Dear Friends,
Last week as we watched the casket of Senator Bob Dole in its journey from Washington, DC, to Kansas and back to DC, I pondered this week’s torah portion, Vayechi.
The parallel to Vayechi is compelling. At the close of our portion, which also concludes the Book of Genesis, we read of the deaths of our patriarch, Jacob, and his beloved son, Joseph. They both died in Egypt, yet neither was buried there. Both of their remains were carried forth from the foreign territory of their sojourn to be set for eternity in the land of their people, Canaan. Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, had purchased a cave in Hevron two generations earlier when Sarah died, and the place was established as the family burial site. Joseph and his brothers bore Jacob’s casket back to Canaan, while centuries later, Moses carried up the bones of Joseph when our ancestors were released from Egyptian slavery.
This week, we witnessed that both Bob Dole’s body, and those of Jacob and Joseph, found ultimate rest in places sacred to each.
The Indians fought for their land. Jewish prayers for millennia have proclaimed a tie to Zion, too. What is the bond which links people to ancestral grounds?
I learned an answer to this question in 1989. I was on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv, to welcome one of the first airplanes making a direct flight from the USSR to Israel, bearing former refusniks (Refusnik was the name given to Soviet Jews who had been refused permission to leave Soviet Russia). For years, these persecuted Jews had petitioned and dreamt of leaving Russia to immigrate to Israel, their imagined motherland. Now, they were stepping down the jetway with their meager possessions, and met by a group of rabbis, myself included, singing Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem. I had been to the former USSR months earlier, and had met many determined Soviet Jews who had never been to Israel, but who wanted to live their remaining days in the Jewish state. As these newcomers reached the bottom of the jetway, many knelt, kissed the ground and cried. What made this place so special?
Home - we call it our homeland - a land in which one either can live one’s days, or be buried and rest therein forever. Many spend their lifetimes yearning for, or seeking, such homes. As Jews, our Tradition and our history have established that home
Jacob, Joseph, and Dole, each determined that they be buried only in sacred lands. We are inspired in their names.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabi Doug Kohn
Last week as we watched the casket of Senator Bob Dole in its journey from Washington, DC, to Kansas and back to DC, I pondered this week’s torah portion, Vayechi.
The parallel to Vayechi is compelling. At the close of our portion, which also concludes the Book of Genesis, we read of the deaths of our patriarch, Jacob, and his beloved son, Joseph. They both died in Egypt, yet neither was buried there. Both of their remains were carried forth from the foreign territory of their sojourn to be set for eternity in the land of their people, Canaan. Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, had purchased a cave in Hevron two generations earlier when Sarah died, and the place was established as the family burial site. Joseph and his brothers bore Jacob’s casket back to Canaan, while centuries later, Moses carried up the bones of Joseph when our ancestors were released from Egyptian slavery.
This week, we witnessed that both Bob Dole’s body, and those of Jacob and Joseph, found ultimate rest in places sacred to each.
The Indians fought for their land. Jewish prayers for millennia have proclaimed a tie to Zion, too. What is the bond which links people to ancestral grounds?
I learned an answer to this question in 1989. I was on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv, to welcome one of the first airplanes making a direct flight from the USSR to Israel, bearing former refusniks (Refusnik was the name given to Soviet Jews who had been refused permission to leave Soviet Russia). For years, these persecuted Jews had petitioned and dreamt of leaving Russia to immigrate to Israel, their imagined motherland. Now, they were stepping down the jetway with their meager possessions, and met by a group of rabbis, myself included, singing Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem. I had been to the former USSR months earlier, and had met many determined Soviet Jews who had never been to Israel, but who wanted to live their remaining days in the Jewish state. As these newcomers reached the bottom of the jetway, many knelt, kissed the ground and cried. What made this place so special?
Home - we call it our homeland - a land in which one either can live one’s days, or be buried and rest therein forever. Many spend their lifetimes yearning for, or seeking, such homes. As Jews, our Tradition and our history have established that home
Jacob, Joseph, and Dole, each determined that they be buried only in sacred lands. We are inspired in their names.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabi Doug Kohn