Years ago, an elderly member of our Jewish community called
me to come to her apartment. She felt
she was nearing the end of her life and she wanted to think about her
burial. She feared that her children
wanted to have her cremated and put into a vessel to sit on a shelf rather than
to have her be buried in a traditional Jewish fashion. I asked her if she ever told them directly
what her wishes were, what she definitely did not want done, and if she ever
had them promise to follow her wishes for having tahara, a kosher casket, and
burial in the ground. She had not. After my visit, she did call her children to
her bedside and expressed her wishes both in terms of positive and negative
statements. She also had them promise
that they would honor her requests after she died. The bottom line is that her action worked and
her wishes were followed.
How many of us were or have been deliberately told by our
parents which principles and values that they’ve lived by that they want us to
carry on. It’s true, that parents often
set examples for their children by living their lives in specific ways, but is
that as efficacious as actually setting an example and listing the behaviors
you hope they will incorporate into their own lives and which behaviors you
hope they will avoid?
In today’s parasha, Vayechi, the final parasha in Bereishit,
we read an extended death bed scene of Yaakov who has lived for 17 years in
Egypt. Yaakov knows that he is dying
and chooses to take matters into his own hands before he leaves the scene. In a sense, he is getting his “house into
order.” He wants to make sure his family
knows where he wants to be buried.
Read 47:29-31 Perhaps
you noticed that Yaakov chose to speak to his son Yosef before addressing his
other sons. Yosef was a government
official. He had political clout with
the Pharoah and the people of Egypt.
Even so, Yaakov wants his son to know “DO NOT BURY ME IN EGYPT.” In
other words, Egypt, no matter how good it has been to you, Yosef, and to
us, it is not our place! Yaakov reminds Yosef where his place really
is and that is next to his forefathers.
This interaction with Yosef also has an interesting use of wording. Yosef is asked to promise and then to swear
that he will not bury his father in Egypt.
Why do you think Yaakov asked Yosef to promise and then to
swear? What is the difference between making
a promise and swearing?
Now let’s look at 49:29-32.
This scene takes place after Yaakov has blessed his grandsons Ephraim
and Menashe and each of his sons. Now he
is speaking to all of his sons and telling them his final wishes. He does not tell them as he told Yosef, “do
not bury me in Egypt,” instead he tells them the precise location where he
wants them to bury him. He tells them,
“in the cave that is in the field of Ephron, the cave which is in the field of
Machpela, facing Mamre, in the land of Canaan.”
There is no doubt about where he wishes to be buried. He wants it to be on the family property,
where all of his ancestors were buried.
The Torah makes sure that it provides us with both
transmissions that Yaakov gave prior to his death. The first transmission involving Yosef was
stated in the negative and positive…DON’T bury me in Egypt take me up from Egypt and bury me in their
burial place. It also involved taking an oath.
The second transmission involving the other sons was stated only in the
positive and did not involve taking an oath.
Which transmission was more effective? Perhaps if we look at the scenes which follow
we can determine that.
Read 50: 2-6 It
appears that Yosef’s having sworn in a formal way carried weight with
Pharoah. In many ways, if you look at
the text, Yaakov also had stature within Egyptian society as well as his
son. Afterall, they “bewailed him 70
days. “ Perhaps it would have been a more complicated matter to remove his body
from Egypt if there had been no oath made.
The entourage that goes with Yosef and his brothers from Egypt is truly
a procession indicative of a “state funeral.”
Read 50: 12-13
Yaakov’s wish to be buried by his ancestors was fulfilled by his
sons. Yosef ensured that he would not be
buried in Egypt, the other sons ensured that he would be buried where his
grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, and wife had been buried.
Read 50:24-26 At the
end of the parasha, which is also the end of Bereishit, we see Yosef at the end
of his life. Notice that he too made his
sons swear that his bones would be carried from this place when the Israelites
would be redeemed. Yosef, although he
had been successful in Egypt, although he had attained a position of power
within the government, and had basically
assimilated into Egyptian society, seemed to get the message of his father
better than did his brothers. He
understood that the Israelites were not to give up hope, that G-d would redeem
them and that they would return to Canaan.
He understood that he too wanted to be buried with his forefathers in
the Cave of Machpela. He is the only one
of the sons of Yaakov whose bones were carried out of Egypt some 400 years
later. It appears that he of all the
sons of Yaakov, learned from his father perhaps because he heard both a
negative and positive message, not just the positive. He also learned that his expectations would
be followed if he extracted an oath from those at his bedside, just as his
father extracted an oath from him.
Do you think expectations should be stated in the positive
and negative forms? I know that when I
taught elementary school we never said what we didn’t want kids to do….only
what we wanted them to do. Do you think
this is an effective way of getting the results you’re hoping for in the
younger generation? Do you think there
is a place to tell individuals what you don’t want? With your own parents, were
you led solely by example or did you have serious conversations about
expectations for behavior and attitudes?
As you think about the legacy you hope to leave, how do you envision
communicating hopes and expectations with others?
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