Parshas Vayechi: Happy New Year
It’s December 31st morning, and the calendar feels louder than usual.
Not because something major changes at midnight, but because we as a society have decided that it matters.
It is the last day of the secular year.
Charidy campaigns are everywhere, offering one more tax-deductible donation,
and that familiar inner voice says, “go on… one last sweet treat before the diet starts tomorrow.”
Vayechi opens the same way, standing at the edge of an ending.
Yaakov is nearing his final moments, but the Torah never says he died.
It says:
וַיְחִי — and he lived.
He is still alive in the moment.
His days are drawing near, so he calls Yosef close. Not to say goodbye, but to say what still needs to be said.
The Gemara even says it:
“יעקב אבינו לא מת” — Yaakov never truly died (Taanis 5b).
Not because his body remained, but because his life kept moving through the people who carried it.
If his children are still living what he stood for, then so is he.
Vayechi is not an ending. It is continuity made visible.
The question is no longer what happens to Yaakov.
The question becomes what happens to us with what he left.
And if the question is how a person lives on, Vayechi answers simply:
Say what needs to be said to the people who will continue the story.
Not speeches. Not perfection. Just clarity that can be carried forward.
Starting With the Future
Because continuity is not abstract.Before Yaakov turns to his sons, he blesses his grandchildren, Menashe and Efraim.
The continuation of the continuation.
Where legacy shows its real strength, not in memory but in transmission, especially to those who grew up in a different house.
Yosef positions them the expected way: older on the right, younger on the left.
Respectful. Traditional. Familiar.
Yaakov looks at them and crosses his hands.
He does not move the boys.
He moves himself.
Not because Ephraim is better.
Not because Menashe is being displaced.
Not because birth order is meaningless.
Because blessing should fit the child.
A lesson he carried from his youth, from the days when blessings were taken instead of given.
Not stolen out of greed. Taken because something true needed to happen before the world was ready to accept it.
Rivka taught him that sometimes a blessing does not wait for the proper seating chart.
I used to think, like Yosef, that blessing meant getting everyone else to line up correctly.
A lot of this past year has been relearning that.
Not reinventing myself. Just adjusting how I show up.
Less performance, more presence.
Less trying to position everyone “correctly” and more noticing who the people and moments in front of me actually are.
Vayechi is giving Torah language to work I have already begun.
Then the Present
Only after blessing the next generation does Yaakov turn to his own children.
He knows he won't be there anymore to fix their mistakes or celebrate their victories.
So he blesses what is real: their strengths and their weaknesses, not what he once wished for or what denial tried to call perfect.
Yaakov’s blessings are not compliments. They are clarity.
The world doesn't change when we pretend. It changes when we tell the truth with love.
Reuven — good heart, learning steadiness.
Shimon — fierce spirit that needs gentleness to avoid harm.
Levi — intensity that becomes holy when given purpose.
Yehudah — leadership built on accountability, not ego.
Dan — judgment that needs compassion to stay human.
Naftali — movement asking for direction, not escape.
Gad — strength choosing what is worth fighting for.
Asher — nourishment without performance.
Yissachar — quiet work of Torah that carries weight.
Zevulun — holiness that travels into the world.
Yosef — soft where life tried to harden him.
Binyamin — beloved without earning or proving it.
He does not correct them.
He does not pretend.
He blesses what is real.
If blessing means seeing someone clearly, then the next question is simple:
What kind of atmosphere can hold a truth like that?
Blessing cannot land in stale air.
It needs a world that can breathe.
11 Teves — Purifying the Air
Today’s Hayom Yom (11 Teves) says it clearly:
“Man needs air to live. Speak words of Torah wherever you are. They purify the air.”
Not metaphor. Reality.
I remember learning this Hayom Yom for the first time as an eight-year-old. Third grade, Oholei Torah.
Our teacher took us for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge that morning.
We said the 12 pesukim and other pieces of Torah the whole way.
Letting Torah live in the open air.
Giving the world something holy to breathe, wherever the wind could carry it.
When we got back to school, the secretary found me and told me my mother had just given birth. I had a new baby sister.
Of course I never thought it was cause and effect. The connection simply stayed with me.
When you purify the air, there is more room for life to grow.
But Torah in the street only works if the home can receive it.If not, holiness leaks before it lands.
When the Air Is Not Breathable
The Hayom Yom emphasizes public spaces, like it trusts the home to be breathable.
But what if it isn’t?
A man can go to shul for Maariv, stay for a shiur, farbreng ideas of Chassidus with a friend after, sing along to a niggun the whole way home,
and walk into a house where his spouse is drowning from handling dinner, homework, baths, and bedtime alone.
A woman can be doing her own holy work.
Lighting Shabbos candles early, learning Chitas every day or going to a class a couple times a week,
showing up for everyone outside the home, and still miss what is happening right in front of her.
A spouse needing partnership. Children needing presence, not perfection.
Nobody acting maliciously. Nothing evil going on. Just unexamined.
Holy work in one direction does not replace presence in another.
Public Torah matters.
But if the home air is heavy, where will that Torah land?
Purifying the air is not just about saying Torah louder.
It is about making sure there is oxygen where Torah is supposed to return to.
Sometimes a pasuk in public purifies a street.
Sometimes washing dishes purifies a home.
Presence in the home and presence in the world are both Avodas Hashem.
Remove one and the other cannot stand.
Both “jobs” belong to all of us.
If Yaakov waited until his last breath to say what was real,
we honor him by living the truth before the ending comes.
So What Do We Do With a New Year?
Most resolutions break because the year is too big.
So try the rest of this week.
From now until after Shabbos.
Purify your life with Torah.
Purify your home with presence.
Bless your people with honesty.
If it holds, take another week.
If it falls apart, start again.
This is not a third-grade mishnayos test.
There is no failing grade here.
Every win, no matter how small, is a win worth celebrating.
One win plus one loss does not equal zero.
We celebrate each win for what it is: progress.
Losing less often is also a win.
Change does not arrive in a year from now when we look back at the past.
It arrives on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon when everybody in the room can breathe a bit easier.
A Blessing for 2026
May the air we breathe be made new,
and may our homes feel light enough to hold blessing.
May we choose presence over performance,
and the courage to change what we can touch.
May our words purify the atmosphere,
the way Torah purifies a street, gently and steadily, for whoever stands near.
May this year rise like dough in a warm room,
alive because the air around it has changed.
May וַיְחִי be something we live before it becomes something our children remember.
וַיְחִי — And He Lived
It does not say “and he concluded.”
It does not say “and he wrapped things up.”
It says he lived.
Not by becoming someone else, but by swapping our hands and our perspective.
By blessing what is true while we still can.
For us.
For our homes.
For the ones who will remember us not by what we finished,
but by how we lived.
חזק חזק ונתחזק
Is there a Hayom Yom that lives inside you the way this one lives in me?
A line, a memory, a moment?
If you have one, I would be honored to hear it.
Good Shabbos, and Happy New Year.
Berke
Download printable version (PDF)
P.S. Looking for more Hayom Yom lessons? Here are a few that found their way into earlier weeks.