My friend Kobi recently helped his mom move to an eldercare facility near his home in Raanana. He wistfully told us how her personality has changed: “She used to be so decisive,” Kobi said. “Mom would always tell us all what to do and how to do it – and now she just kinda sits there, waiting to be told what to do next.”

What does it feel like for a parent to reach that stage? Is it freeing, or sad, or a little of both? Yaakov, when he needs to ask Yosef for a burial in Israel in this week’s Torah reading of Vayechi, behaves differently than he did years earlier. Novelist Thomas Mann, in his masterwork Joseph and His Brothers, picks up on the language with which Yaakov addressed his son:........

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