This week’s portion begins with /Jacob settled in the land where his father sojourned. (Gen. 37:1). It seems the opening word signals that Jacob, instead of being in travel mode, has come to rest. Having journeyed to the ancestral homeland, he seems to realize that his real home is the place where he started. It looks like he has come full circle. Perhaps like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he has discovered that “there is no place like home.”

      The next verse says: This then is the line of Jacob, which suggests that we are about to get a standard biblical geneology. Appearances are deceptive! Instead of a genealogy, we are told that his son Joseph is 17 years old, helps shepherd the flock and tattletales about the bad things his brothers are doing. What is Jacob’s response? “Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons…and he had made him a coat of many colors.” Joseph’s behavior and his dreams will lead to his being sold into slavery by his brothers who hate him. 

      Jacob, in his settling in the land, seems to forget all he should have learned from his own story. He knows what it means to be the unfavorite child, but still chooses Joseph despite his behavior. He bought the birthright from Esau and Joseph’s brothers will sell him into servitude. They will deceive their father with Joseph’s coat just as Jacob deceived his father with Esau’s clothes. Jacob will live many years in exile from his parents. Joseph will live in exile from his parents, perhaps wondering whether his parents knew what his brothers did. In the end, there was no va-yeishev/settling in the land because there was no va-yashuv—there was no doing teshuvah/repentance from what he had done wrong to his brother. He repeated the mistakes of his father and grandfather. Jacob never seemed to sit and reflect (va-yeishev) on all that had happened. His moments of insight seemed to be fleeting in their impact on him.