[Bəreishit 47:8] And Pharaoh said to Ya’aqov, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” [9] And Ya’aqov said to Paraoh, “The days of the years of מְגוּרַי | məgurai | my sojournings are one hundred and thirty years; few and wretched have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not reached the days of the years of the lives of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.”

Canonically, Avraham lived to 175 and Yitzḥaq to 180. Sure, 130 is less than either of those, but also: At this point Ya’aqov is still alive and kicking, and he keeps on being alive for nearly twenty years after this conversation. How else can we understand məgurai than as a mere indication of the span of time Ya’aqov has spent alive?

Məgurai is a verbal noun that means “being a geir”. Geir is often translated “stranger”, but it can also mean something close to the contemporary “resident alien”, ie someone who lives in a place without being fully a citizen of it, even if they do so for many years. So we could understand Ya’aqov as saying: “Unlike my fathers, I have spent most of my life in the most legally protected class, and the few years I didn’t have that status were wretched.” Or perhaps: “I spent only a few years as a resident alien, and that’s kind of wretched, because I now see how that shrank the range of my concern; the law protected me, so I did not worry about what happened to those the law did not protect, and that is an evil way to move thru the world.”

But to be a geir is also to be a stranger. “I have seldom gone to places where I was a stranger; I mostly stuck to my little corner of the world, and sadly know little of its breadth and complexity.”

“I seldom let people be strangers in my life; I have befriended people, made them known to me. I’ve lived with my neighbors in real community, not as isolated strangers sharing nothing beyond mere physical proximity. There are a few times where that didn’t work out, and they are still a source of bitterness to me all this time later.”

A geir is a convert to Judaism, someone who changes, becomes a stranger to themself, must get to know themself again after a great upheaval.

“For 130 years, I have been alienated from myself. It has drained me, worn me out. I have few memories that feel like mine, and it is anguish to live this way.”

“For 130 years, I have been myself. I have never changed, never grown, never looked back on my past with confusion that I could ever have acted as I did. As an elder, I am who I was as a youth, trapped in patterns of behavior I never figured out how to escape.” (Ya’aqov is given the name Yisra’eil, but unlike Avraham and Sarah, his old name hangs around; he never fully sheds it.)

In another context, the exact same word, məgurai, would mean “my fears”. “I have had few fears in my long life, but oh! they were terrible.” “My long life has been full of dread at every turn; it’s no way to live.” “I have drifted so far from the world that I have feared little. To fear is to care, and it is safer under these conditions never to let yourself care; that’s how they get you.” (Yevgeny Yevtushenko: “In Russia, fears are dying/like the ghosts of yesteryears...”)

“I had power, so I was seldom afraid, but others were often afraid of me. What a small and wretched way I’ve gone thru life!”

Perhaps some of these are Ya’aqov and some of them are Yisra’eil. Perhaps that is the point: that the same life can be thought good or bad when twisted and turned different ways to emphasize different parts of it. That the very same thing can be a joy or an evil. Perhaps the best we can hope for here is for Ya’aqov/Yisra’eil to hold all of these understandings of his own words together at once, to dwell — to sojourn — in the ambiguity of language, the strangeness of it.

“The days of the years of my uncertainties are one hundred and thirty years; few and wretched have been the days of the years of my life that have not had the depth and complexity to be understood thru multiple lenses, and yet even so I have not reached the depth and complexity of the years of the lives of my fathers in the days of their uncertainties.”

How could an absolute monarch, a figurehead flattened to a nothing by relentless sycophantic praise, respond to this? Pharaoh says nothing.

[10] And Ya’aqov blessed Pharaoh and went out from before the face of Pharaoh.