The End of Genesis  We have gotten to the end of the book of
Genesis, the book of Bereishit (Beginnings) — the beginnings of
the world and of our people. This last parasha in Genesis is
called Va-Yehi (And He Lived), commenting on the life of Ya’akov
(Jacob) that we have been following for weeks. But just as the
parasha Chayei Sarah (Sarah’s Lives) begins with the death of
Sarah, so too here, Va-Yehi paints a picture of Ya’akov on his
death-bed (even though we might have thought, from the title of
And He Lived, that the parasha would be about his life, not his
death).  There is also a curious puzzle in Va-Yehi that is
captured by the very form in which the Hebrew letters are
written in the scroll. The puzzle is why Ya’akov loses the
prophecy he wanted to convey to his sons before he took his
leave of this world. What happened to him that the prophecy just
escaped from him so completely?  What exactly, is that form that
echoes the mystery of the missing prophecy? Well, Ya’akov is
“blocked,” somehow prevented f