Skip to main content

Parsha Poem: Vayeitzei / וַיֵּצֵא

בראשית / Bereishit / Bereishis / Genesis 28:10-32:3

 

Printable PDF version here.

Parsha narrative overview here.

Copywork sheet available here.

 

Shmuli was reading his old baby book.

“Hey!” he said, “come here; take a look!”

“It’s missing something,” he said, quizzically,

“How come there aren’t newborn pictures of me?”

 

image His parents came near and sat down alongside,

They smiled at him and they told him with pride,

“You have something in common with Yaakov’s own sons.”

“Do you mean the shevatim?”  “Yup, those are the ones.”

 

He’d read this week’s parsha; Vayeitzei, it’s called.

He knew all its stories; they’d kept him enthralled.

“Remember which wife Yaakov loved then the best?”

Shmuli knew it was Rachel who had been so blessed.

 

Well, Rachel loved Yaakov and tried very hard

To bear loyal children who’d always stand guard.

But she couldn’t have babies, though she davened and cried,

And she wanted a son she could raise up with pride.

 

“Take Bilhah,” she told Yaakov (back then he could)

And Hashem looked and saw that it was very good.

He gave Rachel a baby, a son of her own,

Through Bilhah, whose kindness and goodness she’d shown.

 

image Shmuli asked, “but wasn’t it Bilhah’s own son?”

“Well, Hashem knew that Rachel was the best one

To raise him up right and give him a good life;

Rachel, who was Yaakov’s favourite wife.”

 

“Well, that’s very interesting,” Shmuli had to agree,

“But what does that stuff have to do now with me?”

And his father said, “Shmuli, it’s always Hashem,

Who chooses kids’ parents, finds babies for them.”


image Usually, families are made right at birth,

You’ll find families like that all over the earth;

The mother grows bigger and then, at long last,

A new baby is born and then grows up so fast.

 

But sometimes, Hashem finds a different way

To bring folks the child for which they might pray.

Rachel didn’t need to use her own womb,

To open her heart and her home to make room

 

For that son and his brother who soon came along,

Who would grow to be tribes in a family so strong.

“Just like them, you were born in a different place,

But we’ve loved you since we first glimpsed your sweet face.”

 

image In this parsha we learn of twelve very odd stones,

Who wanted to hold up a young tzaddik’s bones

When Yaakov lay down on the ground with no bed,

They all wanted the honour of holding his head.

 

And Hashem made a neis, made the stones all unite,

Come together despite different sizes and height,

Born deep in the ground and in places far-flung,

To be close to the tzaddik, they faithfully clung.

 

“And that’s just like our family – it’s all about knowing

Hashem does the choosing to keep families growing

And like those twelve rocks, where Yaakov once lay

We’ll serve Him together… and together we’ll stay.”image

Comments

  1. ... and it's all right there in the parsha, but you've expressed so beautifully how some people come to be parents in a variety of ways. I think you should send this one to Mel over at stirrup queens.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this. Thank you so much for writing this. I have saved it to hopefully read one day when Hashem helps us find a child to come into our family in an unusual way.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

Are Jews an "underrepresented community" in children’s publishing?

I applied for a writing award yesterday. I'm not going to get it, but that's not what I wanted to share with you. Here's what I wanted to share. This box:   I stared at this box for a long, long time. And then I decided not to check it. Even though I believe people like me truly are underrepresented, we probably wouldn’t fit the definition in other people's minds. Why? Well, because we're European. Because we are white. Because as everybody knows, Jews control the media. (do we???) If anything, some people say, Jews are over -represented in publishing. And yet. Some definitions are careful not to include people like me. Like this random definition from the State of California which defines underrepresented for some very specific business purposes as: "an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self-identi