Just as the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and fall describe the kind of lives that we live. Spring speaks of the blossoming of life. Summer speaks of the harvest and hot days. Autumn reminds us that life does not go on forever, and winter teaches us about death.
In like manner each book of the Torah teaches us something unique about our lives and about the lives of our people. During the weeks that we read from Genesis, we are concerned with beginnings, and every Shabbat that we chant and study that book we learn about beginnings. Exodus teaches us about possibilities. Leviticus teaches holiness. Numbers takes us through the desert. Deuteronomy is concerned with endings.
This week we end the book of Genesis. Jacob, who is the last of the patriarchs, gathers his sons and speaks to them. They are his legacy. They are the result of his beginnings. They are the product of his parenting. And Jacob is dying. He knows that his job is complete. He has but last words to give them.
Those last words are not prophecy; they are nothing more than a father telling his children where they went wrong, or where they did well. In a sense his last words are a form of self-criticism.
After Jacob finishes talking to his sons, he prepares to die. His life is complete. Indeed, at that time Jewish history begins a second phase. When Exodus commences the Jewish people are no longer just seventy souls; they number in the millions. They are maturing as a people, and they are enslaved. Exodus is a book about the possibilities of the human spirit. It is about those slaves and about their struggle for freedom, about plague and miracle, about sin and revelation. It is about a new period in the life of the Jewish people.
Genesis told us about one part of the development of Jewish life. With the death of Jacob and Joseph that book is complete. A new season begins in the history of the Jewish people. That new season is Exodus.