רפואה מן התורה
Healing from the Torah
By Rabbi Adam Ruditsky
In this week’s reading, Parashat Chayei Sarah, we learn
about the death of Sarah, Abraham’s wife and Isaac’s mother. In this case, Sarah who is the first
Matriarch of the Jewish people is buried, and Rivka who will be Isaac’s wife becomes
the next Matriarch to carry on the family name. Here, I’d like to look not just at the death
of Sarah, but in her burial we find a meaning in Jewish life, values and
conduct that follow us from birth until the end and even beyond. This parsha is just not
about the death of Sarah, but about the power for her memory. Likewise, it is not just about her memory, but
the essence of her burial is the capstone of Jewish values in the Abrahamic
trilogy. I think what we see in this parsha
is that Sarah becomes a symbol of immortality, not a bodily immortality, but an
immortality of being. The Jewish
Mystical tradition teaches that Sarah was “the totality of unity.”
From the burial of Sarah we can learn about
the transformative power of value. Today
the amount of people who opt for cremation as opposed to burial is driven both by
finances and philosophy. In Los Angeles
buying a plot in a Jewish cemetery with all the services and merchandise needed
is not cheap, the norm is in the low 5 figures for a single space. Also, for others if is about existence,
physically and spiritually, both of which just cease to be. This week we find Abraham purchasing a family
burial ground called Ha’marat HaMachpeilah, the Cave of Machpeilach, a
particular cave in Hebron up north.
Although tradition questions if there was a way to know the true value
of the cave, value is also defined a little differently. In the Aramaic Midrash, Targum Jonathan on Genesis 23:15, the price is what
it is and Abraham seems to be fine with that, “The land, as to its price, would
be four hundred sileen of silver; between me and you what is that? Bury your
dead.” Rashi summed it up by saying, “leave business alone and bury your dead,”
which is about the value of לְוָיַת הַמֵּת (l’vayat
ham’mayt), “attending to the dead,” a part of the larger value of כָּבוֹד הַמֶּת (Kavod HaMet), “honoring the dead.” While the common view is that Ephron (who
owned the land) overcharged and mispresented the sale, Robert Alter writes that
Abraham is “unwilling to haggle over the price,” his only intent was to “make a
legitimate purchase.” The value for
Abraham was to have a Jewish burial place in the midst of a foreign land for
his family. In this case the need of
burial was birthed from conviction, a conviction that produced a value that was kept
alive in the existence of Sarah’s memory.
Abraham and his family belonged to
the community of all humanity but also understood they were Hebrews. In Genesis 23:4 when Abraham came to Ephron,
borrowing the words of Ibn Ezra and Sforno, said “here I am a resident with you
and death is doomed upon us and I have no place,” so please “be
agreeable so that I should possess a burial plot among you.” In the Canaanite
culture burying a family in a cave was normative, so surely it influenced
Abraham. But given the fact that Abraham had differing views, than Ephron, he
needed to acquire the property without
assistance. In this case we read in
Ecclesiastes 12:7, “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the
spirit returns unto God who gave it,” the crux of his difference regarding
death with those in Canaan. The
Canaanites believed that following physical death, what we can translate as
soul, departed from the body to the land of Mot (Death). Bodies were buried with offerings of food and
drink to make sure the dead would not trouble the living and they practiced embalming,
mumification and necromancy, all of which was against Abraham's practices. Recently I was
with a family who lost their husband/father/grandfather. Although this family opted for cremation, and
stated that they were not religious, as we gathered around the bed of their
departed loved one they asked me to say traditional after death Jewish
prayers. We are a community, and while
our beliefs are broad, we still are a community with a “way” that speaks to
every part of life that transcends religious practice and touches the deeper
spirit of our humanity within. The first
piece of real-estate purchased by our Ancestors in the bible is a burial cave. Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch held the view
that this was how Abraham took ownership of the promises of God regarding the
land, but I’d say it was more than that.
Rav Abraham Isaac Kook taught us about the “unity of God,” saying that the
“content” of a person’s life is “the entire basis of holiness,” thus “the
temporal and the eternal emerge in one whole.”
In the end, Sarah would go back to her organic relationship with the
earth as her soul reunited with God, “the totality of unity.”
While sure Abraham had to stand upon
his own convictions, he also knew that he needed to honor those who saw the
word differently. Here, both with the
location of the burial site, as well as where Isaac’s wife Rivka came from,
Abraham and his family had to survive in the same land where Sodom and Gomorrah
once stood. Regarding the burial cave, Reb
Nachman of Breslev taught, “The site of the Machpeilah
Cave is the gate of Gan Eden through which all souls ascend.” Conversely, the value of the cave according
to Or HaChaim was lost for Ephron since it was “accessed through the larger
field, now when the cave served as a cemetery, it could no longer serve its
original purpose.” Abraham could not
take the cave for free from Ephron because for Abraham it held a value that
Ephron could not understand. The cave
represented much more than a piece of land, but a conviction about the relationship
between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, between the Hebrews and
their values. Yet Ephron called Abraham
a “Prince of God” (נְשִׂיא
אֱלֹהִים, n’sim
Elohim), Ibn Ezra saying as a “Prince of God” Abraham is being
likened to a prophet, Rabbi David Kimchi teaching that in the eyes of Ephron
Abraham was in an elevated position, “your status as such among us” (see. Gen.
23:6). Abraham, and Sarah, stood out,
their faith and convictions made meaning amongst the masses of Canaan, the
voice of their values were heard, respected and embraced.
The power of Sarah’s burial place represented
something that Ephron could not quite put his finger on, and that was a
morality of values. Rabbi Jonathan
Sachs, z’l, of blessed memory, wrote “In our ability to see the world not only
from our own perspective, but from that of others, that gives us our privilege
and responsibility as moral agents.” Abraham became a moral agent by embracing his sense of
values that impacted the tikkun, the repair of the world in which he lived. The voice of Jewish values are just as potent
today, values like ahava (love), avodah (service for others) and chesed
(kindness), relational values toward others that we teach our children from the start.
A value such as kavod habriyot (human dignity) must stand in
opposition to sinat habriyot (human hatred), or how can values of rachmanut
(compassion) and shalom bayit (family harmony) operate for the
good? In fact, if relational values are absent
or further fragment, can we really fix what is broken around us? Rav Abraham Isaac Kook taught that ahava
(love) for another must include the good and bad alike, no one said that would
be easy, but that is the only way what has value can be heard.
Shabbat Shalom.
No comments:
Post a Comment