Our life essence

In Beshalach, our Torah portion for this week, one of the first things we read is that Moses fulfilled Joseph's dying request. Joseph had specifically requested of his sons that his bones be taken when they left for the promised land, and we read in our Torah story that Moses did that very thing; he took Joseph's bones with him on the journey into freedom.

Why the word bones? Well, yes, at that point Joseph's remains would only be bones. Yet, is it only bones that our Torah is talking about?

You see, in Hebrew the word for bones, atzamot, shares a root with the word for essence, which is atzmiut. The literal bones of Joseph, and of us all, are the physical skeletons, the literal scaffolding and framework for our physical bodies. In taking the atzamot, bones, of Joseph, Moses is also taking the atzmiut, the "essence" of Joseph into the promised land.

What is Joseph's essence? It is his spiritual framework, the framework of the soul. While Moses took the bony remains of Joseph's body in order to bury him in the Land of Israel, he also took the essence of Joseph on the journey.

This can be likened to looking at a beautiful cross stitch picture on our wall. I have one that a dear friend took hours of loving patience to make for me:

It spells out the Hebrew word Mizrach, which means "East 

It's beauty is unparalleled, with golden threads and beads, purple and teal stitches, all laboriously and carefully placed with meticulous, tedious precision, resulting in a gorgeous hand crafted work of art.

Yet, the back side of the canvas looks quite a bit different from the front. From the back, it's difficult to make out the word and the beads can't be seen at all. Looking at the back, we see the knots, some bumps, some fine threads of color, but it looks almost random and without a cohesive whole.


Only from the front side of the tapestry is it possible to see how it all fits together. From the front we can see that every stitch and every knot forms an integral part of a vast, magnificent, breathtaking picture.

The back of the work is the atzamot, the bones, the framework of the needlework. The front shows us the essence, the atzmiut.

As we travel through life, for the most part, we only see the back of the tapestry of our life, it's bones, it's scaffolding and framework. We see the knots, the tangles, a few fine threads of color here and there, but it doesn't make much sense. It looks random and chaotic. When we take a few steps back and bring in our spiritual essence, using the whole of our intuition, our knowledge, and our spiritual wisdom, sometimes we can glimpse the picture that might be on the other side, the soulful essence of our whole life across the decades.

Joseph wanted not only his bones, his physical skeleton, taken to the Promised Land; he wanted the Hebrews to also take his essence, his soulful self. He wanted his spiritual children to carry both sides of the tapestry with them, to help them make sense of their lives together as a people.

Today, which side of the tapestry of your life are you choosing to view? Are you in a particularly gnarly situation, and all you are seeing are the knots and random imperfections and chaotic bumps? What if you turned the tapestry over and took a step back...what might you see then? Can you see the golden beads? Do the fine threads which have woven their way through your life make more sense when viewed from a larger perspective, from the perspective of your soul essence?

Dr. Wayne Dyer would often say, "What do you get when you squeeze an orange? Do you get lemon juice? Grapefruit juice? Cherry juice? No. When you squeeze an orange you get the essence of the orange. You get orange juice."

When life squeezes us, how we respond is our essence. When we respond with unkindness and stress and negativity, we are refusing to try and see the tapestry from the front. We are too narrowly focused on the knots and gnarls at the back of the work, the bones, the atzamot, and we miss the breathtaking beauty of the golden beads and words on the front of the work, the essence and soul, the atzmiut.

Taking a breath and closing our eyes and calling to mind the beautiful things and people in our lives will often be the difference between seeing only the bones, and seeing also the soul of our life. If we cannot see that beautiful essence, we are most likely looking at the wrong side of the work.