The parsha this week is Parshat Beshalach, which contains the following passage from Exodus 13:19
Moses took the bones of Joseph and his brothers with him, for Joseph had bound the sons of Israel (i.e., Jacob) by an oath that they should in turn bind their descendants by an oath, saying, “God will surely remember you and your descendants, and when He does, you must have your descendants take up my bones from here together with yours.”
Kehot Chumash; Chabad House Publications, Los Angeles
This week, the remains of the final Hamas hostage, Ran Gvili, were finally recovered and repatriated.
So this week we tell two stories, 34 centuries apart, of Jewish people being disinterred to have their remains brought home to Israel.
(Incidentally, Joseph's bones were reburied in Shechem, on a plot of land Jacob had purchased more than 400 years earlier. According to some Rabbinic sources, Joseph asked to be buried on this land because this was where he was sold into slavery. Shechem is in Samaria. It is in Area A of the West Bank, which is under full Palestinian administrative/security control and where Jews cannot safely visit. But that's a whole other conversation.)
