I've
now lived in America for the best part of eight years of the last ten. And yet despite all of this time living on
this side of the Atlantic I do remain in many ways British. I still go to the B.B.C. as my first port of
call for news, I still check the football (soccer) scores before I check any other
sport, and I still sound like I come from somewhere else. Despite all of these years here I still have
a certain British core, amidst my American identity.
In
this week's Torah portion we see a similar occurrence in the case of Joseph. He was seventeen when he left his homeland and
his family’s house to live in Egypt; and he lived the following ninety three
years in Egypt rising to the very top of that society. And we might assume that over that time
Joseph assimilated and became an Egyptian.
And yet, as we read at the end of his life, this was not the case.
After
the death of Jacob, and as we come to the end of the book of Bereishit, the
Book of Genesis, Joseph says to his brothers: ‘I am about to die. God will
surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land that He
promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob’ (Gen. 50:24). And
Joseph made them promise: ‘When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up
my bones from here’ (Gen. 50:25). In
this way Joseph ensured that he would be buried back in his homeland; he would
be returned to the Promised Land and would not remain in Egypt.
Despite
all of the wealth, and the prosperity that Egypt afforded him, and the
salvation that it brought to his family, he felt at heart that he was a Hebrew. He wanted to be buried back in his homeland.
For
generations of Jews living in Diaspora, Joseph was a reminder of the fact that
we can, and do, maintain a connection with that Land of Israel, despite the
fact that we might not live there and despite the fact that for generations we
might not have even been able to visit.
We have that strong connection in our history.
And
for the Israelites in the wilderness alongside the Ark of the Covenant that
they carried with them they must have also been carrying the bones of
Joseph. He provided a real physical
connection to the land to which they were journeying. He had been born in the Promised Land, and throughout
all of their wanderings they carried him with them, reminding them of the
centrality of their commitment to that place; and that despite all of those
years in Egypt; once a Hebrew, always a Hebrew.
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