Dvar Torah - Parshat Vayechi: Putting Good Into the Headlines

Parshat Vayechi

5774/2013

Good things that happen, good things people do everyday do not make the newspapers.  To my knowledge, the New York Times has never run a major front page headline when a neighbor helps shovel snow for someone who cannot do it himself, just as an example.  There was never to my knowledge a breaking news story that cut into the Yankees radio broadcast to advise that someone visited her friend in the hospital and brought her flowers.

What is the reason the good news often stays hidden from the headlines unless it is earth shattering?  Why are simple, friendly, and helpful mitzvahs that we do for each other not newsworthy? 

Personally, I would love to read and tell my kids about these things.  These things do attract my attention. 

What do we think?  Can we take a straw poll here?  How many people would like to get a newspaper or digital report about basic good things that people have done for one another? (Possibly with names changed to protect identity and privacy.)  Would this publication change the way people operate?  Would more good happen out there?  Would the news strengthen us?

There is evidence in this week’s parasha that this good news would strengthen us.

Toward the end of his life, and sick in bed, Jacob hears that Joseph is on his way to visit.  Visiting the sick, bikur cholim, is a mitzvah – a mitzvah that is beneficial even if the patient is asleep and does not know you are there.  Prayers we offer are inevitably stronger when we’re standing near a person we care about.  As Joseph approaches, we see that Jacob gains strength, “vayitzchazek Yisrael, vayeshev al ha’mitah”, he feels stronger and sits up in bed.

The Gaon of Vilna reminds us the way the Rabbis teach that a person who visits someone who is sick may be able to take away 1/60^th of whatever they are suffering.  How do we know that this happens when Joseph visits Jacob?  Jacob feels stronger and sits up!  How else do we know that now Jacob’s illness has been reduced, that there are only 59 parts of the malady instead of sixty?  The letters of the word for bed, mitah, add up to 59! (And at first, there were 60 parts of illness, given the word ‘Hineh’ (Behold), Behold your father is ill. Hay-Nun-Hay equals 60.) Itturei Torah, Vol. 2, p. 434

Something about the mitzvah is believed to have a real impact on the person who is receiving its benefit.  I begin to imagine people feeling moved, inspired, and motivated to do more good as a result of reading about these things more often, to the extent that they wish to not only benefit from the mitzvahs of others but to give blessing themselves in their actions.  These ‘simple gifts’ remind us that we need not live in a world in which only radical or extraordinary benevolence makes headlines.

Of course, we might also argue that doing the right thing is its own benefit, and publicizing these things will encourage self-promotion.  If the self-promotion happens for doing good and right, then is it such a problem?  Won’t other people call those to task who are being insincere?

This week, please do not hesitate to share at least when others do special things for us.  Share them on Twitter and Facebook.  Let me know and I’ll remove names and share what happened and put in in the language of mitzvah, the language of our people that calls out to us to be daily messages of our people’s values as they leap from the page into the street.

And let’s celebrate the end the Book of Genesis, when we say tomorrow, Chazak Chazak Ve’nitchazek! A phrase with the same word describing how Jacob was strengthened when Joseph arrived, vayitchazek – may we all have strength of mind, body, and spirit to make headlines for good, headlines with letters so tall that they reach from earth up to heaven.

Shabbat Shalom