 Torah Thoughts
This week we read the Torah portion
"Chayei Sarah" (The Life of Sarah) (Genesis 23-25:18). This
portion contains 105 verses and no mitzvot (commandments).
Overview
Our portion opens with the death of Sarah and Abraham's
purchase of the Cave of Machpela in Hebron.
This burial ground became the first Jewish owned real estate in the Land of Israel. Later, Abraham himself, Isaac,
Rebecca, Jacob and Leah would be buried in the Cave. According to our
tradition, Adam and Eve are buried there too.
After burying his beloved Sarah, Abraham sends his
trusted servant Eliezer to seek a wife for Isaac in "the old
country" among Abraham's kinsmen.
Eliezer beseeches G-d to provide
a confirmation of the identity of Isaac's destined wife. If the woman
would respond to his request for a drink of water affirmatively and would
offer to water the camels too, she would be the worthy wife. The beautiful
chaste Rebecca appeared anon. Rebecca was the granddaughter of Abraham's
brother. Before discovering her lineage, Eliezer was convinced that Rebecca
was the woman he sought as he observed her compassionate response to his
request for a drink.
Eliezer met with her family. Rebecca's wily brother
Laban's interest was piqued upon seeing the jewelry given to his
sister. Eliezer recounted the auspicious events of his journey and
sought permission to take Rebecca back to Isaac in Canaan.
Reluctantly, the family inquired of Rebecca, who agreed to go with the man.
The family blessed Rebecca and sent her off with an entourage of servants…
In the distance Rebecca saw a man. Awed by his
aura, Rebecca fell off the camel. She inquired of the servant who informed
her that this was none other than Isaac, her intended husband.
Isaac brought her to the tent of his mother Sarah- Isaac
found her to be a worthy heir to his mother, a matriarch of the Jewish
People. Isaac married Rebecca and loved her.
In his old age, Abraham took another wife, Keturah.
According to our tradition, Keturah was none other than Hagar, mother of
Ishmael. She bore him more children. The Torah describes how Abraham
bequeathed all his spiritual and temporal assets to Isaac. To the children of
Keturah, he gave gifts and sent them away to the land of the east.
The Torah describes Abraham's death at a "good old
age, mature and content." Isaac and Ishmael bury their father in the Cave of Machpela.
G-d blessed Isaac, the heir to Abraham's destiny.
Our portion concludes with a genealogy of Ishmael. His
descendants settle outside of the Land
of Israel and form
their own nations. Ishmael and his offspring exit the stage. Next week's
Torah portion continues with the saga of Isaac and his descendants.
Insights
Abraham's insistence on seeking a wife for his son among
his own kin in a distant land, and his imposing an oath on his servant not to
find Isaac a mate among the local Canaanites raise a question. Decades
earlier, Abraham was instructed by G-d to leave his homeland and
his family. He was to abandon the pagan environs of his roots and
travel to a new place, Canaan. If Abraham's
relatives were pagans, and his Canaanite neighbors were pagans, why not save
on travel expenses and shop locally for a wife?
Aside from their idolatrous practices, the Canaanite
nations were known for their immorality. Theirs was a culture that
showed no respect for human life, let alone sensitivity to the needs of their
fellow. (See for example Genesis 18:20, 19:4-5) Sexual immorality
was socially acceptable (See Genesis 34- the people of Shechem tolerated
the rape of Dinah)
Abraham recognized that monotheism could be adopted by
intellectual exploration; indeed he had found G-d despite his pagan
background. Moral conscience, however, is inscribed on the soul of a
child by the milieu created in the home. Abraham recognized that faith and
covenant must be preceded by conscience.
There is a well-known dictum of our Sages- "Derech
Eretz kadma laTorah" - civility preceded the Torah. This can be
understood on a number of different levels.
Simply, chronologically, the Torah was given twenty-six
generations after Adam, during which time a mode of civility, social
intercourse and morality had developed. The Torah came to refine and codify
this morality and to inject it with spiritual significance, revealing areas
of concurrence between organic morality and Divine will, adding the concept
of Divine service and imperative to socially conventional conscience.
On another level, in order for Torah
to penetrate the psyche successfully, it must not be perceived to be
merely an intellectual pursuit. Torah should be viewed as a mold that
requires a pliable substrate in order to form a perfected product. If the
material placed in the mold is too unyielding or too fluid, the mold
will have no effect. The substrate is the human conscience. The product
is the perfected human reaching his potential.
Often, Jews, when confronting their lack of Torah observance
claim "But I'm a good person! Who needs all the ritual and
minutiae?"
Claims of moral goodness open the door to moral
relativism. How is "goodness" measured? By whose standards? The
Torah provides us with a guideline of absolute morality. Part of absolute
morality is fulfillment of potential. This can only be achieved by following
the "instruction manual", paying close attention to every detail.
The desire to follow THE "manual" can only
be achieved when one has been trained to follow A "manual".
Education in the ways of sensitivity is a prerequisite to molding a Torah
personality. (Similarly, the slavery-experience in Egypt, prepared the Jewish People
for submission to an infinitely greater Master.)
Abraham recognized that his family in "the old
country" possessed this value, whereas his neighbors did not. In his
kin, Abraham perceived the moral potential to be ingrained in his
descendants. It was thus necessary, in order to lay the groundwork for a nation
to accept the Torah, that their next matriarch, although a scion of pagans,
be a paragon of moral virtue.
HAFTARA
I Kings 1:1-31. Our Haftara describes the scene
at the death bed of our great king, David. As he lay unaware, his ambitious
son Adoniya, a pretender to the throne, engaged in political jockeying
and contrived his own coronation ceremony. Verse 6, giving us insight
into Adoniya's behavior, informs us of how his father never disciplined
or upbraided him.
Nathan the Prophet, and Bathsheba, the king's favorite
wife knew that Solomon, Bathsheba's son was to reign after David. They feared
that Adoniya would usurp the throne and purge the younger Solomon and his
mother. They devised a scheme to lead the king to reaffirm his choice of
Solomon as the next King of Israel. In the end, they were successful. King
David swore to Bathsheba that Solomon would accede to the throne.
The Haftara reflects a number of concepts dealt with in
our portion. Our Torah portion treats the deaths of Sarah and then Abraham
and the ascent of Rebecca and Isaac as the next generation of founders of the
Jewish People. It also mentions the genealogy of Abraham's elder, unworthy
son Ishmael.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Baruch Price
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