Torah Portion - January 16, 2008

B’shalach, Exodus 13:17–17:16
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And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had exacted an oath from the children of Israel saying, “God will be sure to take notice of you: then you shall carry up my bones from here with you. (Exodus 13:19)
Jan and I have had the privilege of traveling a great deal. We have also moved around a lot, which has sometimes felt like a blessing, and at other times, a curse. In any case, it has trained us to pack well, and to discern what to take along and what to leave behind.
It is hard enough to do this with things. Needless to say, it is infinitely harder to leave people behind. Every time we go back and forth between the USA and Europe, where Jan’s entire family lives and where I also have dear relatives, I imagine the generations before us---how they had to leave their homeland and accept the fact that not only might they never again set foot on their native soil, but they might never see their loved ones again.

A couple of years ago I did a values clarification exercise with the Lamed Vavnik teen group. We each created a list of what we would take with us if we had to leave in a hurry. Then we were required to make our lists progressively shorter, giving up precious items. In this case, the exercise was designed to help us empathize with homeless people. Of course, more than a few of our own have experienced this when it is an actual emergency, in the wake of a hurricane.  What do we rush to grab at these times, real or imagined?  What do we call “essential”? Does this change?

That is the quandary that our ancestors faced when they escaped from slavery in Egypt, and so the shadow of this narrative has hovered over our people ever since. Along with the telling of the chaos and the fear that they wouldn’t make it out of Egypt, Moses had to shepherd the nascent nation to the banks of the sea, and then across it. On top of all of this responsibility, Moses also took it upon himself to fulfill a promise made to Joseph four centuries earlier: “So Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here’” (Genesis 50:25).

Moses carried Joseph’s bones in a box called an aron. That is indeed the same word that we use today for “coffin” or “casket.” It is also the word that was used for the special container for the luchot habrit, the Tablets of the Covenant. Today, aron is the ark in which we keep the holy Torah scrolls. The Midrash teaches that the same word is used for both container of holy writings and container of a deceased human being because this came “To show that in one aron were [the remains of] a man who fulfilled the commandments contained in the other” (Sotah 13a–b)

Joseph was indeed known as The Righteous One, so although he lived and died centuries before the Torah was given, he is said to have lived according to the mitzvot. This he did whether he was experiencing the cruelty of slavery or prison, or whether he was experiencing the privilege of being Pharaoh’s right hand. But no matter how high a rank he achieved in Egypt, Joseph never lost the belief that he gleaned from his father Isaac, who in turn learned it from his father Abraham: that God would one day bring the Children of Israel back to the Promised Land. That is why, when he was on his death bed, Joseph exacted the promise that his bones would be brought back to Israel. And that is why the aron with Joseph’s bones symbolized faith and hope and commitment as the Israelites gradually, and imperfectly, traversed the long, winding way through the wilderness.

This trip turned out to last 40 years, during which the Israelites experienced the miracles at the Red Sea and at Sinai, as well as the calamity of the Golden Calf, the catastrophe of Korach’s rebellion and God’s furious response---and many other incidents. For forty years, the bones of Joseph helped Moses, Miriam and Aaron focus on the challenges of leading this erev rav, this motley crew, through the desert. They also inspired Joshua ben Nun to take over the leadership from Moses when it was times to lead the Israelites into their homeland.

Leadership is a challenge, yet the nature of Judaism is that leadership be shared. The bones of Joseph in their aron remind us that we stand on the shoulder of giants, and we have the treasure of our sacred texts to help us through whatever wilderness we might face.

In nerve wracking times, we must keep that aron in mind. We must always take it with us.   .