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Friday, November 6, 2015

Audio and Essays Parashat Toldot

Audio and Essays Parashat Toldot

New Echoes of Eden Project:
Inside Information

Audio:

Follow the Blessings

Raising Esav

Blessing Of Esav

Father And Son (Yitzchak and Esav) 

Yitzchak in The Footsteps of Avraham

Relationship Of Esav And Rivka

Rivka - the Background of a Mariarch - A Rose among the Thorns

The Voice and Hands of Yaakov and Esav

The Prophecy of Rivka

Yishmael and Esav


Essays:

Stand Up Comedy

The Price of a Bargain

Echoes of Eden

The Voice (and Hands) of Yaakov

Esau

Seeing the Future



Sunday, November 1, 2015

Parashat Chayei Sara 5776; Man of Peace

Echoes of Eden
Rabbi Ari Kahn
Parashat Chayei Sara
Man of Peace

In many families, when a child reaches marriageable age, parents get involved. This may take the form of more or less subtle hints, comments or barbs, or, in some societies, active involvement in the process of selecting a mate.

When our second patriarch Yitzchak was “on the market” (the modern yeshivish idiom is “in the parashah”), his father Avraham summoned his most trusted aide and instructed him to set out on a journey to find an appropriate spouse for his son. Specifically, Avraham required that the woman be from his own hometown, from the land where Avraham was born.

What immediately strikes us as strange is Avraham’s caveat that Yitzchak himself must not cross the border of Canaan to travel to the place of Avraham’s birth. Yitzchak is to be left behind while the faithful servant finds him a spouse-by-proxy, as it were, an ancient version of a mail-order bride. Avraham’s insistence on this point is firm and unequivocal, yet no explanation for his chosen method of matchmaking is offered.

To fill in this void, we might surmise that Avraham’s method was a means of insuring continued possession of the land he had recently been granted as an inheritance. God had promised the land of Canaan to Avraham’s descendants, and had made it very clear that Yitzchak would be the sole heir. We should not forget that at that particular point in history, very few people had been made aware of this promise; perhaps Avraham was concerned that a break in the chain of possession would forfeit the inheritance. He did not want Yitzchak to leave the Land in which he had only recently begun to stake his legal, tangible, demonstrable claim. This conjecture is not without its own weaknesses, most notably the ease with which Yaakov, Yitzchak’s son and heir, is later sent on the very path Yitzchak is barred from taking.

Several years after Yitzchaks betrothal, a famine hits the Land of Canaan. When Yitzchak considers migrating to Egypt in search of relief, as his father had done years earlier, God Himself instructs Yitzchak not to leave the Land. We might say, then, that Avraham intuited Gods objection; Avraham somehow knew that God had other plans for Yitzchak, and they did not include leaving the boundaries of the Promised Land. This may be related to Yitzchaks personal history: The Akeida, in which Yitzchak was placed upon the altar as an offering to God, changed him forever. Yitzchak achieved a status of holiness that was permanent; only the Holy Land was appropriate for a person of this unique spirituality. Yitzchak could not leave Eretz Yisrael.

There may be another way to understand Yitzchaks unique attachment to the Land of Israel, an alternative approach that stems from Yitzchaks unique gifts, his unique personality. In general, Yitzchak is a bit of an enigma. We know far more about Avraham and Yaakov and even Yishmael and Esav are painted in greater detail in the text. The dearth of information creates an aura of mystery, but the few hints we have may provide some insight into his personality.

What do we know about Yitzchak as an individual, independent of his father? When Avrahams envoy returns from his mission with a bride for Yitzchak, the Torah tells us that Yitzchak, too, has been travelling. He returns from a trip to a place called Beer lChai Roi, The Well of the Living Vision. This place is not new to us; we know that Hagar gave it its name after seeing a vision there. When Sarah passed away, Avraham made the continuity of his family and the transmission of the legacy he had built with Sarah his first priority. He became actively involved in finding a wife for his son Yitzchak. At the same time, rabbinic tradition reports, Yitzchak became concerned about his fathers loneliness, and took up the task of rekindling the relationship between Hagar and Avraham (24:62, and Rashis comments on the verse).

This is only one of Yitzchaks conciliatory gestures enumerated in the text: When Avraham passed away, we are told that both his sons, Yitzchak and Yishmael, came together:

And Yitzchak and Yishmael his sons buried him in the Cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which faces Mamre. (25:9)

Both sons united, with Yishmael taking a deferent step back and allowing Yitzchak to take the primary role. From the very particular wording of this verse, our sages understood that Yishmael had repented. No longer jealous of the younger brother who he once blamed for forcing him out of his inheritance, no longer wounded by the second-class treatment his mother had been subjected to, Yishmael now acknowledged Yitzchak as the primary son of Avrahams real wife. He was able to stand behind Yitzchak and honor their fathers memory and wishes. How did this come about? It was most certainly to be credited to the gentle, conciliatory ways of Yitzchak, who was wise enough, secure enough, sensitive enough to validate not only Hagars relationship with Avraham, but also the place where she was granted revelation. This was no mere lip service, nor was it a ploy to make peace: After Avrahams passing, Yitzchak chooses to live in the area of Beer lChai Roi. (25:11)

With this insight into Yitzchaks personality, it should come as no surprise that he is uniquely capable of accepting and loving his troubled son Esav. While others might have rejected someone so superficial, so untamed and unyielding, Yitzchak had a knack for getting along with people, especially family members who might otherwise have been forever estranged. Yitzchak, who had loved and been loved throughout his life by his own father, by his wife was able to love others as they were, able to see the redeeming aspects of troubled personalities and love others on their own terms. Yitzchak was a conciliatory person, a man who brought peace to others because he was at peace with himself.

This may have been the precise cause of Avrahams concern; the reason Avraham did not want Yitzchak to travel back to the hometown he himself had left behind. Had Yitzchak returned to Aram Naharaim, Avraham envisioned Yitzchak trying to heal the relationships, to mend the proverbial fences. Avraham apparently felt that his nascent nation was too new and vulnerable to undertake an outreach program; the time was not yet ripe to try to influence others. The local Canaanite idolaters were not a cause for concern; Yitzchak knew that they were a separate people. It was precisely with family members that Avraham felt there was cause for concern. Yitzchak, who knew how to keep his family together despite the challenges presented by Hagar, Yishmael and Esav, was not permitted to go back to the old country, a place of intolerance and enforced uniformity.

In time, Yaakovs experiences in that same family environment proved Avrahams fears were not unfounded: Even Yaakov, who was far less conciliatory and who was far more adept at holding his own in the face of predators, had a very hard time extricating himself from the household of Betuel and Lavan. Yitzchak, whose life story is one of cooperation and inclusion, would surely have been lost in such a milieu either subsumed into the larger household of his extended family or thrown into the furnace from which his father Avraham had only narrowly escaped.



Echoes of Eden

Essays and Audio Chayei Sarah

Essays and Audio Chayei Sarah

New Essay:
Echoes of Eden Project:
Man of Peace


Essays:
Negotiations and Acquisitions

Uncommon Decency

Death of a King

A Living Well

Comings and Goings

The Servant of Abraham

The First Matriarch

Audio:



The Servant of Avraham and the Maid of Sarah

Parshat Chayei Sarah // And Avraham was Blessed with EVERYTHING
Is “Everything” having a daughter - or not having a daughter?

Parshat Chayei Sarah

Parshat Chayei Sarah // Chevron

Parshat Chayei Sarah // Avraham David and Kingship
Avraham and David Comparison between Chayei Sarah and the Haftorah

Parshat Chayei Sarah // A Wedding And A Funeral

Parshat Chayei Sarah // Yitzchak after the Akaida
Where Is Yitzchak , how did the akaida impact Yitzchak? - where was he during his mother's funeral?

Parshat Chayei Sarah // The Dual Lives of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs

Parshat Chayei Sarah // Be'er l'khai Ro'i -Yitzchak and Yishmael
Why does Yitzchak pray at the well of Yishmael?


Parashat Hayei Sara Negotiations and Acquisitions

Echoes of Eden

Parashat Hayei SaraNegotiations and Acquisitions

A strange negotiation is reported in this week’s parasha. Sarah has died and Avraham has a carefully planned agenda for the funeral arrangements. He approaches the local clan and asks to purchase a particular parcel of land owned by a man named Efron. Efron offers to give Avraham the plot of land as a gift, free of charge, yet Avraham insists on paying for it. Eventually, a price is set; the sum is apparently exorbitant, especially considering the opening “price” offered by the seller.

While some Jews take pride in their business savvy, their forefather Avraham’s negotiation skills seem to have been sorely lacking: He overpays for something he could have procured for free. To make matters even worse, Avraham had been promised this entire land as his inheritance. Why did he insist on paying for something that God Himself would eventually deliver to him on a silver platter?

Avraham had not “forgotten” that this land would eventually belong to him; in fact, God’s promise was precisely the reason Avraham behaved so strangely in this negotiation. Part and parcel of God’s promise that Avraham would inherit the Land of Israel was a “price” to be paid: “Know with certainty that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and they will be enslaved and oppressed, for four hundred years.” (Bereishit 15:13)

The standard translation of this verse presents us with a much-debated problem: The Jews were not enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years. However, if the verse is read while taking into account the cantillation symbols that serve as punctuation of the Hebrew text, a very different parsing emerges: “Know with certainty that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs for four hundred years. (At times,) they will be enslaved and oppressed.” This nuanced reading of the text is not always conveyed correctly in translation, but the gist of the verse is that the four hundred years describes the duration of time in which they would be strangers or foreigners, devoid of sovereignty. The verse describes a period of time in which Avraham’s descendants would be a political minority in the land that would eventually belong to them, and not a period of four hundred years of oppression and enslavement.

Avraham had a very clear understanding of the promise God had made to him; in fact, he made reference to it in his negotiations with the locals: “I am a stranger (or foreigner) and a resident among you,” he said. “Allot for me a burial place among you so that I can bury my dead.” (Bereishit 23:4) Avraham understood his political situation, and acknowledged his current position as less-than-equal among the lords of the land. He echoed God’s use of the word ger to describe his status as an outsider among the locals, indicating that despite his absolute conviction that this land will eventually belong to his descendants, he and his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will continue to be “strangers” for four hundred years - first in Canaan, then in the house of Lavan, and finally in Egypt. The local Canaanite population will continue to control politics, commerce and the military until the full price for the Land of Israel is paid and God’s promise comes to fruition.

And so, Avraham insists on paying for the burial plot. He insists on burying Sarah specifically in that spot because he cherishes the land. He appreciates its significance and holiness, and he wants to be a part of it. He wants to make an acquisition, to establish a foothold, in this very unique place. Although he is quite aware of the price he and his descendants will have to pay to inherit the Land of Israel, he wants to own some small part of it in his own lifetime. He knows that he will continue to be a stranger in the eyes of the surrounding population, but he also knows that this acquisition is the down payment on the land. This is the beginning of ownership of the Land of Israel which will last forever. Avraham did not want it to be given to him as a gift, for if it were “given” (and not sold) to him, it would not really belong to him. Sarah’s burial was, figuratively and literally, the act that planted the roots of the Jewish People - and Avraham would not allow this act to be based on the on-again-off-again largesse of the local Canaanite population.

Efron must have thought that he had hoodwinked Avraham, taking from him four hundred silver shekels for a burial plot, but Avraham was sure that he had made a wonderful deal. For a mere four hundred coins of silver, he had made the first acquisition in the Land of Israel, placing a down payment on the land that would be inherited by his descendants four hundred years later.


For a more in-depth analysis see


http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2013/10/essays-and-audio-parashat-chayei-sarah.html