Vayechi:Responsibilities

Yaakov is old and must confront his end.  He tries to arrange his legacy. Yaakov has become dependent upon his very successful son, Joseph.  Joseph had spent most of his life away from Jacob and his traditions.  When his first son, Menashe, was born,Joseph  named him  for the amnesia. There had now been 17 years of rapprochement between father and son, but the breach could never be mended perfectly.  When Jacob came to bless Joseph's son. how could he give precedence to one named for his renunciation? ...Menashe, Denial of the Past, will also be great a great nation, but Ephraim. Success,  will take precedence. 

Yaakov wants to be buried in the Promised Land. Before refrigeration and  rapid transportation this is a monumental task.  He adjures, with and oath,  powerful  Jospeph to make this happen.  The talmudists, commenting on Shavuoth,  the current daf yomi tractate, ask how such an oath can be taken.  Joseph does not have the power to carry out the request.  This becomes apparent when Jacob subsequently passes, and Joseph must ask, through intermediaries in the house of Pharaoh, for permission to carry out his father's request. Perhaps the oath means only that he will try his best. 

When my mother ( A"H) died, she had left no clear instructions about her burial.  My parents  had made monthly payments , for some years, to purchase plots in Eretz Hachaim, a cemetery near Beth Shemesh, in Israel.  They also had plots in New Jersey, by virtue of their membership in a society of holocaust survivors.  My sisters demanded that mother  be buried in New Jersey, so that the grave could be visited. (They live in Massachusetts and Florida, I live in Seattle).  I took her body on an arduous journey ( we were bumped from an El Al flight because a Chassidic group would not fly with a corpse on the plane [depite halachic alowance]) to Israel.  When I returned and we opened her safe deposit box, the only thing we found was note that said" bury me in Israel"

Vayechi positions Genesis as the story of how the Israelites became slaves in Egypt.  They enslaved themselves.  They sold one of their number, Joseph, into slavery because of envy (and perhaps out of the fear that they would be enthralled by him). In the process of rescuing Benjamin, who was taken as a slave for (trumped up) theft charges, they pledged themselves as slaves to Pharaoh's slave...and the law is: that which the slave acquires is the possession of his master. 

But I suspect that the true bondage came from the economic advantage of living in Egypt.  They had come down to Egypt to avoid starving to death.  But they found, that in Egypt,  they could make a ( good) living ( Machen a leben) .  Egypt was the America of its day.  Why go to the Promised Land...except to be buried.

The slavery in Egypt was a subjugation of values.