Jacob lived in Egypt for 17 years, to the age of 147.  When it came time for him to pass away, he called for his son Joseph. "Please do not bury me in Egypt," he says to Joseph.  "For I will lie down with my fathers, and you shall take me out of Egypt and bury me in their tomb." (Gen. 47:30).   Jacob claims that Joseph’s two sons are like his own, and blesses them , that they may proliferate abundantly, like fish.   Today, on Shabbat evening, parents bless their children, saying to their sons, "May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe," which comes from this story in the Torah.  We hope that our children, though raised in a non-Jewish society like these boys were in Egypt, will learn that they are Jewish, and will live by their Jewish heritage.

Jacob calls together all of his children, and blesses each of them, the twelve tribes of Israel.  When he is finished, he instructs his children to bury him in the cave of the Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Leah are buried. 

Jacob then draws himself onto his bed and dies.  Joseph falls upon him, weeping, and orders his servants to embalm his father.  After the period of mourning throughout Egypt, Joseph approaches Pharaoh requesting to go up to Canaan to bury his father.  Pharaoh agrees, and Joseph and his family and the elders of the land of Egypt go up and bury his father just as he’d asked.  

Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers, who were still afraid that Joseph harbored some hatred against them for what they’d done to him years before.  So they said to him, "Our father gave orders before his death, saying, ‘please kindly forgive the deed of your brothers and their sin,’ (Gen. 50:17), and he did.  Joseph wept, and the brothers flung themselves before him.

Joseph dies at the age of 110 years, after raising three generations of children in Egypt.  Before his death, he told them, "I am about to die, but God will indeed remember you, and bring you out of Egypt, and then you must bring my bones up out of here," (Gen. 50:25).  They embalmed him and placed him in a coffin and he was buried in Egypt.

This parasha closes the book of Bereshit, Genesis.