CHAYE SARAH 1997
 
In the Torah portion Chaye Sarah, we have stories. Why should the Torah spend so much time telling us the story about how Abraham bought a grave for his wife, and how he sent his servant Eliezer to Mesopotamia to get a wife for his son Yitzchak? In fact, the whole first book of the Bible, Bereishis, is primarily nothing more than stories. Why should we learn these stories? Why shouldn't we learn about the mitzvahs we have to observe starting in the Book of Exodus? Why should we spend so much time learning random stories of the lives of the patriarchs? After all, we do not learn everything about their lives.
The Ramban discusses this problem, and he says that the reason we learn these stories is because Maasey Ovos Simon Levonim, that whose occurrences which happened to our forefathers are a sign for us.  In other words, they are prophetic. Jewish history repeats itself, and we take confidence and hope from reading these stories, because they tell us that in spite of all these difficulties, our forefathers overcame their problems and persevered. How many times have Jews been put ont he altar? We all know that story of the Holocaust. We all know about the difficulties of living as a minority in any country.
Rabbi Soloveitchik says that we learn these stories because they also teach us character and how to respond to given situations based cm Jewish values. After all, life is filled with variables. One cannot just read a book and determine what to do.  Even Halachic matters are not fixed entirely. There are always new situations which arise which have to be dealt with. Also, Jewish history is not rigorously determined by the past. We are a teological people. Our history is determined by our goals. Our history is determined much more by our destiny
 
than by our past. Life is not rigorous. Everything is not determined by what went on in the past. This is why computers can never take the place of people because all their answers are determined by the logic of previous answers- They cannot go beyond the information put in them. Human beings can. We are not computers. We make quantum leaps. We know that this is the same thing science is telling us about subatomic physics. Where an electron or atom will go is not rigidly determined. They can make quantum leaps. There are determinate equations and indeterminate equations. We do have free will. The stories of the Bible are there to teach us how to take these quantum leaps and which are in Jewish tradition and which are not.
In this week's Torah portion, we learn how Eliezer goes to get a wife for Yitzchak and devises a test. He says, "The girl who, after I will ask her to lower her pitcher and give me a drink of water, will say, 'I will not only give you to drink but your camels to drink, will be the girl who has been chosen by G-d to be the bride of Yitzchak." Many rabbis, especially the Rambam, rail at this. This is nothing more than divination, like throwing lots or having a black cat cross your path.  They try to jump hoops to try to explain how Eliezer could have done such a thing.
Actually, if we will look at the text carefully, we will see that it was not a divination because when he approached Rebecca she did not say, "I will give you to drink and I will also give you camels to drink." She instead gave him to drink, and only after he drank did she say, "I
 
will give you camels to drink."The divination must be precise and cannot miss any elements. Other rabbis say that this was a character test to see whether Rebecca was kind or not, but what kind of test was this? After all, she could have said, "I will give you to drink and your camels to drink,' and be a married woman or an engaged woman, or she could have been an idiot or a woman of loose morals or even a kleptomaniac.  How could Eleizer base his choosing a wife for Yitzchak on just this test without doing any background checks? Other rabbis say that, in reality, he had already checked up on Rebecca and had known everything about her. That's why he gave her the jewelry even before he asked her name. However, he went through this elaborate test not to confirm his choice of Rebecca as a wife for Yitzchak, but to convince her family to send Rebecca with him to the land of Canaan. He contrived this plan to convince the family that this was the divine will. They agreed because they felt that this was the divine will.
Throughout Jewish history, our friends at any given moment have been determined not by their friendship with us but whether they have felt impelled to help us because of their ideology or religious beliefs. We all know from Nixon's tapes that he did not like Jews and was an anti-Semite. However, he helped Israel in the Yom Kippur War because he was a staunch anti-Communist and helping Israel would help him further his ideology and stymie Communism and even defeat it. We know that Stalin was a terrible anti-Semite.  He was planning to murder all the Jews of Russia right before he died. However, he saved Israel in 1948 by shipping to Israel all the captured German war equipment which was stored in
 
Czechoslovakia.  The irony of ironies was the Israelis were able to defeat the Arab armies because they had German equipment.  Today the best friends of Israel are the fundamentalist and evangelists.  They flood Congress with letters.  They even give large sums of money to Israel.  John Hagee recently raised half a million dollars to send Jews from Russia to Israel. They believe that there is a divine mandate for Jews to return to Israel and for Israel to be strong.  Of course, they believe that after this happens, all the Jews will convert to Christianity and then the Messiah will come.  It is not important what their agenda is; they are helping us now.  They are helping us because they feel that they are divinely mandated to do so.
In the first part of the Torah portion, we learn about how Abraham purchased a grave for Sarah.  The rabbis say that this was really the Sarah era, not the Abraham era.  Sarah understood much better how to apply the covenant.  She knew how to relate to people. Abraham was more the teacher.  The rabbis say that Abraham was really secondary to Sarah in prophecy.  That's why G-d told Abraham to listen to Sarah's voice, and Rashi, on that sentence, makes it clear that Abraham was secondary to Sarah in prophecy.  The covenant could not exist unless there are couples.  After Sarah died, G-d no longer spoke to Abraham, and Abraham lived 38 years more.  The rabbis say that Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and then to cry for her because he wanted everybody to understand he greatness.  After we learn that Sarah lived 127 years, it says, "These are the years of Sarah." Why do we have to repeat that? The rabbis say because this emphasizes that this was the Sarah era and they
 
wanted to tell us that is why Abraham wanted Sarah to be buried in the Cave of the Machpelan, the same place where Adam and Eve were buried and where he was going to be buried.  He knew that he only amounted to something because of his wife, that when his name was change to Abraham and the letter Hay was added to his name, which symbolized G-d, a letter Hay was also added to Sarah's name, which also symbolized the name of G-d. Sarah and Abraham needed each other for the covenant to work.  He could not be a patriarch without his matriarch.  She needed to be buried at this site together with him.
We believe that women should be elevated in Judaism.  Those groups in Judaism which ever seek to denigrate woman are acting contrary to Jewish principles and values. We believe that man and woman have different roles but they are equal roles.  From this Torah portion, we learn who we can rely on and who we cannot.  If our friends are acting out of a divine or ideological mandate, we know that at that particular time we can rely on them.  We also must remember that women must always be elevated to be considered in an equal role as men otherwise Judaism is in peril.
I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who found a bottle and rubbed it and out came a genie.  The genie told him he could have one wish.  The man said, "I want to do something that few men have ever tried and that no man has ever been completely successful at."  Immediately he was turned into a housewife.  Let us all hope and pray that we will always realize that the stories of the Bible are not only indicators of the repetition of Jewish
 
history, but also that they allow us to make the necessary quantum leaps so we can preserve our identity and pursue our destiny.  May we all do so so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.