AND ISAAC WENT FORTH TO PRAY IN THE FIELD TOWARDS EVENING, AND HE LIFTED HIS EYES AND SAW, AND BEHOLD, CAMELS WERE APPROACHING. AND REBECCA LIFTED HER          EYES, AND SHE SAW ISAAC, AND SHE FELL FROM THE CAMEL.

 (Bereishit 24:63-64)

 

And she saw Isaac, and she fell from the camel - Panic or Modesty?

She saw him tall and majestic, breaking a new path as he walked towards the field; she was small - three years old - and she took him to be a rapist or a robber and she was panicked to see him, and fell.

Another view: and she fell from the camel should be read as if it followed And she said to the servant (verse 65), and should be interpreted thusly: She saw Isaac and asked the servant, "Who is that man walking towards us?" And the servant said, "He is my master," and only after that, she fell from the camel... And she took the veil and covered herself; she willfully caused herself to fall out of great modesty, as in, and he fell upon his face (Bereishit 17:3).

(Hizkuni 24:64)

 

Black holes

Moshe Meir

And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiryat             Arba, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to eulogize Sarah and to bewail her. And Abraham arose from before his dead, and he spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, "I am a stranger and an inhabitant with you. Give me burial property with you, so that I may bury my dead from before me."

The Torah relates this story in its characteristically short and incomplete fashion, forcing the reader to exercise his mind and imagination to fill it out. Sarah has died in Kiryat Arba and then Abraham arrives. But from where? Why had be been separated from her?

From where did he come? R. Levi said: "He came to Sarah From Terah's burial. R. Yossi: From where did he come? He came from Mount Moriah, and Sarah died of that sorrow. (Midrash Rabbah)

Since the story is truncated, imagination can go wild. One side pulls it towards familial obligation which kept him away from his wife's side at the hour of her death. The other side pulls in the opposite direction - the injury to their son not only separated him from Sarah in the hour of her death, it actually caused her death. It is impossible to choose between these alternative readings, and they give rise to a story of the profound rupture implicit in coming.

Abraham came there to eulogize and cry for her, but the eulogy and crying are never described. Only the getting up and the speaking which followed are mentioned.

R. Yohanan said: On what basis do we say that "He whose dead lies before him is exempt from reading the Shema and from prayer and from tefillin, and from all the commandments of the Torah? From here: And [Abraham] arose from before his dead], and he spoke. (ibid.)

R. Yohanan alludes to a mishnah in the tractate Berakhot (3;1):

He whose dead lies before him is exempt from reading the Shema and from prayer and from tefillin, and from all the commandments of the Torah. Those carrying the bier and those who replace them and those who replace the replacements, those in front of the bier and those after the bier, if they are needed for the bier - they are exempt, but if the bier does not need them - they are obligated. Those and these are exempt from prayer.

Two words are used in this mishnah to designate the object of mourning: the dead and the bier. For relatives who are emotionally tied to the person who has died, the object of mourning is the dead. For the carriers, he is an object which they must lift. For the carriers, the man does not exist - there is only the bier which they take hold of. The dead and the bier constitute the center of a black hole in which the obligation to perform commandments - an expression of human activity - has been suspended.

R. Yohanan learns of the existence of this black hole from the structure of our parasha. Abraham came to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her; he arrives from a distant place and enters the black hole which is left undescribed by the Torah. We do not know what he did there; all we know is that he eventually extracted himself from it. When he left it he got up and only then did he begin to speak and deal with his obligation towards his wife. According to R. Yohanan, this description serves as the basis for the Mishnah's model of how relatives should behave when their dead lies before them; they are exempt from all the commandments. Mourning and suffering freeze a person's consciousness and emotions; the Torah and the Mishnah recognize this freezing point and do not attempt to resist it. A person must know when his sufferings are too much for him to handle; in such circumstances he must relax and collapse into the emotional nothingness. However, just as he must know how to fall, he must also know how to get up.

R. Yohanan fell ill and R. Hannina went to him. He said to him: "Are sufferings acceptable to you?" He said to him: "Neither they nor their reward." He said to him, "Give me your hand." He [R. Hannina] gave him his hand and he raised him. (Berakhot 5b)

Abraham got up by himself, but sometimes one needs the help of another - of a friend - in order to get up.

R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Yohanan went to him; he saw that he was lying in a dark room. He bared his arm and light came forth. He saw that R. Eleazar was crying. He said to him: "Why do you cry? Is it on account of Torah, which you could not fulfill? - We have learnt: 'One who does more and one who does less [are both acceptable], only let the heart be directed towards heaven.' Or is it on account of sustenance? - Not everyone has the benefit of two tables. Is it on account of children? - Here is the bone of my tenth son [who died]." He said to him: "On that account you may well cry"; and both cried. Hereupon, then, he said to him: "Are sufferings acceptable to you? He said to him: "Neither they nor their reward." He said to him: "Give me your hand." He [R. Yohanan] gave him his hand and raised him. (Based on El-Am translation)

Awareness of death and extinction induce a spirit of weakness and cessation in a person. They must be recognized and granted their place, but afterwards one must shake them off and rise up, whether it be through one's own efforts or with the help of others.

 

The Needs of Man and his Animals, and the Quality of Mercy

And it will be, [that] the maiden to whom I will say, 'Lower your pitcher and I will drink,' and she will say, 'Drink, and I will also water your camels,' her have You designated for Your servant, for Isaac, and through her may I know that You have performed loving kindness with my master."

(Bereishit 24:14)

 

Our Sages derived from the passage And I shall give grass in your fields for your animals (Devarim 1:15) that one must feed one's animals before one eats. Know that this applies only when there is no danger or suffering, but should there be danger or pain, one should attend to alleviation of his own suffering before feeding his animals. When the man [Abraham's anonymous servant] requested, Please, let me sip a little water the saintly girl sensed that he was thirsty and suffering. Therefore she told him "Drink", and when she estimated that she had given him enough to allay his suffering from thirst, When she had let him drink his fill, she said: "I will also draw for your camels etc." And the Torah says until they finish drinking - meaning "I will not [water them] according to my estimate; I will water them and not stop until I see that I set drink before them and they do not drink - this will be the sign that they have finished."

(Or HaHayyim, Bereishit 24:19)

 

His loving-kindness and His truth

What love is in feelings, hessed - loving-kindness - is in deeds, love translated into action. Truth is, to a certain extent, a restricting, or at lease a limiting addition. Hessed v'emet - loving-kindness and truth is an act of love where the love does not run too close to overlooking the truth. Human love is blind. It is inclined to accede to the wishes of the beloved one without considering the true worth of these wishes. God's love is hessed v'emet, it only grants such wishes in which the truth is conserved, which truly do lead to happiness. Thus with Jacob, the care for his burial in general is an act of hessed, the limitation, the observing the condition but not in Egypt, is the emet. So, too, what the spies were to do by Rehab was a hessed v'emet, a conditional act of kindness. Truth is the spice, which guards the loving-kindness, so that he not lose with his own hands the main ingredient: the truth.

So perhaps here too. To see their children married is the dearest wish of parents. If they try to accomplish it at all costs, without consideration of the true essentials (if it is not with a girl with an Abrahamic disposition, well then we will take one from Aner, Eshkol, or Mamreh, or from Aram) then they are endeavoring to do hessed without emet. But Abraham wanted only hessed together with emet, and both were granted to him by God.

(Rabbi Shimshon R. Hirsch, Commentary on Bereishit 24:27, translated by Isaac Levy)

 

And do with me loving kindness and truth - Can there be such a thing as loving-kindness of falsehood, that he says loving-kindness and truth?... He said to him that if you do with me loving-kindness after my death, that will be loving-kindness of truth.

(Bereishit Rabbah 96)

 

Go to meet Moses - this illustrates the words: Loving-kindness and truth meet; justice and peace kiss (Psalms 88); Loving-kindness - this is Aaron, as is written, And to Levi he said, your Urim and Tumim to your man of loving-kindness; Truth - is Moses, as is written, (Bamidbar 12) In all My house, he is faithful - here we have loving-kindness and truth meeting.

(Midrash Tanhuma, Shemot, 28)

 

Isaac had just come back from the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi - For he had gone to bring Hagar to his father Abraham, so that he should wed her.

(Rashi, Bereishit 24:62, as per Bereishit Rabbah)

 

From the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi... and he took Rebecca as his wife, and he loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother's death... Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah

In the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda (Bereishit Rabbah 61:4), Keturah was Hagar, the very same woman that Sarah, in her time, had brought to Abraham. How pure and humane was this attitude in the eyes of our Sages, even though the denouement was unfortunate and saddening. Isaac, they said, went to the well in the desert, and brought Hagar from there to Abraham; he himself brought his "stepmother". And he had so loved his mother! And he went there, even though he had not yet been comforted over the loss of his mother! Be these words understood as historical fact or as an instructive derasha, in either case we learn about the weltanschauung which characterized our sages. In contrast to them, how much has our generation declined; tension - if not outright hatred - exists between adult progeny and their fathers as a result of second marriage!

(Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, Bereishit 25:1)

 

...The midrash says that after the demise of his mother Sara, Isaac went to return his stepmother to his father. He went to Be'er-lahai-roi to bring Hagar, who had been banished by his mother, to return her to his father and to correct the injustice. Aggadic narrative is replete with praise of Hagar, who is identified with Keturah: "Why is she called Keturah? Because her actions were pleasing, as incense (ketoret)". This flowery explication testifies to the degree which our great thinkers reflected upon the actions of our fathers, noting every blemish and fault they had, and considered their repair. The generations have much to learn from this. It is wrong to idealize all that occurred; we should see things as they were, trying to understand them, judging them and pondering their rectification.

(Y. Leibowitz: He'arot LeParshiyot HaShavu'a, p. 23)

 

Isaac had just come back from the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi: He had gone to bring Hagar to Abraham so that he could marry her.

(Rashi, Bereishit 24:62)

 

Keturah: (Bereishit Rabbah) This is Hagar, and she was called Keturah because her behavior was pleasant like incense [translator's note - the word Keturah is related to ketoret - incense), and she closed her portal and had no intimate relations from the day she left Abraham.

(Rashi, Bereishit 25:1)

 

"Abraham married three women, Sara - daughter of Shem, Keturah - daughter of Japhet, and Hagar - daughter of Ham." (Yalkut Shimoni, Iyov, 8: 904) According to this aggada, Abraham's three wives belong to the three races recognized by the Bible, as was destined for Abraham: As for me, here, my covenant is with you, so that you will become the father of a throng of nations (Bereishit 17:2). In this way, the midrash chooses to teach us that the significance of father Abraham in human history is universal, and that recognition of God which he established in the world, and that true faith which Abraham was the first to espouse, relate to - and are open to - all the races of humankind. This was accomplished through his three wives, daughters of Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

(Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, z'", Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavu'a )

 

All of Abraham's Sons are Nourished by the Same Roots and are Expected to Continue his Purpose

He is like a tree planted... (Psalms1:3): God took him and planted him in the Garden of Eden.

Another interpretation: God planted him in the Land of Israel.

...which yields its fruit in season...: That is Ishmael.

...whose foliage never fades...: That is Isaac.

...and whatever he does prospers...: Those are the sons of Keturah.

(Midrash Tehillim 1)

 

That is what the Lord spoke: In my opinion, the plain meaning of the text has it that the speech of the Lord, His decrees and thoughts and the matter of His ways are all referred to as the speech, as in I spoke to my heart, i.e., I thought this thought, and also, let her be a wife for your master's son, as the Lord has spoken (Bereishit 24:51) - [the Lord] decreed it.

(RamBaN Vayikra 10:3)

 

Here there is no need to seek His word in explicit verses and no need for a bat kol [a heavenly voice], for one who knows and understands hears God's speech in everyday activities and current events, and in the fates of men and nations. (Prof. Nehama Leibowitz, z'l, Iyyunim Besefer Bereishit)

 

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 he righteous, so he first called himself an alien.

(Or Ha-Hayyim Bereishit 23:4)

 

 

 

 

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