Parashat Chayei Sara

November 22, 2024
21 Cheshvan 5785
PARASHAT CHAYEI SARA
Genesis 23:1-25:18

Dear Friends,

The name of this week’s Torah portion, Chaye Sarah, "the life of Sarah" (Genesis 23:1-25:18), sets up an expectation that we will learn more about the life of Sarah. Instead, we learn more about what she left behind. The Torah portion opens with her death and Abraham’s search for an appropriate resting place for her.

Sarah was a woman who lived through many transitions, challenges, not the least of which was the almost sacrifice of her only offspring Isaac. The midrash proclaims that she died suddenly thinking that Isaac had actually been offered up as a sacrifice. However, the text implies that she and Abraham were not living in the same place when she died. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

As is true for all of the portions of the first book of the Torah, each contains multiple stories. This week, I had the privilege of reading Rabbi Gordon Tucker’s dvar Torah, where he presented an entirely new lens with which to see Abraham and his family. It presented Abraham as a man not quite secure in the land in which he settled. We certainly experience that lack of power in his negotiations as he buys a resting place for Sarah. It is also a moment where he allows himself to be emotional as he weeps. The only other time Abraham weeps is when he sends Hagar away. Rabbi Tucker refers to Abraham’s demeanor while almost sacrificing his son as “sleepwalking through the experience”.

Rabbi Tucker sees Abraham as a refugee, a man without status trying to fit in and yet not quite comfortable in his new surroundings, despite his wealth. Why does he need to send his manservant back to his homeland to find a wife for his son? As much as he wants to be part of the place where he has settled, he does not want to be swallowed up by it. Sending Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac yields positive results when he returns with Rebecca, a kind young woman who watered Eliezer’s thirsty camels and was willing to embark on a journey to a place she did not know.

When looking at this story that is so foundational for us, all the generations who have come since reveal themselves, sojourning to places they did not know for a vast variety of reasons. Today, we work to welcome the current group of sojourners who have left the places that they have known to travel to new, unfamiliar and not always hospitable surroundings.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Linda Shriner-Cahn