Hayei Sarah
Bereishit 23-25:18
Yitzhaq and Exile
Aryeh Bernstein, 5763
This shabbat threatens to be a tense one in the land of our ancestors. The deepening despair and violence within the Palestinian people and the deepening entrenchment of the Israeli occupation are amplified in a week in which the Israeli government disbands over the issue of funding settlements in the territories and promises to be replaced with a more hard-line government. Moreover, this shabbat is parashat Hayei Sarah, which begins with the detailed description of Avraham's negotiation for and purchase--at a steep price--of the Cave of Makhpelah in Hevron, where tradition has our three forefathers and three of our four foremothers buried. Annually, on this shabbat, thousands of Jews converge on Hevron/Qiryat Arba to show solidarity with the small community of Jews who lives there in the heart of a major, Palestinian population center, and to celebrate the eternal Jewish claim to Hevron, on the basis of Avraham Avinu's legally binding purchase. I wish for this devar torah to be my prayer that this shabbat come peacefully-in both directions-and that it will usher in a new week of hope and building toward a lasting peace.
Hayei Sarah, much like so much of what transpires in Israel, is a parashah of stinging irony. We enter the parashah wondering how Sarah will receive her broken family after the brutal ordeal of the Binding (Aqedah) of Yitzhaq. The name of the parashah suggests hope-"the life of Sarah"-but immediately, that hope is dashed and we discover a parashah about death-Sarah's at the beginning of the parashah and Avraham's near the end. Moreover, our lingering uneasiness at Aqedat Yitzhaq is left to fester, as we discover that none of the principal characters in the family-Avraham, Sarah, and Yitzhaq-ever speaks to each other again. The Torah invites us to imagine an estranged and splintered family. At the end of last week's parashah, after the Aqedah, Avraham returned with his assistants, and settled in Be'er Sheva (22:19). At the beginning of this week's parashah (23:2):
| And Sarah died in Qiryat Arba, which is Hevron, in the land of Canaan. And Avraham came to mourn for Sarah and to cry for her. | וַתָּמָת שָׂרָה בְּקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן וַיָּבֹא אַבְרָהָם לִסְפֹּד לְשָׂרָה וְלִבְכֹּתָהּ: |
It is easy to understand how a strong midrashic tradition emerged that Sarah died from the pain of the Aqedah, a motif that rears its head in various versions, all nightmarish.
The most burning question, though, is what happens to Yitzhaq after the Aqedah. We never get a clear sense. Moreover, the Torah never develops his personality as it does with other characters, as if, perhaps, to protect Yitzhaq's privacy from our horrified reactions to the state he might be in. In fact, one of the most central stories of Yitzhaq's life, the search for a woman to marry him (chapter 24), emphasizes his exclusion (e.g., verses 6-8) from the process. When Rivqah does arrive, the Torah gives us our first post-Aqedah glimpse of Yitzchaq, telling us where he has been (24:62):
| Yitzhaq, meanwhile, had come back from the vicinity of Be'er-lahai-ro'i... | וְיִצְחָק בָּא מִבּוֹא בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי... |
We have encountered Be'er-lahai-ro'i only once before. This was the place where God spoke to and supported Yitzhaq's frightened and pregnant step-mother, Hagar, after Sarai and Avram banished her from the house. It is the place where God promised Hagar that she would have a son whom she should call Yishmael, "כִּי שָׁמַע יְהֹוָה אֶל עָנְיֵךְ" -- "for Hashem has heard ('shama') your suffering" (16:11). The story concludes: "וַתִּקְרָא שֵׁם יְהֹוָה הַדֹּבֵר אֵלֶיהָ 'אַתָּה אֵל רֳאִי', כִּי אָמְרָה, 'הֲגַם הֲלֹם רָאִיתִי אַחֲרֵי רֹאִי'" -- "And she called Hashem, who had spoken to her, by the name 'God who sees me', by which she meant, 'Haven't I gone on seeing after He saw me?!' That is why the well is called 'Be'er-lahai-ro'i' (Well of the Living One who sees me)" (16:13-14). Be'er-lahai-ro'i was a place of thanksgiving and hope for the downtrodden, and it bore special significance for the estranged, exiled members of Yitzhaq's family-his brother, Yishmael, and his step-mother, Hagar.
The Rabbis sought to piece together Yitzhaq's life after the Aqedah. Again, our verse tells us, "Yitzhaq, meanwhile, had come back from the vicinity (literally, "the coming") of Be'er-lahai-ro'i" (24:62). A midrash in Bereishit Rabbah 60:14 interprets as follows:
| "And Yitzhaq had come back from the coming": | "ויצחק בא מבוא" |
| --He came from death. | --אתא ממיתא. |
| And where did he go? "Be'er-lahai-ro'i": | ולהיכן הלך? "באר לחי רואי" |
| --He went to bring Hagar-the one who had sat at the well and said | --הלך להביא את הגר--אותה שישבה על הבאר ואמרה |
| to the One Who Lives Forever, 'See my suffering!'" | לחי העולמים, 'ראה בעלבוני'. |
Why did Yitzhaq bring Hagar to his father? This midrash is based on the tradition that Qeturah, the woman Avraham marries at the end of his life (25:1), is really Hagar, reconciled to him at the end of life. Yitzhaq went straight from the Aqedah to Be'er-lahai-ro'i to bring Hagar to Avraham so that he could remarry her.
The portrait is heartbreakingly bittersweet: father and son who can never and will never speak to each other again, but each one tries to reconcile and pick up the pieces by finding a love partner for the other one. Perhaps each one feels hopelessly alone and despondent-Yitzhaq that his father could try to kill him, Avraham that he tried to kill his son, both of them that it did kill Sarah, and both that God imposed this awful scenario upon them. What is especially striking, though, is that while Avraham looks to his kin to provide a stable, nurturing partner for his shattered son, Yitzhaq goes right to the heart of the matter: this business is about healing familial wounds and this family's wounds begin with Avraham's banishment of Hagar. Yitzhaq, the favorite son, understands the neglected and exiled members of the family; his lot was cast with theirs on Mt. Moriah.
The Torah suggests that Yitzhaq's reconciliation was not only with Hagar. The parashah approaches its final breath (25:8-9) by describing Avraham's:
| When Avraham had breathed his last, dying at a happy, ripe age, old and full of years, he was gathered to his kin. His sons Yitzhaq and Yishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah.... | וַיִּגְוַע וַיָּמָת אַבְרָהָם בְּשֵׂיבָה טוֹבָה זָקֵן וְשָׂבֵעַ וַיֵּאָסֶף אֶל עַמָּיו: וַיִּקְבְּרוּ אֹתוֹ יִצְחָק וְיִשְׁמָעֵאל בָּנָיו אֶל מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה... |
Lest we think that the estranged brothers, nemeses from childhood, came together begrudgingly to bury their father in Hevron before going their separate ways, we learn (25:11):
| And it was, after the death of Avraham, that...Yitzhaq settled near Be'er-lahai-ro'i. | וַיְהִי אַחֲרֵי מוֹת אַבְרָהָם...וַיֵּשֶׁב יִצְחָק עִם בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי: |
As a response to a lifetime of death, suffering, and trauma, the brothers who are supposed to hate each other settle down next to each other. This is, perhaps, an act of repair for Qayin's jealous murder of Hevel and Avraham and Lot's nuisanced and dispassionate split and a seed of hope that all of the other sibling feuds-of Yaaqov and Esav, Rahel and Leah, Yoseph and his brothers, and down to our own, painful day and age-a seed of hope that these feuds can be settled, that there must be an alternative to hatred and bloodshed.
Yitzhaq, the only of the patriarchs never to set foot in the Diaspora, is the one who relates to the experience of exile. He is our prayer that the experience of suffering and victimhood will not yield anger and vengeance, but will produce empathy and reconciliation.