Am I Passing Down Pain - or Healing? | Turning the Wheel

Have you ever asked yourself, am I passing down pain or healing? Because parasi is all about a father who lived through betrayal, trauma, and grief and still chose to bless his children. Yakob is at the end of his life, and after everything, the loss of Yoseph, the lies, the silence, he could have stayed bitter. He could have said, "I don't trust you anymore." He could have said nothing. but instead he calls his sons in. He looks them in the eye and he gives each one a braha. Not just based on who they were, but who they could still become. That's not denial, that's healing. And then he does something unprecedented. He blesses Ephraim and Manasha, two [music] brothers with no rivalry, no resentment, no fighting. He gives them the first braha in the Torah where siblings are not in competition. We bless our own children with those words every single week because YaKob finally breaks [music] the cycle. He says, "It ends with me and it begins with you." That reminds me of the way Rabbi Jonathan Sax [music] Zatal approached his own legacy. He experienced deep pain in his personal and communal life, but he didn't run from it. He transformed it. He once wrote, "The test of faith is not believing in what is easy, but in acknowledging what is hard." And that is exactly what Yakov does. And it is what so many people do when they decide to break the cycle of silence, shame, and trauma. We see it every day at Amudim. People who come from families [music] fractured by addiction, abuse, and secrets, but choose to tell the truth, to ask for help, to stop the pain from spreading further. They say it ends here. I'm not handing this down to my children. That's not easy, but it's holy. That is what the parha is coming to teach us. That your past doesn't have to define your legacy. That you can face it and choose something better. That blessing the next generation begins when we stop passing down the pain. This is turning the wheel because the road to healing isn't straight, but no one should have to drive it alone. Have a good chabas.