Shanah tovah um’tukah – may this be a year of goodness and sweetness.

Despite that ubiquitous greeting, we know that our liturgy for these Days of Awe can get a bit more intense. Throughout the High Holy Days, we will spend a good deal of time meditating on both the positive and negative aspects of our days. Despite these days being a time of joy, the liturgy is soaked in mortality and fear.

We will pray together, pleading with God, “Deliver us!” “Redeem us!” “Save us!”

This is the ultimate prayer, not just of our people, but one found across faiths and philosophies. A central function of religion is to facilitate humanity’s cries for an end to oppression, to hardship, to suffering. Be it through a messianic figure or a noble path to enlightenment or the pursuit of righteousness, this is one of the biggest reasons we, human beings, pray.

In our Jewish tradition, we have all kinds of liturgy and ritual to pray for healing, for sustenance, for peace. But we do not only ask — pestering God with requests and demands. We praise, too.

We extoll God’s virtues, perhaps in a wholly unsubtle attempt at flattery, but maybe it’s also a little bit about us. On these High Holy Days, we insert into the Amidah the words, “Mi chamocha Av harachamim” – Who is like You, compassionate God? You may recognize those first words from our song of praise throughout the year, the Song of the Sea, Mi chamocha. Maybe the reason we repeat, over and over again throughout our liturgy for the weekday, shabbat, and holidays alike, “Mi chamocha?” – “Who is like you, Eternal God?” is not just to praise God but to remind ourselves that God has redeemed before, and God will redeem again.

We say on Passover, “B’chol dor vador” — In every generation, every person must see themself as though they personally went out from Egypt. Is this for God’s benefit? Rather, it is for us. We need to feel the relief of redemption — that joy is integral to our tradition.

When the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds from bondage to liberation, we crossed with them. And so, every day, we sing, as we did that day, “Who is like You?”

Those famous words, Mi Chamocha, appear not only in the Song of the Sea and the High Holy Day Amidah insertion, but also in our Psalms. “Kol atzmotai tomarna: Adonai, mi chamocha?” — All my bones will say: Eternal One, who is like You? (Psalm 35:10).

Really, though? All my bones? All of them? Surely my femur will praise God, but my funny bone is a bit more agnostic.

Maybe bones, atzmot, is a metaphor – my structure, my inner core, my physical being. In the context of Psalm 35, the word is placed in parallel with nefesh, soul, only one verse prior. Perhaps we should read it as “My entire worldly existence shall say…”

Even so, I do not believe I have ever given my entire physical self over to whole unquestioning praise. Even at our greatest moments of joy, we recognize pain. At weddings, we step on a glass to bring to mind the brokenness in our world. In truth, do we not all, even the most zealous among us, have a degree of doubt when it comes to matters of faith? What is faith, if not belief in the absence of certainty? Belief in the presence of doubt? So I have to ask, does the psalmist really expect that every bone in my body, from my head to my toes, will praise God without question or reticence?

I think back to that image of the Israelites crossing the sea. Hours earlier, a call rang out in the Israelite neighborhoods of Egypt, get up, let’s go. No time for the bread to rise, grab your kids, it’s time to leave Egypt.

Despite not having enough time to let the dough rise, one Israelite remembered her ancestor Joseph. She remembered that Joseph made the children of Israel vow that, when God redeemed them, they would carry his bones into the promised land.

In the very last verses of Genesis, Joseph has the children make the vow, and then, in the very last verse, he dies, and his body is embalmed and placed into a coffin in Egypt (Genesis 50:25-26).

Exodus chapter 1 verse 6, “A new king rose up over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” Indeed, generations had passed since the children of Israel made their promise to take Joseph’s body out of Egypt, and we are taught that the Hebrews had been enslaved 400 years, but still, she remembered.

Our tradition teaches of a woman named Serach bat Asher. According to the Medieval Midrashic text Sefer HaYashar, Serach was beautiful, wise, and skilled on the harp. She was the daughter of Asher, granddaughter of Jacob, niece of Joseph. The Midrash teaches that she was the one who gently told Jacob that Joseph had not been killed by a beast, as the brothers had reported, but was alive in Egypt. While she told him, she softly played the harp to soothe him. Jacob blessed her, praying for eternal life. According to Talmud, Serach was the last surviving member of the generation that made the promise to Joseph. After all that time and all the hardship within it, Serach remained committed to the bones and the promises of her ancestors (Sotah 13a).

And so she brought the bones to Moses. Exodus chapter 13 verse 19 reads, “Vayikach Moshe et atzmot Yosef imo” – “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.” Imo is translated here as “with him,” but if we instead read it as amo, we might understand the verse to mean, “Moses took the bones of Joseph, the bones of his people.”

The Talmud teaches, “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh” — All of Israel is responsible for one another (Shevuot 39a).

That statement very well might make you uncomfortable. I’m certainly uncomfortable. I’m responsible for the actions of Jews I’ve never met?

The poet Andrew Lustig writes, “I am the collective pride and excitement that is felt when we find out that new actor, that great athlete, his chief of staff… is Jewish. And I am the collective guilt and shame that is felt when we find out that serial killer, that Ponzi schemer, that wife beater… is Jewish.”

We didn’t need the Talmud to tell us that we’re responsible for one another — we feel it in our bones. We feel it when we hear a name on the news that sounds just a little bit familiar and our ears perk up. We feel it when we google a celebrity and immediately click on the “Early Life” section of their wikipedia page.

We feel that pride, that shame, that sorrow, that joy because we are connected to one another. Through shared language, memory, tradition, faith, we are one people – sometimes divided, often at odds, but, on some cosmic level, always connected.

In 10 days, on Yom Kippur, we will read the Torah’s account of our collective acceptance of the Covenant at Sinai. We will hear the words chanted, “Not with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath, but with each one who stands here among us this day in the presence of the Eternal our God, and with each one who is not here among us this day” (Deuteronomy 29:13). Our history, our present, and our fates are intertwined.

And of course, in the famous story of Ezekiel, God places the prophet in a valley full of dry, lifeless bones. God asks, “Can these bones live again?” Ezekiel responds, “Only You know, Eternal Sovereign.” God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and, as he does, the bones begin to rattle and shake, coming together to form skeletons. The skeletons are given veins and flesh and skin. Finally, they are given the breath of life. “Behold,” says God, “this is the entire house of Israel” (Ezekiel 37).

When our tradition imagines a messianic resurrection of the dead, this is the prooftext. We point to this text as evidence of God’s future redeeming power. Why this one and not the Song of the Sea – our jubilant Mi Chamocha after crossing the miraculously parted waters on dry land from slavery to freedom? Sure, that was in the past and this is, maybe, a vision of the future, but why do we need to imagine the whole of Israel as dry bones? Why not focus on that moment of redemption for the living?

So I ask the old woman digging out Joseph’s coffin:

Serach bat Asher, you have lived a long, hard life, going from famine in Canaan through four centuries of slavery in Egypt. You heard you have to pick up and leave right now. Surely you have things of your own to gather; living friends, relatives, neighbors who could use your help. Why spend your time uncovering a sarcophagus and collecting these long-dead bones? Why are Joseph’s bones a priority?

When I was 16 years old, I visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum with my NFTY-in-Israel trip. We sat and listened to a survivor as he told his story. “I have grandchildren older than you are,” he said. “I doubt I will live to tell my story to your children.” In truth, I don’t remember the specifics of his story, but I remember his call to action: We are the transition generation, the last who will meet with and speak to survivors who were really there. It is up to us now to carry his story, his bones, with us; to bring the legacy of a fading generation to the ones that are yet to come.

Serach bat Asher looks up at me with calm determination. “Because they’re my bones too,” she replies.

She wraps Joseph’s bones in a blanket, cradling them like an infant. She carries them out of Egypt, across the sea, into the wilderness. They are witness to God’s miracles, they are present with us when we receive and accept Torah at Sinai. She holds them close as she dances with Miriam in celebration of our shared redemption.

Kol atzmotai tomarna, mi chamocha?

The bones of my body, the bones I carry with me, the bones of those long forgotten, the bones that have yet to form. All my bones shall say, who is like You?