You Can’t Go Home Again. Sort Of.
By Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein
The Torah portion for this week raises a critically important existential question, a query that writers, psychologists and seekers have asked for many, many years: Can we ever really go home again?
Chayei Sarah, or The Life of Sarah, encompasses death and birth, ends and beginnings, and continuity. It offers a story about the polarity of mortal existence. It also highlights the cyclical, and sometimes paradoxical, nature of the human journey.
The portion gets its name from the opening two verses of the narrative, which recount the life and describe the death of the first matriarch of the Jewish people. Immediately after Sarah dies, the aged Abraham purchases the cave of Machpelah from its Hittite owner, Ephron. From that point forward, the cave and the land around it will serve as the burial site, not only for Abraham’s wife but for Abraham himself, as well as his progeny.
The cave also serves as a symbol. After the patriarch’s horrific trial on Mount Moriah (the binding and near sacrifice of his son Isaac), and following the loss of his beloved wife and lifelong partner, Abraham is in dire need of something tangible — something concrete — that he can possess and “control.” Tested by God and bowed by the irresistible power of mortality, the gravesite becomes Abraham’s foothold in the land of Canaan, but it also represents an anchor of security in the midst of forces that are beyond his ability to fathom or resist.
The first chapter in the life of the Jewish people has come to a close. The “mother” who gave birth to the people of Israel has died. But a new chapter has begun.
As T.S. Eliot writes in his poem, “Little Gidding”:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
In Chayei Sarah, Abraham stands at a threshold, a shadow place between ends and beginnings, death and new life. When we, like the patriarch, stand at a threshold, we often feel as if we are neither here nor there: we teeter in liminal space, unsure of our footing and uncertain about our next steps. A threshold can usher in change, but it can also trigger feelings of panic. Yet Abraham does not panic. Instead, he acts quickly and with resolve.
After his purchase of the gravesite and Sarah’s burial in it, the narrative tells us that Abraham is now “old, advanced in years” (Gen. 24:1), and the juxtaposition of this information with Sarah’s interment implies that the patriarch’s life is nearing its end as well, and that Abraham will soon join his wife in the cave of Machpelah. In the next verse, Abraham orders his senior servant to travel to the land of the patriarch’s birth in order to find a wife for his son Isaac — and to swear an oath that he will not choose a woman from among the Canaanites. When the servant asks whether Isaac should meet him there in the event the prospective bride is unwilling to follow him, Abraham replies, “On no account must you take my son back there!” (Gen. 24:6)
Abraham is adamant about this point. He reaffirms and reinforces it two verses later, when we hear his very last words: “Do not take my son back there!” (Gen. 24:8) Yet while the patriarch is (notably) resolute and passionate about his son never setting foot in his homeland, Abraham seems just as determined in his desire to find Isaac a wife from his homeland.
The story presents us with a paradox. On one hand, Abraham’s words and directive convey the idea that we cannot, and should not, try to go home again. Many years earlier, Abraham heeded God’s call, left his father’s house, and began a covenantal relationship between God and his future progeny. There is no going back — not for Abraham, nor for his son and all those to follow.
The past must remain in the past. On the other hand, if we view the woman who will eventually become Isaac’s wife (Rebekah) as a metaphor for “home,” then the narrative — and the teaching behind it — gets more complicated. While we can’t go home again, we can retrieve and reclaim aspects of our heritage. Where we have come from informs and shapes who we will be. Tribal continuity is something we should strive for with all of our heart and soul.
Abraham dies and is buried with Sarah in the cave of Machpelah. The servant finds Rebekah and brings her back to Canaan to marry Isaac. And the cycle of life continues.
T.S. Eliot goes on in his poem:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.
Living at the threshold, as Abraham does in this week’s Torah portion — living at all, really — means that our perceptions of time and self will always be in a state of flux: ends will give birth to new beginnings, and beginnings will eventually transform into ends. Like the patriarch’s clan, we have little choice but to embark, and embark again and again, on the ever-cyclical journey.
Yet our souls crave rest. And completion. When our exploration comes to a close, our focus will shift from perception to recognition. We will see, and we will be wise enough to finally understand, that the end we longed for was actually just another beginning.
Elliot Goldstein, Niles. "You Can't Go Home Again. Sort Of." Odyssey Networks. (Viewed on October 25, 2013). http://www.odysseynetworks.org/news/2013/10/21/you-can%E2%80%99t-go-home-again-sort-of-hayyei-sarah-genesis-231-2518
D’var Tzedek
By Adina Gerver
When read with modern sensibilities, Genesis 24 is a traditional tale about a man who travels to a far-off land to find a woman to marry his master’s son. Imagine that you are that woman, going about your daily chores when a strange man approaches you. He gazes at you for a bit, and finding you to be a beautiful virgin, inquires as to your family lineage. Then he meets with your father and brother, who, seeing the many gifts that the servant has bestowed upon you and them, say without hesitation, “Take her and go, and let her be a wife to your master’s son.”
This is the scene that unfolds in Genesis 24—a traditional story, but with a surprising twist: Rebecca’s father, Bethuel, and brother, Laban, recant, and say “Let us call the girl and ask for her reply.” This verse is extraneous to the story and does not change the narrative at all, since Rebecca immediately agrees to go. What is it doing here? The Rabbis might have simply dismissed this as a stalling tactic since this verse appears in the context of the servant’s desire to take Rebecca with him immediately and her family’s desire that he tarry. Instead, Rashi makes a bold move and writes that from this specific phrase about a specific woman, we learn a general principle: a woman cannot be married against her will in Jewish law. Thus, Rebecca is carried to a far off land to marry Isaac, but with an express consent that impacts all Jewish women: “I will go.”
This story, which seems at first to solely treat women as silent property to be exchanged at will, is made slightly less disturbing by the important inclusion of Rebecca’s consent. Her voice matters at this moment, and Rashi amplifies it to make sure it is heard in future generations. He takes this tiny gap in the patriarchy-clad story and opens it up further, making women’s voices relevant to halachah as a whole.
This incident leaves a small, open space for Rebecca to be an active player in the decisions about her own life, one the Rabbis expanded to create greater change—and we can follow their lead. We must find the places where gender roles are cracking, where women’s voices are beginning to be heard, and wedge into those openings to create the chance for a stronger voice with wider resonance. We can find small elements of hope in patriarchal societies and expand upon them to make sustainable, systemic change.
Across the globe, when women in traditional societies are given the chance to be heard—on matters of their own health, the financial well-being of their families, or, more broadly, the democratic process—women, men and children flourish. When women are not allowed to be active decision makers in their own lives and in the lives of their families, they founder.
Grassroots organizations around the world are working to widen the space for women created by Rebecca. The Afghan Women’s Resource Center (AWRC) finds small gaps in patriarchy and, in those gaps, offers courses in literacy, health, women’s rights and micro enterprise. USOFOORAL ESUPAN in Senegal found a gap, and in it runs a sustainable gardening project that will provide income for 60 women and youth. The Center for Domestic Violence Prevention (CEDOVIP) in Uganda finds space for change at the grassroots level, and in that space, is mobilizing communities to change attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate domestic violence.
These organizations give women—if not Rebecca, then Farhat, Ramatulai, and Nabulungi—voices, and provide opportunities through which they can begin to defeat problems that might otherwise be overwhelming. Rather than turning away from an entire society in resignation, they find the places where women can speak and they work to expand those spaces from the inside, much as Rashi did with Genesis 24:57. And so must we each listen for openings and wedge into those cracks the fight for women’s empowerment.
Gerver, Adina. "Dvar Tzedek, Parshat Chayei Sarah." American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on October 25, 2013). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/chayei_sarah.html
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