Gathered for the Future

"Jacob called his sons and said: 'Gather yourselves, that I may tell you what is to befall you in days to come. Assemble and listen…'" (Gen. 49:1-2) 

At the end of Genesis, the narrative lens widens. After a book shaped by ruptures and reconciliations, Jacob's final act in Parashat Vayechi is not to bless each son in isolation, but to summon them together. The double command, he'asfu ("gather yourselves") and hikavtzu ("assemble"), signals a decisive shift. The future of the covenant will not be carried by solitary heroes. It will be shaped by a people who learn to stand side by side, even when their histories, temperaments, and destinies diverge.

Jacob's words are not predictions in the modern sense. They are assignments. Each son receives a vision shaped by his character, strengths, and failings. Their futures are distinct, uneven, and imperfect. Yet the meaning of the moment lies not in the individuality of the blessings, but in their shared horizon. The sons must hear one another's destinies to understand their own. Jacob offers them not a map, but a collective responsibility that can be met only together.

That scene resonates with the landscape of European Progressive Judaism today. Over the course of my commentaries on the book of Genesis, we travelled across a continent marked by diversity and interruption. Some regions endured devastation; others, hiddenness; others, suppression; and others, courageous renewal. None of these stories were identical, yet all described communities that rebuilt Jewish life from broken histories. Like Jacob's sons in Parashat Vayechi, European Jewish communities emerged from different pasts but now face the same question: what comes next, and how do we build it together?

The German Swedish Jewish poet Nelly Sachs, who wrote out of the flames of European destruction during the Holocaust, captured the work of collective futurity with stark clarity. In one of her wartime poems, she writes: "We walk toward the future bearing the sore feet of the past." It is an image of a people gathered from scattered paths, marked by wounds yet still moving. Sachs does not glorify suffering. She names its weight. Yet her vision is not resigned. For Sachs, walking toward the future is an act of moral choice, a commitment to life after catastrophe.

That commitment has defined Progressive Judaism in Europe for decades. Across the continent, communities rebuilt themselves not by erasing the past but by refusing to let it dictate the limits of possibility. Each community carried its own "sore feet": the Holocaust, the silencing under communism, the legacies of state control or forced assimilation, the quiet trauma of hidden identities. Yet out of these histories emerged institutions, leaders, and congregations who insisted that Judaism could be renewed in ways that were open, ethical, and accessible.

Today we face a new Parashat Vayechi moment. Post-COVID Europe has produced an unexpected hunger for meaning. People who once stood at the margins are seeking community, study, and ritual. Rising antisemitism has led many to re-enter Jewish space not out of fear but out of a desire for rootedness and solidarity. At the same time, new populations are reshaping the European Progressive landscape. Israelis relocating to European cities bring spiritual expectation and cultural fluency. Emerging communities in places such as Georgia, Lithuania, and Cyprus draw together local Jews, returnees, and newcomers in creative ways.

These shifts do not erase the challenges: demographic fragility, political instability, and the continuing struggle for recognition in several countries. Yet in the logic of Parashat Vayechi, challenges are not grounds for despair. They are prompts for responsibility. Jacob does not idealise his sons. He names their limitations and their difficult futures. Yet he calls them together because the covenantal task is larger than any one of them. Their future depends on their willingness to gather, to listen, and to build.

The same is true for us. If European Progressive Judaism is to flourish, it will not be through harmonising every community into sameness. It will be through cultivating a collective vision spacious enough for difference. Each community carries a distinct inheritance, diverse voices bound by a shared commitment to a Judaism grounded in dignity, justice, and inclusion.

Nelly Sachs reminds us that walking toward the future requires honesty about the wounds we carry and courage to continue anyway. Parashat Vayechi teaches that blessing emerges when we assemble, not as a uniform people, but as a community willing to imagine a future together. The task ahead is not to perfect our communities but to gather them, to let their varied stories inform a shared purpose, and to build institutions generous enough to hold the next generation.

European Progressive Judaism continues to weave its many strands into a future shaped by integrity and hope. Its congregations, whether long established or newly emerging, offer places where Jewish life is rebuilt with care and imagination. For those who live in Europe and for those who encounter these communities only in passing, this landscape holds a quiet promise.

And so, just as the book of Genesis concludes with Jacob blessing his sons, I want to leave us with a final blessing: may all who cross the thresholds of Europe's congregations, residents and visitors alike, find moments of connection and strength. And may these communities always be a source of blessing, offering renewal, dignity, and a shared sense of Jewish possibility.