Now it came about, when the camels had finished drinking, [that] the man took a golden nose ring, weighing half [a shekel], and two bracelets for her hands, weighing ten gold [shekels].

And he said, "Whose daughter are you? Please tell me. Is there place for us for lodging in your father's house?"

And she said to him, "I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor."

(Bereishit 24:22-4)

 

the man took It does not say that he gave them to her yet. In his retelling of the story in verse 47, he also says that he only gave her the jewelry after she had told him who her family was. But he thought it was just as well to bring it out already, to let her see some of the riches which he had with him. He now wanted to ask for lodging in her home. Eliezer knew the world, anyway, the Aramitic world; otherwise he would not have found gemilut hesed - acts of kindness - something special or showing special character. For the readiness to take in ten camels and the men attendant on them it was necessary to find not merely an Abrahamitic daughter but a whole Abrahamitic house. The girl was certainly a pearl in humaneness, but who could tell in what metal the jewel was set? In any case, Eliezer thought that before he asked about her home and the possibility of being received there it was just as well to allow some gold to be seen. Who can say, also, whether Rebecca - as an understanding girl who knew full well the character of her brother, who ran the home and who would scarcely have offered a friendly welcome to a number of mere servants and camels - would have given Eliezer her name at all if she had not seen something shining in his hand, which, certainly not for herself, but for the ruling spirit of her home, would have been a somewhat greater attraction than a mere opportunity to offer humane hospitality.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on 24:22, based on Levy translation)

 

The Conclusion of Abraham's Life as the Conclusion of the Book of Bereishit up to that Point

Leah Shakdiel

When humanity was created, male and female, it was - like the animals - permitted to eat only the herbs of the field and the fruits of the trees, except for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Cain remained faithful to that command and engaged in raising crops to feed people. When it occurred to him to make a sacrifice to God, he quite logically offered some of the fruits of his labors. Abel was a shepherd. Within the framework of the commandment to work it and keep it, humans led and watched over the animals subservient to them, perhaps milking them or shearing their wool for human benefit.

When the idea of sacrificing to God comes up, Abel makes a radical innovation. He does not stop at offering the milk or the wool of his flocks, rather, he sheds their blood, killing a nefesh haya - a living spirit - (a term used both in reference to animals and humans) in order to make an offering to God! Cain, the older brother, is shocked to depths of his soul by Abel's behavior, and challenges him.

God, however, tests Cain by accepting Abel's offering, expecting Cain to successfully contain his justified anger and thus be galvanized to further spiritual development. Just as we saw earlier in the case of God's testing Adam and Eve by prohibiting them from eating of the Tree, God's arbitrary behavior is here intended to teach humans who is the master of creation. Humans are superior to the rest of creation, only they are created in God's image, only they possess good and evil inclinations (that is to say, free will), but nevertheless, they are not like God.

Now comes Cain's tragic failure (tragic within the Aristotelian schema of character fault, hubris, and pride), which necessarily - fatefully - leads to his downfall. Cain mistakenly infers that if God accepts Abel's offering of slaughtered sheep, He will also accept a slaughtered human as an offering as well! If both humans and animals eat vegetation, and the woman is mother of all that lives - the pinnacle of the pyramid of life on earth - and now it has become evident that one is permitted to kill animals and that this is acceptable to God, then it is also permissible to kill people and God will accept them as an offering! God tries to explain to Cain the difference between Abel's blood, which cries out to Him from the ground and Abel's offering of sheep. God understands that His working assumption - that Cain will be able to control his justified anger towards Abel and God - has collapsed. His expectations were too high. As a result, Cain was punished with expulsion (similarly to Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden) from the settled lands to the wilderness. Now every effort must be made to counter the terrible idea that murder of people is permissible just as the slaughter of animals is permitted. Now it is the wilderness-wandering Cain who is in danger. He might become prey to any passing hunter of animals. In order to protect him from this threat, he is marked as a creature essentially different from other animals. (The midrash describes Lemekh as a hunter of beasts who accidentally kills the human Cain.)

Cain is exiled from settled land and discovers a way to distinguish humans from animals and to allow them to sustain themselves in ways completely different from those of animals. This will grant him a measure of atonement for his sin: Cain builds a city and his descendants invent technology and the arts. Thus, he demonstrates that he has understood the essential and profound difference between human and beast.

Will Cain's solution - the use of new professions and modes of habitation to mark the difference between humans and animals and the invention of the city - save humanity from another round of sinful behavior? No. This becomes clear twice: first in the generation of the Flood and again in the generation of the dispersal from Babel.

God specifically said that He was sorry for what He had made, that there were mistakes to be corrected. The correction would take the form of a covenant, a concept that did not appear earlier. Again, this happens twice and at two levels: the covenant with Noah and his children, and the covenant with Abraham and his children.

God explicitly lays foundations for the human/animal dichotomy in His covenant with Noah. It is necessary to permit humans to kill animals for food (while it is also necessary to mention the similarity of humans with other "living spirits," that the blood is the spirit, the prohibition against eating part of a living animal, and the foundations of all the Torah's laws of kashrut). But God forbid someone should learn from this that the killing of humans is permissible! Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man. This is the first time that God explicitly links the unique human status of having been created in the image of God with the "Basic Law: The Prohibition of the Murder of Humans." From here on the killing of humans - and not animals - will be referred to with a special term: "murder" - retzah. Every time people talk about a justified reason to kill a person they revert to the older term, hereg - "killing." In other words, in some specific circumstances (self-defense, capital punishment, war) human blood may be shed as animal blood is shed.

Humanity strikes out on a new path thanks to the covenant with Noah and his sons. However, Cain's innovation - the institution of the city as a means for distinguishing human culture from the animal world - still fails. The Tower of Babel proves that the realization of humanity's divine image continues to be based upon the lowest and most dangerous common denominator - the sin of pride and the aspiration to be like God. This false realization of human superiority over animals leads necessarily to a further and related fallacy - the granting of permission to murder people, that is to say, to kill them just as human beings kill beasts for their own purposes. The Sages already read this into the story of the Tower of Babel. In the flood story God distinguishes between humans and beasts by destroying those people who had lost their divine image and saving alive the remaining righteous ones. In the Tower of Babel story He uses a new method: He designates a portion of humanity to serve as guides for the rest. As Abram is being sent to Canaan, God tells him: "All the families of the earth shall be blessed through you - you are charged with the mission of teaching everyone how to preserve human superiority over the other animals (the image of God) alongside absolute obedience to God, Lord of the Universe." A delicate balance indeed!

Abraham's stories include two divine tests: Sodom, and the Akedah.

Like Babel, Sodom is located in a valley, and, like Babel, it is a sinful city. The plain meaning of Scripture emphasizes that Sodom deserves to be destroyed thanks to its disregard for humans as bearers of the divine image. He who erases the image of God in his fellows hurts God Himself and loses his right to exist in God's world. This time, however, God does not tell Abraham what to do, rather, He tests him: Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am doing?... For I have known him because he commands his sons and his household after him, that they should keep the way of the Lord to perform righteousness and justice. God tells Abraham ahead of time about His intentions to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in order to find out what Abraham has come to understand so far. Abraham passes the test with outstanding success: he argues with God - as one equal confronting another - about His expectations from the humans who were created in His image. Indeed, he proves himself worthy of representing God's path of righteousness and justice in the human world!

One item of business from the story of Cain and Abel remains unfinished. Now there is a world leader to teach humanity about their unique value and about how human life is more sacred than animal life. But what of the notion of human sacrifice? Is it a justified form of killing and thus excluded from the category of murder, together with the sacrifice of animals to God?

The Akedah comes to answer this question. There we are explicitly told that God is testing Abraham. Abraham is supposed to distinguish between the categorical obedience expected of him, as a human being, to God, and the clear prohibition against murdering humans. That is why the test involves your only son whom you loved, that is to say, he shall select the most choice of humans - from his standpoint - to be sacrificed to God.

I join those who believe Abraham failed in this test: God finally had to intervene and explicitly teach Abraham the difference between Isaac and the ram, between human and beast, and why his faith in God had be proven beyond any doubt even without his sacrificing Isaac as a burnt-offering to God. Not only is there no need to sacrifice a person in order to prove one's faith in God, in fact, the killing of humans is always prohibited, even when one has been explicitly commanded by God to sacrifice a fellow human being.

I find here a parallel between Adam and Noah. They each received explicit commands regarding what they must or must not do and God simply expects them to follow his orders. Adam failed, and Noah brought the tikkun, the repair, for his sin. The next pair was Cain and Abraham. They were expected to figure out how to act by themselves, to filter the contradictory commands given them by God, and to choose when to obey and when to disobey. Humans are created in God's image, and therefore, they are not supposed to obey when they are told that right is left and left is right. Abraham was Abel's tikkun, inasmuch as one can repair such a sin.

Abraham understands that he failed by obeying, without argument, the blatantly illegal order to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering to God. He knew he had reached the end of his road. He had made amazing progress but there was nowhere further to go. At the conclusion of the Akedah story we hear a glimmering of information regarding Isaac's future wife, pointing towards his emancipation and independent life without his father. The purchase of Me'arat HaMakhpela completes the matter: before his death, Abraham sets his life's work upon firm foundations - a land-holding in Canaan for the prince of God who lives in the midst of the rest of humanity. Parashat Hayey Sarah ends with Abraham's death. This is also his legacy for us, in conclusion of the divine plan which began with creation: righteousness and justice, the prohibition against taking lightly the killing of humans created in God's image as if they were mere beasts, and even the prohibition against sacrificing human beings who were created in God's image - any human beings - in the name of some alleged divine command.

Leah Shakdiel is an educator and social activist. She lives in Yeruham.

 

 I am a resident alien among you (Bereishit 23:4) - The point of his [Abraham's] claiming to be a resident alien is based upon what the RaMBaM [in Hilkhot Zekhiyah U'Matanah 3:11] wrote: "One may give free gifts to a resident alien... because you are commanded to sustain him, for it is written, a resident alien, let him live by your side (Vayikra 25:35)."

You should know that our entire holy Torah is rational, particularly in connection with earthly behavior. Rationality requires the land's inhabitants to establish amongst themselves the practice of sustaining people who are resident aliens in their midst, giving them free gifts, just as we treat the resident aliens who dwell among us. That is Abraham's claim - I am a resident alien among you - give me. He was careful to say resident and not merely alien in order to emphasize that while he was an alien and not one of them, he was, nonetheless, a resident. Another reason why he said alien is because he was concerned about calling himself a resident of this world, which is opposite to the way of the righteous, so he first called himself an alien.

(Or Ha-Hayyim Bereishit 23:4)

 

Why Did Abraham Object So Strongly to the Canaanite Women?

From the Daughters of the Canaanites - Lest they say I entered the land through inheritance and bequest, but I only want to gain it by God's hands, that He gives it to me as a possession.

(Hizkuni 24; 3)

 

We must recall that when Abraham rejected the Canaanite women, the people of Aram were also idolaters. It follows that Canaan's moral corruption, rather than its strange gods, motivated his decision. Paganism is in essence an intellectual error that can be corrected. However, moral corruption takes hold of the whole of a person's being, to the depths of the soul and the emotions. Here (in Canaan), Abraham could not hope to find his son a modest and morally pure wife, a wife who would bring to his home the pearl of nobility and the purity of morals.

(R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, Bereishit 24: 4)

 

Anyone can do teshuvah (repent) and teshuvah atones for all.

And Isaac and Ishmael buried him: From here we know that Ishmael repented, and allowed Isaac to walk before him, and that is the good old age spoken of in connection with Abraham.

(Rashi 25:9)

 

Hayey Sarah ["the times of Sarah's life"]: Rashi explains, "they were all equally for the best." And although regarding Ishmael it is written, and these are the years of the life of Ishmael, one should still say that he repented, in accordance with Rashi's comment on the verse, And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him, for a convert who has just converted is comparable to a new-born child, and all of his preceding years, all of the evil he wrought, is accounted as nothing, and he is as one who repented each day of his life.

(Da'at Zekeinim MiBaalei HaTosafot; 23:1)

 

Kiryat Arba - Four Cubits

One should meditate upon this parasha, which hints that even if a person's rank is magnified, and he comes to possess the entire world and all that is in it, (in the end) he owns nothing but the four cubits of his grave. Abraham was given the entire Land as a gift, and first he purchased there the Ma'arat HaMachpeilah, in Kiryat Arba, which is Hebron.

(Rabbeinu BeHayey, Bereishit 23: 20).

 

...and this is the portion of each person in his world, that he is buried in the space of his four cubits (kiryat arba amotav), a hint to those four cubits left to Abraham after the entire land was given to him as a gift, in reality, that is all that is left to any human being from all his greatness and property that he acquires in his lifetime.

(Y. Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua, p. 94).

 

 

 

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel $700
• English edition distributed via email $ 100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.

In Israel, checks payable to Oz VeShalom may be sent to Oz VeShalom-P.O.B. 4433, Jerusalem 91043.

US and British tax-exempt contributions to Oz VeShalom may be made through:

New Israel Fund, POB 91588, Washington, DC 20090-1588, USA

New Israel Fund of Great Britain, 26 Enford Street, London W1H 2DD, Great Britain

Please note that the NIF is no longer accepting donations under $100

PEF will also channel donations and provide a tax-exemption. Donations should be sent to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317 Madison Ave., Suite 607, New York, New York 10017 USA

All contributions to either the NIF or PEF should be marked as donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project. For Donations to NIF, please mention that Oz veShalom is registered as no. 5708

 

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts that have always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment to the land of Israel and it no less views peace as a central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the religious and the national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a fair and just society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an imperative.

4,500 copies of a 4-page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah reading are written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot Shalom and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are sent overseas via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il.