Joseph's Dual Loyalty

1/2/2026

"My language is German. My culture, my attainments are German. I considered myself a German intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in Germany and Austria. Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew."

I've been thinking about these words from Sigmund Freud as I read the parsha this week, where the identity dilemma American Jews—or should I say Jewish Americans—are often faced with, echoes powerfully.

It's the concluding section of Genesis, the parsha of Vayechi, which tells the emotional story of the passing of Jacob and his departing words to his family. And then the same with Joseph, with whose passing we conclude this first book of the Torah.

Both Jacob and Joseph die with one final request on their lips:

Swear to us, they implored their family, that you will bring our bodies for burial in the land of Israel.

Jacob's request is easier to digest. He was not an Egyptian. He had only arrived in Egypt in his final years to live closer to his son Joseph. But he did not identify as an Egyptian and Egypt was not his home.

It makes sense therefore that he wanted to be brought over to his native land and be buried together with his wife and parents, in the family plot in Hebron.

"Bury me with my fathers . . . In the cave in the Field of Machpelah . . .There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah; there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebecca; and there I buried Leah."

But Joseph's request is astonishing.

Joseph was the vizier of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. He led the country through its most difficult hardships and brought Egypt to the height of its power by foreseeing and preparing for the famine that would strike the region. He was a loyal Egyptian who married an Egyptian woman and lived in Egypt for 80 years.

And yet Joseph's final request was for his body to be taken to a different land for burial.

"Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die, but G-d will surely remember you and take you up from this land, to the land that He promised by oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”And Joseph bound the sons of Israel by an oath, “G-d will surely remember you, and you must take my bones up from here.”

These words from Joseph are just stunning.

Surely antisemites at the time wouldn't have approved of Joseph's request. They would falsely claim that it showed a lack of loyalty to Egypt. Perhaps it is indeed what seeded the Egyptians' hatred and suspicion of the Jews which we begin reading next week.

But Joseph was a confident man and he was proud of who he was.

While sitting in the seats of power in Egypt he never forgot that he was, first and foremost, a Jew.

And Joseph never forgot that G-d promised his grandfather Abraham that the Jewish people would eventually all return to the Land of Israel.

Joseph was proud of his history, confident in his identity, and never forgot his roots. And he was not going to let his haters change any of that.

Joseph's story is a reminder to American Jews that however successful we might be and however influential in American society we might have become, we should never forget our Jewish roots and always remember our history.

Joseph was a proud Egyptian, but like Sigmund Freud thousands of years later, at the moment that counted most, he preferred to be called a Jew.

Rabbi Tzvi Alperowitz