You Are Not Alone
Why Does Genesis End on Such a Low Note?
By: Rabbi YY Jacobson
Experiencing the Other
Sadie goes to see her rabbi. She complains about her very bad headaches, and whines, cries, and talks about her poor living conditions for hours. All of a sudden, Sadie shouts, overjoyed: "Rabbi, your holy presence has cured me! My headache is gone!" To which the rabbi replies: "No Sadie, it is not gone. I have it now."
Culminating Words
Thus are the culminating words of the first—and in many ways the foundational—book of the Torah, the book of Genesis:
"Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years; they embalmed him and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt[1]."
This ending is disturbing. Could have Genesis not concluded on a more inspiring note, just like the four following books of Moses?
Even the fifth and final book, Deuteronomy, which concludes with Moses' passing, culminates with a eulogy so rarely moving that it leaves one with an unforgettable impression of Moses.
Indeed, for thousands of years the classical Jewish sages, authors and rabbis have paid special attention to concluding their written volumes and verbal speeches on a positive note[2]. Even if the subject matter was one of melancholic nature, they desired that at least the punch line, the "last inning," as it were, should invigorate readers and listeners with a message of hope and promise.
Yet, the Book of Books chooses to conclude its first installment with a gloomy and despairing punch line: Joseph's death and burial.
That incredible human being who in the best and worst of times displayed enormous dignity and richness of spirit, that tremendous visionary and leader who rescued a world from famine, is now gone. If that is not enough, Genesis informs us that Joseph is embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. There his remains would be stored for hundreds of years until the Jews leave Egypt and bury his bones in the city of Shechem (Nabulus).
While Joseph's father, Jacob, labored hard for assurances that his body would not remain among the morally depraved—and what would turn out to be genocidal—Egyptian people but would be brought back to the sacred soil of Hebron, Joseph's worn and sacred body must remain etched in Egyptian earth for centuries.
Even if the Torah felt compelled to culminate Genesis with Joseph's death, it could have ended with the second-to-the-last verse of Genesis: "Joseph told his brothers: 'I am about to die, but G-d will indeed remember you and bring you up out of this land to the land that He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob... You will bring my bones up out of here." At least that would have ended the book with a promise for future redemption. What indeed are the final words of the book?
“Joseph died... and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt!”
"Be Strong! Be Strong!"
The question about the ending of Genesis increases upon considering the Jewish custom that when the reader of the Torah concludes each of the books of the Five Books of Moses, the entire congregation thunders out loud: Chazak! Chazak! Venischazak! "Be strong! Be strong! Let us be strengthened!" This will occur this Shabbat morning in synagogues the world over. When the reader of the Torah concludes with the verse—“Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years; they embalmed him and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt"—Jews will sing out: Chazak! Chazak! Venischazak! "Be strong! Be strong! Let us be strengthened!"
But how can one glean strength, never mind triple strength, from this despairing end?
The Pain of Loneliness
Yet it may be that it is precisely this ending that grants us a deeply comforting message. Unfortunately, we cannot live life without pain. Every life comes with challenges. The very genesis of existence is rooted in a void and a vacuum—the concealment of the Divine infinite presence to allow for an egocentric universe. This means that life, whichever way you twist it, is a confrontation with a void, and thus a painful experience.
What a person must know is not how to get rid of his or her pain—that may not always be possible—but rather how to discover that they are empowered to deal with the pain and that they are not alone in it.
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), who survived three years in the concentration camps of Dachau and Auschwitz and went on to create a new school of psychotherapy, Logotherapy, once shared the following story. A woman phoned him up in the middle of the night and calmly told him that she was about to commit suicide. Frankl kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living. Eventually, she promised him she would not take her life, and she kept her word.
When they met later, Frankl asked her which of his reasons she had found convincing. "None," she replied. What then persuaded her to go on living? Her answer was simple. Frankl had been willing to listen to her in the middle of the night. A world in which someone was prepared to listen to another's distress seemed to her one in which it was worthwhile to live.
