וַיְבָ֨רְכֵ֜ם בַּיּ֣וֹם הַהוּא֮ לֵאמוֹר֒ בְּךָ֗ יְבָרֵ֤ךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר יְשִֽׂמְךָ֣ אֱלֹהִ֔ים כְּאֶפְרַ֖יִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁ֑ה וַיָּ֥שֶׂם אֶת־אֶפְרַ֖יִם לִפְנֵ֥י מְנַשֶּֽׁה׃
[Jacob] blessed them that day, saying, “By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: may Elohim make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh. (Gen. 48.20)
Blessing one’s children has been a regular part of the erev Shabbat table ritual for generations: daughters by the Matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, and sons, not by the perhaps expected trio of Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but rather by Jacob’s grandsons by Joseph, Menashe and Efrayim.
Why? According to the modern scholarship, which picks up echoes preserved in very old midrash, the historical answer probably has something to do with ancient Israelite politics. For the People of Israel, though, performing this ritual throughout the ages demonstrates another kind of answer: that developed naturally through the cultural experience of the people.
When we look at the names Joseph gave his sons, it makes this blessing of our own children by those names curious, for two reasons: first, the meaning of the names (this translation by the scholar Everett Fox):
וַיִּקְרָ֥א יוֹסֵ֛ף אֶת־שֵׁ֥ם הַבְּכ֖וֹר מְנַשֶּׁ֑ה כִּֽי־נַשַּׁ֤נִי אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־כׇּל־עֲמָלִ֔י וְאֵ֖ת כׇּל־בֵּ֥ית אָבִֽי׃
Yosef called the name of the firstborn: Menashe/Who-Makes-Forgetting, meaning: Elohim has made-me-forget all my hardships and my family house. (Gen. 41.51)
וְאֵ֛ת שֵׁ֥ם הַשֵּׁנִ֖י קָרָ֣א אֶפְרָ֑יִם כִּֽי־הִפְרַ֥נִי אֱלֹהִ֖ים בְּאֶ֥רֶץ עׇנְיִֽי׃
And the name of the second he called: Efrayim/Abundantly Fruitful,
meaning: Elohim has made me bear fruit in the land of my affliction. (Gen 41.52)
Second, because the blessing is given in a subversion of birth order that students of the Torah know very well by now, as the younger, Efrayim, is mentioned before the older, Menashe.
One understanding we may derive here is that we bless our children to be fruitful, and to forget their past. This seems rather contrary to what we Jews take for granted, we who have ritualized memory from Kaddish to Kiddush to Pesakh.
Perhaps, though, we can understand that there is a tension between these two names: that fruitfulness requires memory, but making one’s own way in the world requires distance from all that one remembers, lest one become only an echo of what has come before.
Efrayim and Menashe are the first of Israel to be born and raised outside the land of their people. The fact that they do not disappear, but become part of the story of the tribes of Israel, can be seen as a victory over the forgetfulness of Diaspora distance.
Yet forgetting seems out of place here, unless what we are meant to bless here is the necessity of forgetting what is better lost to time so that we can remember what we need to keep. Loss is, after all, human; how do we know, though, what we are meant to let go of? What should we be fighting with all our will to hold on to? How can loss lead to fruitfulness?
A midrashic tradition preserves a frightening warning regarding the stakes of this question in the story of the premature Exodus of the Efrayimites:
Ganun, one of the grandchildren of Efrayim, came and said, “the Holy Blessed One has been revealed to me, to lead you out of Egypt.” The children of Efrayim…took their wives and their sons, and they went forth from Egypt. The Egyptians pursued after them, and slew of them 200,000. – Pirke dRabi Eliezer 48.4
At the wrong time, even the right idea is wrong. A blessing is no blessing if it brings about a curse. This is how we know that the destruction of Gaza and the Jewish violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is wrong. The Jews involved insist that they are seeking the blessing of being in the land which is our historical homeland, but the horrifying ongoing slaughter of innocents declares clearly that this “right idea” is terribly wrong.
But the land of the West Bank was the land promised to the Patriarchs; are we supposed to forget them, and give up Hebron, Shekhem, Beer Sheva? Perhaps the answer is yes. Perhaps we bless our children by Efrayim and Menashe instead of by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for that very reason?
Our entire ethical tradition warns us that following leadership which is not righteous will lead to ruin. Allowing that which is considered ethically wrong by our own Jewish tradition will never bring us to a righteous place. צדק צדק תרדוף Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, “justice, justice you must pursue” (Deut. 18.16) is understood by our Sages to mean that we must have just means and just ends, and that ends do not in themselves justify means.
Efrayim and Menashe, fruitfulness and forgetting, go hand in hand. We are only blessed when we recognize and respect the message they can only convey together.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 