The Torah is the most politically incorrect document in the world. How many revolutions have occurred from the inspiration the downtrodden have received from the story of the Exodus from Egypt? How many have sacrificed their lives for moral ideas first expressed in the Ten Commandments or in the Holiness Code?
In the portion that we read this week we meet that politically incorrect approach to the world again. Jacob is dying, so he calls all of his children in order to give them his last testament. He does not mince words. He calls two of his sons men of violence and murderers. He calls another unstable. He finds faults and strengths in all of his sons, and he does not try to sugar coat that which is undesirable. Jacob had to learn the hard way. When he was a boy, he tried to find advancement in the world through lying. Those lies only brought him a life of suffering and pain. By the time that he was an old man, he had learned the force of the truth, and tried to apply that truth in the last conversation that he had with his sons.
Jacob taught us that problems cannot be solved unless we meet them head on. We can never improve our lives with lies. No matter the circumstance, lies need be undone for truth and progress to happen.
Unlike other histories of his time, he does not try to change events. For him victories are victories, and failures are failures. He describes the world as he perceives it. For thousands of years we have read about his world and about his children. From him we have learned to confront our own sense of failure. We have learned that mortality means that we are not perfect, that we make mistakes and do wrong. Yet, Jacob teaches us that we can change the world and ourselves. We can bring about the end of days.
Judaism has survived longer than most religions because we have never been afraid of the truth. We have no baggage in lies. Lying was never the currency that we dealt. Israel is strong for that reason today. Indeed, the most powerful worldly tool that Israel has is the Jewish reliance on truth.
The history of our people is not always pretty, but it is always true. That is the legacy that we received from Jacob.