by Rabbi Yissacher Frand
In this week’s parsha, Yosef brings his two children to his father Yaakov for a bracha [blessing]. Yaakov gave Yosef’s children a tremendous bracha: “By you shall Israel bless saying, ‘May G-d make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh’” [Bereishis 48:20]. What a bracha! In the future, whenever the Jewish people would bless their sons, they would invoke the prayer that they should be like Yosef’s two sons: Ephraim and Menashe.
A very obvious question is asked. Yaakov had twelve illustrious sons. Why didn’t Yaakov say, for example, that the perennial Jewish blessing would be “May you be like Yehudah and Yosef” or “like Yissachor and Zevulun”? Why did Yaakov single out these two grandchildren to be the prototypes of blessing?
Several meforshim [commentators] offer the following explanation, which I saw most recently in the works of Rabbi Eliyahu Munk, zt”l. Yaakov saw a special quality in Ephraim and Menashe that he did not have the opportunity to see in his own children. Yaakov’s own children were raised in the best of environments. They lived in the Land of Israel, in the house of the patriarch Yaakov, insulated from any bad environment. Granted, it is not trivial to raise good children even in the best of circumstances. However, there is nothing novel in the fact that Yaakov’s own children turned out well. It is no surprise if a child who is raised in Bnei Brak or Meah Shearim grows up as an observant Jew. However, if people raise a child in a city such as Sioux City, Iowa – where their family is, perhaps, the only observant Jewish family in town – and the child is subject to foreign influences from all of his surroundings, and nonetheless, the child turns out a faithful Jew, that is truly a great accomplishment.
The patriarch Yaakov, perceiving that generations of Jews would spend so much of their time in Exile, formulated the greatest blessing that the Jewish people could give over to their children. “May they be like Ephraim and Menashe.” Ephraim and Menashe were raised in the Sioux City, Iowa of their time. They were the only Jews in the entire country! They had to grow up knowing that many things that they saw around them were not right, not the way things should be. Despite this, they turned out just like Yaakov’s own children. This is the special blessing that the Jewish people would need – the ability to be raised in a non-Jewish environment and yet turn out to be good and honest Jews.