Today we are participating in something special, My d’var Torah and our Torah discussion are dedicated to the Academy for Jewish Religion, my seminary, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. There are now 193 alumni serving the entire spectrum of the Jewish community. Rabbis and cantors train together for positions in the Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal, Independent world. We are pulpit rabbis and cantors, educators, chaplains, university professors, and more. The slogan is “Ordaining rabbis and cantors for all Jewish communities.” And I stand here this morning proudly in my AJR Tallit since being an AJR rabbi is an especially good fit for this independent synagogue that prides itself on embracing diversity. We can talk more about this at Kiddush which the Kleins are sponsoring in honor of AJR’s anniversary.
Today’s Torah portion starts with a gap. In the last scene, Abraham returns to Beer Sheva after the near sacrifice of Isaac. Some other year we will explore more fully what happened on top of that mountain. Abraham returns to Beersheva.
But then it says, “These are the years of the life of Sarah. Sarah was 100 and 20 and 7 and Sarah died.” The portion is called Chayyei Sarah, the Life of Sarah. Not the death of Sarah, yet this portion starts with her death.
Here is the surprise. The gap in the text. And Abraham buries her in Kiryat Arba, not Beersheva. How does she get from Beer Sheva to Kiryat Arba? It is some 40 miles away. The text is silent. The commentaries are strangely silent. This gap then becomes ripe for midrash. Stories about the text the fill in the holes. Again the classical midrash are strangely silent. We will come back to that gap.
This text starts with her obituary. Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years. The rabbis do ask the question, why the repetition of the word “years.” It could say Sarah was 127 years old. It must come to teach us something because there are no extra words in the Torah. They decide that when she was twenty she was as beautiful as she was at seven, and at 100 she was as blameless, without sin as she was at 20. (Bereshit Rabbah 58:1)
Let’s think about that for a moment. How would you like your own obituary to read? That you are beautiful? Sinless? Something else? It is a really important question. Some people even do this as a writing exercise which we won’t do here today but I encourage you to go home and try. Meanwhile, what would yours say? A discussion ensued and it included things like, “She was kind.” “A good parent” “A good sense of humor.” “Overcame much” “Determined” “Worked hard.” “A good provider.” “A family man.”
We noted that there were no material things on the list. Nothing like an old t-shirt of my husband’s that said, “He who dies with the most fonts wins.” Coming off of Thanksgiving, we were grateful for much.
We learn important things from this text. “Abraham came to Kiryat Araba, now Hebron to cry and to eulogize.” So we know that it is OK to cry at a funeral. In my family, we were pretty straight laced, and crying didn’t come easily. It wasn’t really allowed. I sang in the temple choir and we did a production of Free to Be You and Me. One song was “It’s alright to cry.” That song was a revelation to me. But then my father died. I did a eulogy, struggled to control my emotions, could barely see the words on the page and sat back down next to my mother who said, “But you didn’t cry.” So cry. It’s all right. The Bible says so. Marlo Thomas says so. Even my mother says so.
We learn that it is important to tell stories about the deceased. To give a eulogy.
How do we do this? Abraham is our model for this as well. It is said that his eulogy of Sarah was the passage we know as Eishet Chayil, A Woman of Valor. Usually we subscribe the writing of Proverbs to Solomon.
A woman of valor–seek her out, for she is to be valued above rubies.(or pearls)
Her husband trusts her, and they cannot fail to prosper.
All the days of her life she is good to him.
She opens her hands to those in need and offers her help to the poor.
Adorned with strength and dignity, she looks to the future with cheerful trust.
Her speech is wise, and the law of kindness is on her lips.
Her children rise up to call her blessed, her husband likewise praises her:
“Many women have done well, but you surpass them all.’
Grace is deceitful and beauty vain, but a woman loyal to God has truly earned praise.
Give her honor for her work; her life proclaims her praise.
This is Sarah’s life. She follows Abraham to Canaan. She follows him again to Egypt where he describes her as beautiful. She is barren and comes up with a solution. She rushes to feed her guests and gives a portion to her maidens. She laughs when she is told she will have a baby even though she is so old. This is a pretty good eulogy for Sarah. So tell the stories. Use Eishet Chayil as a base. Don’t be too grandiose or too belittling. Your words, however, should make the mourners cry, because that is part of the healing process.
From this portion we also learn that Abraham buries his dead. He sought out a cave and purchased it from the men of the town. The men offer to give him the choicest place and he says that he will pay for it. 400 shekels. The first land contract, if you will. And that is important. It is one of the clear indications that Israel has a claim to the land. Abraham purchased it. It was not a gift.
But we still have a problem in our text. Why did Sarah die and why is she in Kiryat Arba?
The rabbis teach that she died from grief. From shock. One midrash has it she didn’t even hear the whole story, just that he was taken to the mountain. Another has it as joy and relief that he was spared. It is a direct response to learning about the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. Now I am not sure whether that is grief or fear but imagine having your son, the one you have waited for you entire life, the one you believe G-d promised you, taken away and almost sacrificed. What emotions would you have? Anger, fear, confusion, grief, relief might all be included.
There is one more gap that we have to wrestle with. The text is again silent. What happens to Isaac? The text tells us: “Abraham then returned to his servant lads; they got up and traveled to Be’er Sheva, and Abraham settled in Be’er Sheva.” Is Isaac there? Generations of rabbis, commentators of all religions, scholars have tried to figure that out.
Later in today’s parsha we get some of that answer. Abraham arranges for a wife for Isaac. When Rebecca arrives Isaac is meditating in the field, whatever that verb means. He raises his eyes and sees her. She alights from her camel. They go to Sarah’s tent and he loves her—the first mention of love in the Bible—and he is comforted from his mother’s death
It seems that Abraham didn’t ask Sarah before he took Isaac to Mount Moriah. Or maybe as one midrash suggests, he said he was taking Isaac to a yeshivah. (Pirke d’Rabbe Eliezar 31) Or worse, as some of the midrashim written during the Crusades suggest, that Isaac actually died on Mount Moriah. This story became the model of Kiddush HaShem, Sanctification of the Name, where Jewish parents were forced to kill their own children or have them forcibly converted. Others see the very text as a polemic against child sacrifice. But neither answers the question, where is Isaac. Where is Sarah? Either way, as a mother, I would not be happy. I do not think I could live with that grief.
My colleague Rabbi Jonathan Kligler at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation in Vermont has a modern interpretation that resonates with me. When he first meets Rebecca the text says, “Now Isaac was coming from the direction of Be’er Lachai Roi, for he was living in the Negev”. That’s odd. That’s where Hagar ran away to when Sarah was mistreating her. And at that very spring, that is where Hagar first names G-d, “El Ro’I, the G-d that sees me.” This is the spring that Hagar and Ishmael return to one when Abraham at Sarah’s command banish them to the wilderness. And this, we now learn is where Isaac is living after the Akedah. Kligler says that it means that Isaac and Ishmael loved each other. That Isaac’s heart was broken when Hagar and Ishmael were banished. Ishmael was his brother. Hagar a second mother. He wanted to make his family whole again. At some levels every family is broken and in need of that wholeness. In his midrash, Isaac is doing teshuvah with Ishmael, the hard work of repair and reconciliation that we talk about at the High Holidays but is accessible to us year round.
It is an interesting read. We know that they did reconcile. The two of them return to Kiryat Arba to bury their father Abraham together. That gives us hope. That Isaac and Ishmael can come back together. And then Isaac settles in Ber Lachai Ro’I, the place where we are really seen, where we are known for who we really are, where we know that we are all children of the Divine, created in the Divine image and loved by a Divine love, a love that heals, and blesses and makes whole.
Unfortunately, that knowledge comes too late for some. We are told that the years of the life of Sarah were one hundred and twenty and seven. And Sarah died. Compared to her husband Abraham, this is a premature death.
So here is my midrash
And they went down the
Mountain
together.
Both Abraham and Isaac
And together they returned
To Beersheva.
How could she have stayed
When she learned what Abraham had done,
When she learned how G-d had tested Abraham
how nearly she had lost her son, her only the son, the one she loved
How nearly she had lost Isaac,
The one that G-d had promised to her.
And when Sarah learned all this,
She ran away.
What G-d could, would demand this of her, of any mother?
In fact, never even asked her,
Just told Abraham to take their son
To a mountain G-d would show
Take him and offer him as a sacrifice
Like a ram.
She could imagine Isaac’s fear
When he saw the knife poised in Abraham’s hand
And he realized he was to be the ram.
And Abraham, her husband, he was no better than G-d,
Maybe even worse.
He did it without questioning,
Without wondering why
Without asking G-d
Without consulting Sarah.
And so she fled.
She would go home
To where her family was
Where everything was familiar,
The land, the people, the gods
Not like this strange land that Abraham had brought her to,
Like this strange G-d who demands everything,
Even her son.
And on her way Sarah died in Kiryat Arba,
Now Hebron,
Even though the text does not tell us why here
We can imagine Sarah’s suffering
At the disintegration of her family
And the years of Sarah’s life were
One hundred and twenty and seven
And Abraham and Isaac came to Hebron
To mourn her.