Vayechi: Making a Living

This parsha is about the end of 2 lives: Jacob and Joseph.  Both want to be buried in the promised land: Jacob immediately and Joseph anon.  It is extremely important to these patriarchal figures that Israel be their final resting place. 

When I buried my parents, I could feel a relic of that mission.  Burying them in Israel was their final struggle,  a battle bequeathed to me, their son.  Its accomplishment is a lasting source of nachas ruach, the satisfying peace, that comes from doing the appropriately ironic.  The Holocaust survivors, who chose to come to come to America to make a living, lie eternally in the ground that was consecrated by their ancestors.  The land that was the subject of inter-generational dreams and contributed so much to an ongoing tradition of surviving and escaping persecution. 

Jacob has come to Egypt to survive the famine.  He had come 17 years earlier.  Joseph, based upon Pharaoh's dream had predicted a 7 year famine.  Jacob had, at least, 10 years to leave, to return to Canaan.   He stayed in Egypt.  Perhaps he was living the title of the parsha: he,  and his clan ,were making a living.

Going to Egypt had demeaned Jacob.  He had to adjure his powerful son Joseph to bury him in his ancestral crypt.  He had lain claim to the Cave of Machpela by burying Leah there. (He had been forced to bury Rachel in Bethlehem.)  Once Joseph swears to fulfill this funereal wish, he bows to the the bed, presumably, indirectly, to his son. 

Jacob leaves a legacy of "blessings" to his sons.  Onkelos interprets this to be deeds to various parts of the Promised Land.  These are dream certificates. Jacob's holdings in Canaan are either non-existent or long gone.  His rusted keys will be ignored.  But these dreams are kept, and motivate "returns" to lands that pilgrims had never seen. A dream that lives today, even in me. 

The Children of Israel and a great Egyptian retinue come to Hevron and bury Jacob  -as he had requested.  Why did they return to Egypt? Physically they had escaped. Perhaps that they had to make a living. 

Joseph had a good life in Egypt. he enjoyed his great grandchildren (who would go on to conquer  parts of the Promised Land.)  But he casts his fate with the redemption of his kin.  He transmits the password: Pakod Yifkod, Gd will surely remember - and remind the nation

Our burial plot, near my parents in Eretz haChaim, the land of the living, is bought.  For now, we will wait.