Rabbi Guzik is on sabbatical. Please enjoy A Bisl Torah from our Rabbinic Intern, Moe Howard.
This past Monday marked the end of what has felt like an era, as the body of slain hostage Ran Gvili was finally brought back to Israel for proper burial after more than two years of waiting, praying, and protesting.
Though this moment ought to have come much sooner, its arrival seems as if predestined. For it is in this week’s Torah portion that we read of a momentous era’s end marked by as momentous a return:
“And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had exacted an oath from the children of Israel, saying, ‘God will be sure to take notice of you: then you shall carry up my bones from here with you.’” (Exodus 13:19)
Joseph was first to be brought into Egypt, sold by his brothers into slavery against his will. Now he is last to be brought out, redeemed by his descendants’ generations hence. His homecoming, while not yet complete, is the closure of a saga and the fulfillment of a dual promise: that God does not abandon His people, and that they do not abandon each other.
So too, Ran’s homecoming is a saga closed and a promise fulfilled. And so too, there remains a journey ahead. With Egypt behind them and Sinai before them, the Israelites face the even greater challenge of redefinition. As former captive Rom Braslavski spoke from the stage of what was once Hostages Square in Tel Aviv: “We now go from one war to another war, which will be much more difficult—the war of rehabilitation.”
Together, we will win.
Shabbat Shalom.
