GC#41 - Raider of the Lost Ark - Omer Day 27 - a podcast by Amram Landau

If you were taken from your home as a baby, or as an impressionable young man, it would be traumatic. If you went through slavery and then became viceroy, or you were raised as a prince, even though recognisable as a Hebrew, you could very possibly suffer an identity crisis. Both Yosef and Moshe knew of their origins and could easily have turned their back on what could seem like a rejection by their nation. Given Egyptian names, it is enough to confuse anyone.

Yet they both came through extraordinary circumstances when they could easily have just shut their eyes to what was going on. They went on to lead by example, to save and to sustain others - Yosef through the storehouses, and Moshe, in whose merit the מן fell. 

And both played a part in the splitting of the Yam suf. Moshe stretched out his staff, but the sea only 'fled' when it saw first Nachshon, but then the Aron/coffin/bones of Yosef - raised by Moshe for this purpose. 'Alei Shor - Arise ox' he wrote on the golden tablet that he threw in. (Note the tragic irony in that item's use later to produce the eigel - the wild untamed version...thrown in by Micha...the very child that Moseh saved!)

It seems like the sea had to fulfill a promise - a covenant, just like Moshe did to Yosef. Just like Yosef did to Yaakov. Yosef's aron, was clearly not the only Ark of the Covenant. So much so that the Midrash describes the fact that they questioned how Yosef's aron went with Moshe's aron even though the former contained the dead, and the latter, the Torah of life...

The response? 'Don't worry - this one kept everything that was written in that one'. Let's discover what Moshe understood about the secret of Yosef's atzmus - his bones - his very self. A trait that Moshe himself shared. Taking responsibility.

Taking the bull by the horns.

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