Vayechi: Blessing Your Children

(1) Some time afterward, Joseph was told, “Your father is ill.” So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. (2) When Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has come to see you,” Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed. (3) And Jacob said to Joseph, “El Shaddai, who appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, blessed me— (4) and said to me, ‘I will make you fertile and numerous, making of you a community of peoples; and I will assign this land to your offspring to come for an everlasting possession.’ (5) Now, your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, shall be mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine no less than Reuben and Simeon. (6) But progeny born to you after them shall be yours; they shall be recorded instead*instead Lit. “under the name.” of their brothers in their inheritance. (7) I [do this because], when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow, while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath; and I buried her there on the road to Ephrath”—now Bethlehem. (8) Noticing Joseph’s sons, Israel asked, “Who are these?” (9) And Joseph said to his father, “They are my sons, whom God has given me here.” “Bring them up to me,” he said, “that I may bless them.” (10) Now Israel’s eyes were dim with age; he could not see. So [Joseph] brought them close to him, and he kissed them and embraced them. (11) And Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, and here God has let me see your children as well.” (12) Joseph then removed them from his knees, and bowed low with his face to the ground. (13) Joseph took the two of them, Ephraim with his right hand—to Israel’s left—and Manasseh with his left hand—to Israel’s right—and brought them close to him. (14) But Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head—thus crossing his hands—although Manasseh was the first-born. (15) And he blessed Joseph, saying,“The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day— (16) The Messenger who has redeemed me from all harm—Bless the lads.In them may my name be recalled,And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.” (17) When Joseph saw that his father was placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head, he thought it wrong; so he took hold of his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s. (18) “Not so, Father,” Joseph said to his father, “for the other is the first-born; place your right hand on his head.” (19) But his father objected, saying, “I know, my son, I know. He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great. Yet his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall be plentiful enough for nations.” (20) So he blessed them that day, saying, “By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.” Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh.

(1) בך יברך ישראל IN THEE SHALL ISRAEL BLESS — When one wishes to bless his sons he will bless them by reciting the formula with which they were blessed — a man will say to his son, “God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh.”

ויברכם ביום ההוא לאמור, He blessed them on that day, saying, etc. The Torah means that Jacob gave the boys such a full measure of blessings that everybody said that the simplest way to bestow blessings on Jewish children in the future would be to mention that they should be as blessed as Ephrayim and Menashe were blessed by Jacob.

בך יברך ישראל, “By you shall Israel bless:” Yaakov told Joseph that when Israel would bless its children they would hold up Joseph’s children as the models they hoped their own children would emulate. When blessing Jewish boys the father would invoke the names of Ephrayim and Menashe as the models he wished G’d to use when blessing his own children.

בך יברך ישראל, ”when the Jewish people bless their children they will do so by referring to you, Joseph, to your well turned out children.” They will express the fervent hope that their own children would turn out as successfully.

Did Rabbi Emden have the practice of only blessing the sons and not the daughters? That is unlikely. From that which he wrote, "to bless the children," and not, "the sons," it appears that they would bless the sons and daughters alike with the same blessing of Jacob, "May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh." And that is what is implied in Scripture: By you shall Israel invoke blessings (Genesis 48:20) — that the blessing is for all of Israel.