Beshallach: Carrying Joseph's Bones

By Stu Woolley, delivered Feb. 7, 2009

Today’s Torah portion, Parashat Beshallach, unravels the dramatic departure from Egypt - recounting the race to the Red Sea, the puzzling hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and the catastrophic destruction of the Egyptian military. Pardon me if I bypass these panoramic events and concentrate, instead, on an obscure introductory verse. I’m going to take about 12 minutes to explain why Exodus Chapter 13 Verse 19 commits us to Jewish history. And that’s about 6 minutes shorter than Barrack Obama’s D’var Torah in D.C. last month.

I

Let’s begin with the verse, itself:

AND MOSES TOOK THE BONES OF JOSEPH WITH HIM; FOR HE HAD STRAITLY SWORN THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL SAYING: “G-D WILL SURELY REMEMBER YOU; AND YE SHALL CARRY UP MY BONES HENCE WITH YOU”.

Just for fun, here’s a little riddle I drew from this text:

Question: How do we know that Hashem is a historian?
Answer: He remembers.

G-d remembers…Please hold that thought.

Exodus 13:19 seems like a sidebar inserted into the stormy Mitzrayim narrative. But because nothing in Torah is random or without purpose, perhaps its inner meaning can be decoded.

Here’s a syllogism:

Because Hashem is an historian and historians remember, and because we are made in G-d’s likeness, then to be human is also to remember and to be a bone-bearer for history.

Which is an awkward way of saying we should document the transit of human culture moving through time and space. We call it “History”!

II

Jews are historians. Not only do we carry our own bones day by day, like Moshe we’re also obligated to carry the bones of our history: personal, familial and, of course, collective. The Jewish People are collectively responsible for transporting a veritable charnel house of Jewish national and cultural bones across millienia. What a demanding job! And the pay is lousy, too! But is there a people more historically acute, or narcissistically obsessed with its own history, than we are!

There are Jewish bones all about us. Everywhere. In our tallis bags, in the aron kodesh behind me, in the chumash on your lap.  Metaphoric bones, of course, but bones, nevertheless. What we do here today, and on every day that we tell a Jewish joke, fret about the survival of Israel, remember a Yiddish phrase planted in our memories by a bubbie or zayde long gone – all this, and more, is bone-work. It’s Jewish bone-work of an essential kind. The work only we can do. The work only we can teach our children to do for their children after we’ve left the stage.

In the meantime, we live. We carry the bones gracefully -- that's on our good days.  But there are many days when our bone-work is arduous and uncomfortable.  Consider how leaden those Jewish bones feel during Holocaust commemorations or when Israel is at war – again. Rembrance is often hard, demanding, fraught.

On those days and at those times, we’ve got baggage…

III

As Moderns, we have problems with baggage. With us, baggage is negative. Baggage is not advantageous.  Baggage is not comfortable. It's an encumbrance.  It slows us down and keeps us shackled to the earth. It has to be managed, and it's always subject to loss. Our baggage is frequently tear-stained.  And baggage is often all that's left behind at the end of a lifetime: sepia photos, worn personal effects, scraps of scribbling, a bank account or two. And, happily, a genetic twinkle in the eyes of a grandchild or two.

On this score, I agree with Paul Simon, one of America’s most thoughtful and influential songwriters: "Preserve your memories. They're all that's left you."

If we excavate deeper into Exodus 13:19, we will be reminded that being a bone-bearer is not reducible to mere baggage-handling. When I first started thinking about this verse, I tried to imagine what must have been going through the mind of Moses. On one hand, the refugees have to get out of town at the earliest possible moment. On the other, he’s the refugees’ leader, and he’s looking for a box of old bones?! How does that work??

Well, Moses made it work! Moses made it his business to take those bones. No Exodus without them -- they were that important. The remains of the favoured son of the 3rd Patriarch were no impediment to Moshe; he knew how to bear the weight.

IV

Let’s consider the verse again – but with more “21st century” in the language:
 
AND MOSES TOOK THE BONES OF JOSEPH WITH HIM; FOR JOSEPH HAD PROMISED THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, SAYING: “G-D WILL REMEMBER YOU; AND YOU WILL CARRY MY BONES WITH YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS LAND”.

It was Moshe’s genius to sense opportunity in every responsibility, every task, every challenge -- each mitzvah.  Whatever the situation, Moshe perceived the bigger picture. The picture Hashem sees and wants us to see, too. Torah is vision-enhancement. Moshe knew that -- and he also realized that Joseph had thrown him the torch of historical trust. No surprise -- Joseph was an historian, as well.

Joseph understood G-d’s world as a work-in-progress, a project-over-time. He understood his own improbable life-story in that same context: the world-as-jobsite. He recognized that Hashem is a blacksmith at the forge: firing, hammering, bending, fashioning the Jewish People as an instrument of purpose on an imperfect planet coursing amongst the dead stars.

We are “Uncommon Humanity”. That’s the mission-statement of the Chumash. And that’s also why the political Left has so much difficulty with the concept of the Jewish People – Capital J, Capital P.
 
"G-d will surely remember you."

Joseph’s prophecy and his promise…

Joseph knew that, in the ever-turning mind of The Master, the Jacobite journey in Egypt would need an expiry date. Eventually, Exodus would come.  In time, Hashem would spring the trap.  His People would emerge from lifetimes of servitude and oppression - only to be subjected to 40 years of vigorous, national road-testing in the wilderness.

It was Joseph's wish - his dying wish - not to be left behind in Mitzrayim but to return at last, even as a stone box of old bones, to the land he had left in his boyhood. Even 40 centuries ago, there was no place like home. Despite knowing he’d be embalmed and entombed as an Egyptian, Joseph understood that he’d need to be rescued as a Jew.

"You shall carry up my bones hence with you."

In other words:

When the time comes, you guys get me outta here!  Rebury me in my homeland so I can rest amongst the bones of my own people.

As Torah is fond of saying: “He was gathered unto his ancestors.” I love that phrase! And 400 years later, Moshe perceived the deeper meaning in Joseph’s prediction. A new age was about to dawn. Hashem was ready for more worldly intervention. The plagues were just a run-up -- an appetizer for what was brewing -- and here he was, a guy with a major speech impediment leading a rabble of argumentative serfs. Not very promising.

Moses knew what he was up against. He knew all too well that this refugee people would need a pillar of fire to light the way forward and a pile of Abrahamic bones for the great arrival. Wherever and whenever that arrival would occur. To Moshe, Joseph’s bones represented continuity -- the genetic link to the Patriarchs.

No less than G-d’s thundering fiat, the bones of Joseph, son of Jacob, were title to a renewed identity on aboriginal soil.

V

What does this bone-borscht mean to us today? As Jews collectively and as Jewish individuals with lives invested in secular Modernity? Does it have any meaning at all? Do we even care? Should we even care? Since I’m the guy giving the d’var Torah, I get to tell you what I think. And I think we should care - and do care. I think we care a lot. And that’s because carrying Jewish bones is an accepted Jewish duty. If not us, then who? Who will control our narrative if we don’t?

Does it matter? Yes, it does! And I’ll tell you why. We should never forget that it was the fondest wish of the Nazi regime to write the history -- the epitaph -- of “an extinct people”. History is survival. The dead write no commentaries…

So, yes, Jewish bone-bearing must be done. It’s no easy assignment. And it’s a very long journey, wherever we’re headed. But we get important hints along the way – if we know where to look and how to listen.

For example: here and now. At schul, we can plumb the ancient words of Tanach for contemporary meaning, relevance and guidance. That’s our tradition. We’re linked-in; we throw the bones. We read, we write, we grow. We remember and go forward in time and space. We are sustained and, sometimes (but not always) we are rescued.

VI

In conclusion…

Moshe carried the bones of Joseph as an object lesson for the Hebrews of the Exodus, and equally for us -- the Jews sitting in this sanctuary today in our little outport of Jewish civilization.

Those old bones are with us still, passed down faithfully by 4000 years of diligent, expert bone-schlepping. In every generation, we can haul Joseph’s ossuary to the next station, or we can just…walk away.

Throughout our long, strenuous history, we Jews have been doing both: walking away from Joseph’s bones and sensing value in the commitment to history and its burdens. We are Jews by choice as much as by destiny. We choose life and History.

But here’s the best part. Though our box of Jewish bones may seem cumbersome and inconvenient, we’re not required to carry it alone. And when we fulfill the duty of bone-bearing together – many hands on many handles -- we discover, like Moshe, that carrying Joseph’s bones is light work, indeed, and that we’re made stronger and more durable by facing up to the challenge.

Am Yisroel Chai! The People Israel Lives! And writes its own history.