“Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years; they embalmed him and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.” This ending is disturbing. Could have Genesis not concluded on a more inspiring note, just like the four following books of Moses? Even the fifth and final book, Deuteronomy, which concludes with Moses’ passing, culminates with a eulogy so rarely moving that it leaves one with an unforgettable impression of Moses. Joseph – that incredible human being who in the best and worst of times displayed enormous dignity and richness of spirit, that tremendous visionary and leader who rescued a world from famine is now gone. If that is not enough, Genesis informs us that Joseph is embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. There his remains would be stored for hundreds of years until the Jews leave Egypt and bury his bones in the city of Shechem (Nabulus). While Joseph’s father, Jacob, labored hard for assurances that his body would not remain among the morally depraved—and what would turn out to be genocidal—Egyptian people but would be brought back to the sacred soil of Hebron, Joseph’s worn and sacred body must remain etched in Egyptian earth for centuries.
Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson explains: “The Jewish people are about to become enslaved and subjugated to a tyrannical government that will attempt to destroy them one by one, physically and mentally (as recorded in the beginning of Exodus). This new Egyptian genocide program will drown children, subject all Jewish men to slave labor and crush a new nation. What will give the people of Israel the resolve they will desperately need? What will preserve a broken and devastated people from falling into the abyss? The knowledge that one day they would be liberated? Certainly. The knowledge that evil will not reign forever? Absolutely. Indeed, this is what Joseph told the Jewish people before his passing, recorded in the second-to-the-last verse of Genesis: “Joseph told his brothers: ‘I am about to die, but G-d will indeed remember you and bring you up out of this land to the land that He swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob… You will bring my bones up out of here.” But, then, when Genesis seeks to choose its final words, it provides us with a message that perhaps served as the greatest source of strength for an orphaned and broken Jewish family. “Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years; they embalmed him and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.” Joseph’s sacred body is not taken back to the Holy Land to be interred among the spiritual giants of human history: Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebecca; his father Jacob, or his mother Rachel. Joseph’s spiritual and physical presence does not “escape” to the heavenly paradise of a land saturated with holiness. Rather, Joseph remains in the grit and gravel of depraved Egypt, he remains etched deeply in the earthiness of Egypt, together with his beloved people. This is based on the ancient Jewish idea that has its roots in the Bible itself: The burial place of a virtuous and saintly human being contains profound holiness and spiritual energy and constitutes a place conducive for prayer to G-d. Since the soul and the body retain a relationship even after they depart from each other, the space where the physical body of a holy man is interred is a space conducive for spiritual growth, meditation, reflection and inspiration. “He was placed in a coffin in Egypt”—that is the culmination of Genesis. The Jew may be entrenched in Egypt and all that it represents, but Joseph is right there with him, in the midst of his condition, giving him strength, blessings and fortitude. The same is true in our own lives as well. In each generation G-d plants such “Joseph’s” in our midst, the Tzaddikim and Rebbes, who are there with the Jewish people in all their pain and agony. Sometimes, even after their passing, if we open our hearts, we can feel the touch of their soul, the richness of their spirits, the faith of their lives. We may be stuck in the quagmire of “Egyptian” dung, yet “Joseph” is present with us. Thus, even in the midst of a dark and horrific exile, we can hold each other’s hands and thunder aloud: Chazak! Chazak! Venischazak! “Be strong! Be strong! Let us be strengthened!”
Prepared by Devorah Abenhaim
