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Chayei Sara פָּרָשַׁת חַיֵּי שָֹרָה

11/22/2024

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Some time in the mid-90s Bill Moyers hosted a ten-part series. The ads for the series read “Rape, fratricide, jealousy, temptation, fear, rage, murder . . . “

What was the series called? Genesis: A Living Conversation.

Moyers emphasized that our biblical heroes were, as we know, flawed, and that, in the words of God to Noach, “the heart of man is evil . . . from his youth.”  We spoke of some of these flaws in studying the Parshyot over the past weeks. But to focus on “rape, fratricide, jealousy, temptation, fear, rage, and murder” is to ignore another theme that really does frame our parsha reading today. That theme is LOVE. Specifically, the love between a husband and a wife.

Hayyei Sarah opens with word of Sarah’s death at age 127. Abraham has two initial responses: “And Abraham eulogized her and bewailed her.”  If you have lost a loved one, then you know exactly what this means and how it feels. We eulogize and we bewail. But eulogizing and bewailing are two very different activities. When we eulogize (the Hebrew word here is ‘hesped,’ we review a person’s life, we tell the story of that person—what did she value? How did she live? What would she want to be her legacy? When we weep, however, we do not plan or reason or even necessarily think. Weeping is a release of almost unbearable tension when one’s world seems to be crumbling. Weeping expresses in a primitive way the sense of loneliness and isolation that one feels when confronted with a significant loss. Everyone in the community could understand Abraham’s eulogy for Sarah, for they too had their relationships with her. But no one there could share his personal pain; that was his alone.

Sarah left her family and home to go off into the wilderness with a nomad who had little but promises to offer, and some Midrashists claim that Sarah came from royalty. If that is true, then how much more amazing is it that she left all that to be with an iconoclastic monotheist. Midrash also tells us that just as Abraham brought in thousands of male converts, so Sarah brought thousands of women into the Covenant. Just as Abram became Abraham, adding the letter “hey” to reference God’s name, so too Sarai became Sarah.

What does Abraham do next? As we know, when he arises from his mourning, he buys a plot of land in order to bury his wife. Some say that this act was the last of the ten tests that Abraham faced. Imagine having to face a test AFTER the Akada! In any case, Abraham is up to the task. He is more than willing to humble himself to do so. In fact, the Torah tells us twice that he “prostrates himself before the people of the land.” He insists on paying what the land is worth—400 shekels, he is told—so that he knows that the wife he has loved has a resting place that is truly hers and where she remains to this day.

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Genesis 18 gives us the story of three angels visiting Abraham. One of them says “I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” Sarah overhears the conversation. She “laughs to herself, saying, ‘Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment – with my husband so old?’”

Gen 18:13. In the very next verse, God reports her laughter to Abraham. But he tells Abraham that when Sarah laughed, she said: "Shall l in truth bear a child, old as I am?"

This story is familiar to many. It establishes the line of Abraham as coming from a miracle by God. It resolves the dramatic tension in the story of how Abraham can still be the father of nations when he is already an aged man with only a son from a concubine, not by his wife, Sarah. But I want to focus on one detail of the story. Let’s look carefully at the last two quotations.

In verse 13, Sarah laughs at the idea of being a mother. She says “with my husband so old,” implying that Abraham is too old for sex. But when God reports this to Abraham, God doesn’t say that. He says she laughed at the impossibility, saying “old as I am.” God tells Abraham that Sarah laughed because she thought she was too old to conceive. Why did God change the story? Did God lie?
That’s the question.
Jewish tradition says that God acted this way to teach that peace in the home is more important than telling the truth. Why should God tell Abraham that Sarah thinks he is too old? That would embarrass him. Better to tell a little white lie. Peace in the home is a principal virtue, Shalom HaBayit. A little deviation from the truth is a small price to pay.

The Bible teaches that white lies are OK to maintain peace in the family.

The Talmud derives a stronger principle. The rabbis assert there is a strong prohibition against “hurting with words.” It prohibits embarrassing anyone in public, even if the words are true. The ancient rabbis noted that when someone is seriously shamed, the blood drains from their face. They equate this with murder, the shedding of blood, in its severity.

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Lech-Lecha פָּרָשַׁת לֶךְ־לְךָ

11/8/2024

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After their return to Canaan from Egypt, Avraham and Lot have acquired much material wealth and possessions, both in portable goods and possession of animals. At this time a quarrel breaks out among their shepherds, and this brings about the ultimate separation of uncle and nephew. The cause of the breakup in the family was clearly the possessions that they both acquired, and how to properly care for these assets. One could easily conclude that money once again causes family friction. This is common in our day, as it was common in ancient times as well. Possession of wealth easily creates friction among family members. There can even be a fracture in a mishpacha over worldly goods.

Avraham enters into a dialogue, pressing Hashem for assurance of Avraham’s future, and they enter into the Covenant of the Pieces. The Torah states at one point in the discussion between Hashem and Avraham (15:6) “he trusted in Hashem and He reckoned it to him as righteousness, tzedakah.”

Some commentators interpret this verse to indicate that with the assurance given to him by Hashem, Avraham considered it an act of righteousness and continued to give tzedakah as he did before as a wealthy individual who shares his assets with the less fortunate. In actuality we can see a break with the norm. When a person is amassing wealth and has no children, his and her attention can be focused on being a most giving, charitable individual. Without children, one can afford to be a major philanthropist.

With children, one is hesitant to part with great amounts of assets because one becomes concerned with the future financial stability of their growing family. Avraham had just received a verbal assurance from the Almighty that he will be blessed with children and grandchildren. That, in and of itself, could have altered his charity practices. The Torah is indicating to us that this was not true, even with this assurance which he believed wholeheartedly, Avraham would continue to be as charitable as he was all along because he felt that God’s gift to him would include the assets necessary to raise the children in financial security, and still enable him to be the philanthropist he had always been.

This week’s haftorah devotes much attention to Divine Providence and Hashem’s involvement in one’s personal life. The prophet Isaiah centers his discussion around our Patriarch Avraham and his war against the four mighty powers of his time. Isaiah says, “Who awakened the man from the east – He who declared righteousness with His every step? Who rendered dirt into sword, pounded straw into arrows?”

Our Sages (Sanhedrin 109a) explain that this passage contains the inside story of Avraham’s miraculous defeat of the four mighty kings. According to the Rabbis this passage reveals that Avraham’s mighty weapons were none other than dirt and straw. They interpret the passage to be saying that when Avraham threw handfuls of dirt at the enemy they were transformed into swords and when he sent pieces of straw they became piercing arrows.

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I know that we are all very familiar with parsha Noach—it’s part of every Bible coloring book, and you may have seen the movie, and once Diane and I had to carve a watermelon to make it into Noah’s ark for a birthday party. In other words, the story of Noah is VERY well known. Perhaps too well known. Because when something is that familiar, we tend to gloss over some things that might be worth a little more digging. There are some lines in Noach that I want to look at just for a few minutes to maybe convince you that there’s more here than the vivid picture of a large ark holding two of every animal.

These lines occur very early on in the parsha; in fact, they are part of the first aliya.

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְהִנֵּ֣ה נִשְׁחָ֑תָה כִּֽי־הִשְׁחִ֧ית כָּל־בָּשָׂ֛ר אֶת־דַּרְכּ֖וֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ:

And God saw the earth, and behold it had become corrupted, for all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth.

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְנֹ֗חַ קֵ֤ץ כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ בָּ֣א לְפָנַ֔י כִּי־מָֽלְאָ֥ה הָאָ֛רֶץ חָמָ֖ס מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם

And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth has become full of violence because of them, and behold I am destroying them from the earth."

Notice that word ‘corrupted.’ NEESH CHATA. The word appears twice in the earlier verse, and HAMAS—violence, sound familiar?—appears in the second. Many scholars have asked what exactly was the sin of mankind that was so terrible that God had to destroy the entire earth. And no one is quite sure. ‘Corruption’ is a pretty general term, and even ‘violence’ isn’t exactly clear. Not everyone even agrees that the correct translation is violence. For example, the Jewish Publication Society of 1917 translates the passage as “the earth was filled with violence.” But in 1985, that same society translated it as “the earth was filled with lawlessness.” And some texts interpret ‘lawlessness’ to mean idolatry. Finally, the Chabad site as well as the Judaica Press translate HAMAS as “the earth became full of robbery,” which in my humble opinion, just doesn’t make it. But, even if we agree on the word ‘violence,’ we still don’t know what SORT OF violence. Violence, for example, can be psychological or physical. You can do violence to people, to animals, to property. Maybe this was a case of ‘all of the above.’

What is also interesting about this passage is that God has His own little play on words. When He states that he is going to destroy humankind, he uses the Hebrew “MASHCHEETAN,” which has the same root as the word translated as ‘corruption.’ REMEMBER: NEESHCHATA. So, in a sense, God is telling us that God is going to do to us what we have been doing to the earth and to each other. Our retribution.

One other interesting passage I want to highlight. And this is from the very first verse of the Parsha. We open with “this is the line of Noah.” Wouldn’t you expect that the parsha would then give us Noach’s genealogy? Wouldn’t you expect to read about the sons of Noach? But that is not what happens. The next line is “Noach was a righteous man.” Doesn’t that seem like a strange shift, to go from Noach’s lineage to describe his deeds, including how he walked with God? Rashi has a very interesting and famous explanation for this odd shift. Rashi claims that here the Torah is telling us that our “line” is not our children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Rather, our “line” is our deeds. That is, what we DO is what we leave behind. Our actions, our deeds, represent our legacy.

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Toldot פָּרָשַׁת תּוֹלְדוֹת

Chayei Sara פָּרָשַׁת חַיֵּי שָֹרָה

Vayera פָּרָשַׁת וַיֵּרָא

Lech-Lecha פָּרָשַׁת לֶךְ־לְךָ

Noach פָּרָשַׁת נֹחַ

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