Listen to our class on Parashat Hayei Sarah from 2017, "The Search for Rivkah," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Showing posts with label Hayei Sarah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hayei Sarah. Show all posts
Monday, November 18, 2019
Parashat Hayei Sarah: The Search for Rivkah
Listen to our class on Parashat Hayei Sarah from 2017, "The Search for Rivkah," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Monday, October 29, 2018
Friday, November 10, 2017
Parashat Hayei Sarah: Community
Community
A Message for Parashat Hayei Sarah 2017
...And the
servant said to him [Avraham], “Perhaps the woman will not want to come after
me to this land. Shall I indeed bring your son back to the land you left?” And
Avraham said to him, “Watch yourself, lest you bring my son back there…” (Bereshit 24:5-6)
Avraham’s absolute demand that Yisshak remain in Canaan is perplexing.
What did he fear? Raised with the values of Avraham and strengthened by God’s
promise of the Land, it seems likely that Yisshak would succeed even in exile.
Why, then, was Avraham so deeply concerned?
The final verse of this episode may
illumine its preceding motive:
And
Yisshak brought her [Rivkah] into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rivkah
as wife. And he loved her, and Yisshak was consoled after his mother’s death. (67)
The Torah highlighted Rivkah’s entrance into Sarah’s tent as an act of
continuity that concluded the search for Yisshak’s wife. But why did it need to
end in Sarah’s physical tent? Couldn’t Yisshak and Rivkah continue the
family’s moral and theological legacies while starting out in a different land?
* * * *
In the introduction to his best-selling book Outliers: The Story of
Success, Malcolm Gladwell described the fascinating story of the
town of Roseto, Pennsylvania.[1] He
wrote that in the late 19th Century, several thousand residents of
the Italian town Roseto Valfortore set sail for America. The people founded and
settled a small but self-sufficient town on a rocky hillside in Pennsylvania.
They established a centralized church, and built schools, a park, small shops,
bakeries and various other community venues.
In the mid-1950’s, Dr. Stewart Wolf stumbled upon an astonishing
phenomenon in Roseto. Studying the results of an extensive study that he had
conducted, Wolf found that virtually no resident of Roseto under the age of
fifty-five had died of a heart attack or showed any signs of heart disease. He
discovered that the death rate of men over sixty-five was roughly half that of
the United States, and the death rate from all causes in Roseto was 30 to 35
percent lower than expected. Pairing up with sociologist John Bruhn, Stewart
then found that there was no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and very
little crime in Roseto. Bruhn summarized their findings: “These people were
dying of old age. That’s it.” Informed of the facts, their next step was to
determine the secret of this tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania.
Thinking that a unique dietary practice may have contributed to their
health, Wolf investigated but found that it was anything but healthy. He then
checked their exercise habits, soon realizing that they too were deficient.
Many struggled with obesity and others smoked heavily. He studied the lives of
the Rosetan relatives who lived in other areas of America for a potential
genetic link, but found no evidence of remarkable health in them. Finally, he
analyzed the lives of the residents of Roseta’s neighboring communities, but
found nothing special in them either.
Wolf began to realize that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet, nor
exercise, genes or location. It was Roseto itself. Walking around the
town, he and Bruhn figured out why. They watched the Rosetans stop to chat with
one another in the street. They saw them cook food for each other. They
realized that many homes had three generations living under one roof, and
noticed how much respect the grandparents demanded. And in that modest town
with a population below two-thousand, they counted more than twenty separate
civic organizations. They discovered, to their astonishment, that the physical
health of the Rosetans was rooted in the community.
* * * *
Someone recently argued to me that in today’s era we must expand our
conception of community. She argued that technology’s advances in
communication have forced the transition from many local communities to
one large international community. Though I believe that her general
logic is correct, I nonetheless know that the existence of a local community
will forever maintain a vital function. As Wolf and Bruhn learned, our personal
interaction with one another engenders within us capabilities that would
otherwise be impossible. The physical proximity and close spaces that we share
create unfathomable realities.
Insisting that Yisshak and Rivkah continue in Canaan, Avraham understood
that the unique entity which he had tirelessly built could only endure within the
structure of its physical community.
Shabbat
shalom!
Rabbi Avi
Harari
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Parashat Hayei Sarah: Life and Death
Life & Death
A Message for Parashat Hayei Sarah 2016
In the opening scene of Parashat Hayei Sarah,
Avraham approached the citizens of Hebron to purchase a burial place for Sarah.
He curiously introduced himself to them as a “resident alien” (23:4).
Paralleling his self-description to the Torah’s subsequent use of similar
wording, this phrase appears to indicate a legal disadvantage.[1]
Indeed, archaeologists have found that while the urban agriculturalists during
the time of the Avot possessed familial burial plots in the cities, the
general practice of nomadic shepherds was to bury in desolate lands that lay
distant from civilization. Avraham’s request of a sepulcher for Sarah in
Hebron, then, was a clear divergence from his social status, thereby deeming
him a “resident alien.”[2]
Bearing in mind Sefer Bereshit’s
aversion to the innovations of city-dwellers and its consistent depiction of Avraham’s
life as a nomad,[3]
his decision to bury in the city in the way of city-dwellers is particularly
difficult to understand.
* * * *
Prominent thinker Leon Kass noted the Torah’s
deliberate contrast between the burial of Yaakov at Me’arat ha-Makhpelah
and the mummification of Yosef in Egypt, in the last chapter of Bereshit.
He explained the significance:
The contrast between
burial and embalming/mummification reveals a crucial difference between Israel
and Egypt: the difference between the acceptance and the denial or defiance of
death.
While embalming the body is an attempt at
human control after death – to prevent decay and to beautify the body, burial
accepts that we are “dust to dust” and submits to the impossibility of eternal
life in this world.[4]
Kass noted, as well, that the Egyptian counter-cultural custom of men to shave
their beards was underlain by a similar drive, as shaving is “a perfect emblem
of the Egyptian penchant to deny change and to conquer decay by human effort.”[5]
What was Avraham’s approach to life and
death?
Consider this intriguing midrash:
Until
Avraham, there was no old age, so that one who wished to speak with Avraham
might mistakenly find himself speaking to Yitzhak, or one who wished to speak
with Yitzhak might mistakenly find himself speaking to Avraham. But when
Avraham came, he pleaded for old age, saying, “Master of the universe, You must
make a visible distinction between father and son, between a youth and an old
man, so that the old man may be honored by the youth.” God replied, “As you
live, I shall begin with you.” So Avraham went off, passed the night, and arose
in the morning. When he arose, he saw that the hair of his head and of his
beard had turned white…[6]
The Hakhamim traced the origins of
whitening hair – the paradigmatic mark of old age – to Avraham. They clarified
its significance by imagining Avraham’s request and intent – that “the old man
may be honored by the youth.” Avraham marched on a mission to establish a derekh
Hashem in this world. He fought for faith in monotheism and the practice of
justice and righteousness. But he knew that this undertaking would not be
accomplished in his lifetime. As stated by God, “For I have embraced him so
that he will charge his sons and his household after him to keep the way of
God, to do righteousness and justice” (Bereshit 18:19), Avraham was aware that
this mission awaited his children’s completion. Trailblazing this path, Avraham
prayed that his descendants honor their predecessor and continue upon it.
French-American philosopher Gabriel Rockhill wrote
about his personal transition from fear of death to its wholehearted acceptance,
in an article entitled “Why We Never Die.” Describing our continued existence
after death, he wrote:
The
artifacts that we have produced also persevere, which can range from our
physical imprint on the world to objects we have made … There is, as well, a
psychosocial dimension that survives our biological withdrawal, which is
visible in the impact that we have had – for better or for worse – on all of
the people around us. In living, we trace a wake in the world.[7]
Leon Wieseltier similarly wrote that man’s
death is “almost never complete,” explaining, “He survives himself in many
ways, he leaves many traces of himself behind, in his works and in the people
he loved.”[8]
Seen from this angle, the deceased’s life continues after death by those who appreciate
and continue their mission.
It is in this light that we may imagine that
Avraham was not frightened by death, as were the Egyptians of old. Avraham was
instead conscious of the mission that he had set into motion, and he strode
confidently to the beat of a legacy that would live on long after death.
* * * *
Last week we explained that the danger of
cities and human progress, as depicted by Sefer Bereshit, lies in
their tendency to lead man to focus on his own “name,” instead of that of God.
They pose the threat of becoming absorbed in our own accomplishments, and
losing sight of our relationship with God. Since cities possess no inherent
danger, and their evils lie only in active engagement, Avraham’s burial of
Sarah therein posed no problem. But why would he specifically seek a “city
plot,” in the ways of the “city folk,” instead of burying Sarah in a place and
fashion befitting a nomad?
Avraham was perhaps teaching his children and
future descendants an important lesson regarding life and death. Life must be
lived “as a nomad” – constantly deflecting the focus from oneself to that of a
larger mission, stripped of all ego. Death, in turn, represents the “next step”
on that mission, through the everlasting legacy imparted to future generations.
Burying Sarah on a random countryside ran the risk of confusing his descendants’
understanding of death. It could cause death to be seen as a loss of all
identity, an entrance into a looming abyss of anonymity and inexistence. Burial
in the city, by contrast, drew attention to the acceptance of death, and
symbolized man’s permanent life in this world.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Avi Harari
[1] See Vayikra 25:23, “But
the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but
strangers residents with Me,” and Nahum M. Sarna’s Understanding Genesis
(New York, 1966), pg. 166-7.
[2] R. Elhanan Samet, Iyunim
be-Parashot ha-Shavua II, vol. I (Tel Aviv, IS 2009 ), pg. 90.
[3] See last week’s devar Torah, “Cities and Human Progress.”
[5] Kass, 564-5.
[6] Bava Metzia 87a.
[7] Gabriel Rockhill, “Why We Never Die,” The New York Times, Aug. 26, 2016.
Monday, November 6, 2017
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