As often happens, our Torah Parasha this week closely relates to current world events. Moses carrying Joseph’s bones out of Egypt and Israel bringing home the body of the last hostage from Gaza both stem from the same deep Jewish instinct: we do not abandon our dead. Yet, our Torah and Halakhah emphasize that while kavod ha‑met is sacred, honoring the dead can never override our greater obligation to the living and to creating a more just world.
When this week’s parashah describes the Exodus, the Torah suddenly pauses the narrative to record a seemingly small detail: “And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, for he had required a solemn oath of the children of Israel, saying: ‘God will surely take notice of you; then you shall carry up my bones from here with you’” (Exodus 13:19). Joseph had already made that demand at the end of his life: “God will surely remember you, and you shall carry up my bones from here” (Genesis 50:24–25). Generations later, Moses fulfills the promise, and the bones of Joseph are finally buried in Shechem when the people enter the land: “And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, they buried in Shechem” (Joshua 24:32).
The Rabbis provide additional context. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Vayehi Beshalach 1:9 depicts Moses personally searching for Joseph’s coffin, calling out at the Nile, and miraculously raising it, highlighting that Moses himself takes responsibility for this ancient promise. Ibn Ezra on Exodus 13:19 notes that the Torah emphasizes Moses because he took this task on himself voluntarily and as a matter of his own merit. The newly freed people leave Egypt not only with their dough and possessions but also with a coffin. Joseph’s bones serve as a movable symbol of memory and loyalty—a reminder that the story isn’t complete until even the dead are brought from slavery to the land of covenant.
This week’s news out of Israel echoes that verse painfully. After months of war and captivity following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the Israeli army announced the recovery and identification of Ran Gvili’s body, the last remaining hostage whose remains were still held in Gaza. With that, every hostage taken into Gaza is now, in some sense, “home” – either returned alive in exchanges or brought back in death for burial and mourning. Israel’s long-standing principle that “no soldier is left behind” has, in our generation, expanded into a broader national commitment: no citizen, no victim, no body is willingly abandoned in enemy hands. Like Joseph refusing to let his story end in Egypt and the people refusing to leave him there, Israel today refuses to let its dead remain in Gaza’s tunnels or morgues. The state and the people shoulder the burden of retrieving the coffin, sometimes at great political and military cost. This is a modern expression of kavod ha‑met: the dead deserve dignity, return, and a resting place among their own.
And yet, the Torah and our tradition also emphasize a crucial distinction. When hostages are alive, the mitzvah at stake is pikuach nefesh – saving and protecting life. The verse “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My ordinances, which if a person does, they shall live by them” (Leviticus 18:5) is understood by the Talmud to mean “and not die by them”; from this, Halakhah derives that saving a life overrides almost every other commandment (Yoma 85b). The days and nights when living hostages were in undisclosed locations in Gaza were driven by that urgency: lives that might still be saved. Now, with the last body recovered, the mitzvah being fulfilled is different: it is kavod ha‑met, which, as weighty as it is, does not stand on the same halakhic level as pikuach nefesh.
At the same time, kavod ha‑met is not optional. Tractates like Moed Katan (especially 27b–28a) and Ketubot (17a) demonstrate how far we go to honor the dead: we interrupt other obligations to escort a funeral; we set aside some aspects of our own dignity for the dignity of the deceased; communities rearrange their priorities to make sure no Jew is buried alone or without proper rites. Berakhot 18a–b explores the idea that the dead have a kind of ongoing awareness of what happens to them, reinforcing the belief that post‑mortem dignity really matters. Joseph’s bones carried through the wilderness and buried at Shechem serve as the Torah’s narrative example of this halakhic principle: we do not abandon our dead in Egypt; we carry them, literally if we must, until we can give them a resting place of dignity and belonging.
But the hierarchy is clear. If honoring the dead conflicts with saving a life, we save the life. “Live by them and not die by them” is not just a verse; it is a stance (Leviticus 18:5; Yoma 85b). That is where your core intuition aligns deeply with the tradition: kavod ha‑met is very important, but it is not as important as bringing the living home and protecting the living now. Bringing bodies home is a mitzvah; bringing living hostages home is a higher mitzvah.
This same tension plays out on a smaller scale in our liturgical lives, especially around Mourner’s Kaddish. The text of Kaddish itself is strikingly life‑oriented: “Yitgadal ve‑yitkadash shemei rabba…” – “Magnified and sanctified be His great Name…” – and it never mentions death or mourning. It is a doxology, a public sanctification of God’s name in the world. Over time, Kaddish became attached to mourning – in part through aggadic stories about how a son’s Kaddish can aid a deceased parent – but the actual words remain focused on God’s greatness and on peace in this world.
Different communities practice mourning in various ways. Some only have halakhic mourners—those who, within 12 months of losing a parent, 30 days after losing other close relatives, or on a yahrzeit—stand and say Kaddish. Others have everyone stand: to show solidarity with mourners, remember victims without relatives, or simply acknowledge the significance of Jewish history. I have always been uncomfortable with this practice. My discomfort with people who, without a specific obligation, routinely stand and recite Kaddish, or with everyone constantly standing, fits into this broader conversation. There is a real risk that we could become a religion centered mainly on death and memorials—focused on “our dead”—rather than on the living covenantal duties of justice, chesed, and tikkun olam.
If Joseph’s bones were meant to be at the center, the Torah would end in the wilderness, with the coffin permanently in the middle of the camp. Instead, Joseph is buried, and the story moves on (Joshua 24:32). The goal is not to walk forever with a coffin at the front; the goal is to build a just and holy society in the land. The bones are carried so that we do not forget the past and do not abandon our dead, but they are not the destination. Likewise, today: recovering the last hostage’s body is a necessary and noble act of kavod ha‑met, but it cannot define our whole religious project. The real question is what we, the living, will do with our grief: will we simply circle around it in ritual, or will we use it to fuel a deeper commitment to protecting life, limiting violence, pursuing justice, and making this world less cruel?
The truest kavod ha‑met is kavod ha‑chayim: using memory of the dead to push us to protect and sanctify life, to pursue justice and peace, so that fewer bones need to be carried and fewer hostages need to be brought home. Moses carried Joseph’s bones so that no part of our story would be left in Egypt. In our day, we carry home the bodies of hostages so that no Jew is abandoned in Gaza. But the Torah’s greatest demand is not about how we carry our dead; it is about how we carry our lives. We will always practice kavod ha‑met. Yet the highest honor we can give the dead is to fight for the living – to build a world in which fewer oaths are sworn about bones, and more covenants are kept in life.
