms the nucleus of what Jewish peoplehood means for millennia afterwards. We are composed of tribes with different temperaments and priorities, and still each “tribe” of Jews is connected - by fate as well as by choice.
There is an aphorism in classic Jewish sources that contains the tiniest of variations:
Kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh - All of [the people] Israel are arevim for each other. Kol yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh - All of [the people] Israel are arevim with each other.
What is this arevim? And who cares what preposition we use?
In context, to be arev means to be responsible for each other (morally), or a guarantor for each other (as when co-signing a loan). But the root arev can also mean mixture (by the way, this is the origin of the Hebrew word for evening, erev, when light and dark mix).
Contemporary teacher Rabbi Reuben M. Rudman explored the significance of that slight variation in meaning, suggesting that “when la-zeh is used, it implies that the members of Klal Yisrael are responsible for each other. Each person is a separate entity who is expected to be a guarantor for the other members of the klal. When ba-zeh is used, it implies that all Jews are “mixed” together to form a single entity known as Klal Yisrael; what each person does affects the destiny of the entire nation.”
The book of Genesis is in part a meditation on the concept of arevut, responsibility for each other, and the peculiar suffering of unhappy entanglement. There are times when going your own way feels like a blessing, rather than enduring the friction of forced connection. But Genesis ends with a trajectory that honors the choice to remain entangled.
First, Judah explicitly names himself as an arev, a guarantor, for his brother Benjamin (Genesis 44:32), after Joseph as the Egyptian official frames Benjamin and prepares to imprison him. Judah demonstrates the concern and responsibility that so few characters have been willing to take upon themselves, prompting Joseph to reveal himself and reunite with his family.
And then, near the end of the story and near the end of Jacob’s life, he asks his son Joseph to bring Jacob’s grandsons Menasheh and Ephraim so he can bless them. Jacob deliberately crosses his arms, entangling them, so that the younger child gets the right hand (a sign of privilege usually reserved for the oldest). Despite Joseph’s protest, Jacob affirms his choice. Then “he blessed them that day, saying, ‘By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: God make you like Ephraim and Menasheh.’ Thus he put Ephraim before Menasheh” (Genesis 48:20).
To this day, Jewish parents may bless their children with that language: May God make you like Ephraim and Menasheh. I’ve always felt confused by this choice, because we know next to nothing about them! Except this: The blessing they received included a complicated entanglement. And the blessing they offer us, through the lack of any stories about them fighting, is the possibility of a close and loving relationship nonetheless.
The Chassidic master Noam Elimelech taught yet a third interpretation of the word arev, which has the additional meaning of “sweetness”. And so, “each person of Israel sweetens and makes pleasant one for the other.”
Although it is not a traditional secular New Year’s Greeting, I’ll say it anyway: May you have a sweet new year.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
