Joseph’s Final Redemption

In this week’s Torah reading B’Shallah, the Israelites leave Egypt. The miracle at the Red Sea awaits them. But what was the last reported thing they picked up to carry with them before they left? The bones of Joseph.

The past, present, and future are intertwined in the Jewish consciousness.   Joseph had been sold into slavery in Egypt, but he never forgot his people or the promised land.  When Joseph’s father, Jacob — later, “Israel” —  died, Joseph brought his body back to the family tomb in Israel.  Joseph’s own dying wish was that his own bones be returned.  Eventually, as reported in the Book of Judges, Joseph was buried in Shechem.

By picking up Joseph, the people of Israel were not only honouring their own past; they were committing to their future.  They were embracing a symbol of covenantal succession, the promise by God that eventually, despite their exiles and tribulations, the Israelites could make their home again in Israel.

Joseph had been thrown by his jealous brothers into a pit and then sold into slavery.  He was deposited in Egypt.  There, he survived, then thrived, and eventually became Prime Minister.  He saved the Egyptians by storing up food for times of famine.  When his father and his brothers in Canaan, too, were facing starvation, they sought temporary refuge in Egypt, and Joseph was able to provide for them.  Joseph’s greatest moment was a midrash on his own life.  He interpreted it as a redemptive story rather than a revenge play.  He told his brothers that their betrayal ultimately served a providential purpose. It permitted him to rise in Egypt and save them in their time of need.

What midrash can we read or create about Joseph’s burial in his homeland?

The rabbis created a beautiful midrash about Moses, the leader in charge of returning Joseph to Israel.  Moses, like Joseph himself, never returned in his lifetime; Moses died on the other side of the Jordan River.  But the rabbis offered this vision: many of the Israelites died in the wilderness before their return.  Moses was buried outside of Israel so that at the time of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead, Moses could help his fellow Israelites who lay in the wilderness to complete the journey.

But why was Joseph buried in Shechem?

I would offer this midrash in the spirit of Joseph’s.

Let us go back to the time when Joseph was a youth, hated by his brothers and sold into slavery.   His father regularly had set Joseph out to conduct surveillance on his brothers.  That is one reason why they resented him.  Joseph is told that his brothers are looking at their flocks in Shechem.  He goes looking for them.  A stranger says that they are a little further away, in Dothan; it is there that his brothers, after debating whether to kill Joseph, sell him into slavery.

When Joseph is buried in Shechem, there is a further symbolic reconciliation with his family. Joseph is buried in the plot that his father bought.  And Joseph is buried in the same place where he went looking for his brothers on the day they betrayed him. The descendants of his brothers could then visit Joseph’s grave in Shechem to honour him.  Even now, many Jews travel to Shechem – now the Arab village of Nablus – to honor Joseph’s memory.  If you believe that, in the time of the Messiah, the dead will be resurrected, then Joseph will live again in the Promised Land.

There is a rabbinic tradition that being buried in Israel will help atone for the sins from the time when you were alive and help to speed you into the bliss of the afterlife.  If we follow this tradition, then Joseph’s burial in Israel achieved redemption and reconciliation in another way: between Joseph and God.  For generations, Joseph’s descendants lived and died as slaves in Egypt.  In the Exodus story, God remembers the Israelites and returns them.  And Joseph will live again in Israel surrounded by the ingathered Israelites from everywhere.

Even now, many Jews around the world seek to be buried in the holy land.  Even now,  the families of fallen soldiers and hostages from Israel are desperately anxious to recover the remains of their loved ones and bury them in the promised land.

We keep alive the memory of Joseph in other ways.  Every year during the Passover seder we dip karpas, a vegetable, in salted water.   Rashi says the word “karpas” refers to fine wool, and so the ceremony reminds us of Joseph’s many-coloured coats.  Others say that the dipping reminds us of how Joseph’s brothers dipped his coat in animal blood to convince Jacob that Joseph had perished by an animal attack rather than through fratricide.  Midrash always involves imagination, and it takes a lot of imagination to find a reminder of Joseph in the vegetable dipping.  But it also takes reverence;  we find Joseph in the Passover ceremony.  We look for Joseph because the whole ceremony is about remembering our forbearers.  As the Haggadah says, we are to imagine that we  ourselves were there.

When we celebrate Passover, it is as one people with a shared history.  We celebrate Passover as descendants of Joseph and the descendants of his brothers, all remembering the past, all reciting the hope that they will arrive or remain as free people in the holiest city of the promised homeland.