The Torah does not merely record history. It teaches patterns. The story of the Bible unfolds through survival, continuity, and moral endurance. That is why Parasha Beshalach feels so piercingly relevant today.

The parsha opens with a detail that is easy to miss but impossible to ignore:

“And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the children of Israel solemnly swear, saying: God will surely remember you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you.” (Exodus 13:19)

Joseph’s bones are not symbolic. They are physical. Heavy. Inconvenient. Moses does not begin the journey to freedom with triumphalism, but with responsibility. Freedom is incomplete if it forgets its dead. Redemption begins with memory.

Joseph is eventually buried in Shechem—modern-day Nablus. The Torah is precise about geography. The Jewish people do not wander into history anonymously; they return to specific places, to land, to burial sites, to promises made generations earlier. This is not mythology. It is continuity.

From there, the parsha moves to the defining moment of the Exodus: the splitting of the sea. The Israelites have already left Egypt. Slavery is over. Pharaoh has lost. And yet Egypt chooses to pursue.

Why?

Not for strategy.
Not for defense.
But to destroy.

The Torah describes an irrational pursuit—an obsession that overrides logic. Egypt chases a people who are no longer a threat, no longer property, no longer economically useful. And that pursuit leads to Egypt’s destruction.

This is where the parsha becomes unbearably present.

Bones, Egypt, and Healing — Ran Gvili as the Bridge

This week, as we read Beshalach, the body of Ran Gvili—the last hostage—is brought back to Israel and returned to his parents.

“Last hostage” is not a statistic. It is a threshold. It marks the closing of a chapter that has held an entire nation suspended between prayer and dread, hope and helplessness. His return allows something essential to begin—not victory, but healing.

Joseph’s bones teach that redemption is not only about escaping slavery. It is about carrying responsibility. Moses does not say, “We’ll deal with the dead later.” He begins freedom by refusing to abandon someone who cannot walk out on his own.

Ran Gvili’s return is the same ethic in modern form.

In the ancient story, Joseph’s remains are proof that the Jewish people are not merely fleeing Egypt—they are moving toward covenant, land, and continuity. In our story, bringing Ran home is proof that we are not merely surviving the moment—we are insisting that our community still has a soul.

There is a deeper historical echo here. The Exodus is the birth of Am Yisrael, but it begins with a wound: centuries of oppression, broken bodies, and stolen dignity. Healing requires more than winning. It requires retrieval—bringing back what was taken, restoring what can be restored, and naming what cannot.

When a hostage is returned alive, there is relief. When a body is returned, there is a different kind of mercy:........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)