Parshat Chayei Sarah
Cheshvan 21Pa/ October 25
By: Joel Ackerman
Most of this week’s parasha reads like the plot of a soap opera. The cast of characters:
Abraham: The man who had been blessed with everything – except grandchildren to inherit his legacy.
Isaac: a forty-year-old bachelor, never dated. He would inherit everything, but who was he, really?
Rebecca: Chosen by G-d to be Isaac’s wife. Was she up to the challenge?
Eliezer: A true and faithful servant or conflicted over the need to advance his own interests?
Abraham was well advanced in age – at an age when he would be reviewing his life and accomplishments, and there was a huge gap. G-d had promised him that his descendants would be exceedingly numerous, but Isaac, the son who would inherit everything, was still unmarried. Abraham did not want Isaac married to any local women, even those from the families of his close Canaanite friends, but apparently was no longer up to the task of looking for a wife for him – especially since it would involve a long journey. So he assigned Eliezer, the steward of his property, the task. Many times humans complicate matters. Eliezer is characterized by our commentators as Abraham’s perfect servant, loyal to the core. However, some of Eliezer’s acts in this parasha seem to indicate an intent to sabotage his own mission.
Eliezer concocts a very specific scenario that would tell him whether a particular girl would be the right wife for Isaac. It would seem extremely unlikely that anyone would carry out that scenario exactly, and the mission would therefore fail. Yet Rebecca comes to the well and enacts the scenario exactly as Eliezer had envisioned it.
When Eliezer enters the home of Rebecca’s family, he is offered food, but refuses to eat, stating “I will not eat until I have spoken my words.” This is a scene common in many medieval romances. A stranger rides into a castle, is invited to eat at the master’s table, stands up and states “I cannot eat until I have told my story!” At this point, everyone relaxes. The stranger is on some type of quest. The evening’s entertainment has arrived.
But this isn’t medieval Europe. This is the Middle East, where customs involving host and guest are critical, where an error in behavior can produce a serious insult, where honor is at stake. And it looks as if Eliezer’s behavior here – refusing food - is intended to be a major affront to his hosts. In reciting Eliezer’s speech to Rebecca’s family, at one point the ba’al koreh uses a shalshelet, a quavering note that rises, falls and rises again. It is only used a few times in the entire Torah; it indicates a major point of tension – a major point of conflict for the character. Why is it here for Eliezer? Rashi asserts “Eliezer had a daughter and he was searching for a pretext so that Abraham would turn to him to marry his daughter to Isaac.”
The Dubno Maggid agrees: “Eliezer… had been forced to carry out his master’s orders, but he had no real desire that his mission should be successful”. He told his story to the family in a way that they would have no desire to pursue Abraham’s proposal of marriage so that Abraham would have to come to him for the marriage.
And at the end, Eliezer demands to know whether or not they intended to do kindness and truth to his master; if not, he would pack up and go immediately. After all that, Rebecca’s family could be justified in rejecting Abraham’s proposal.
But most commentators do not agree. Abravanel is typical. In his view, Eliezer was completely faithful. He ignores Rashi’s thought about a daughter of Eliezer. He states, as do all the commentators, that Eliezer’s concocted scenario at the well was to determine whether the girl had the necessary characteristic of chesed – kindness – that would be needed for Isaac’s wife. He asserts that Eliezer’s refusal to eat until he had spoken was necessary in case they did not reach an agreement about Rebecca because in that case he would have to leave immediately, which could not be done if he had accepted food from the host. He describes how Eliezer carefully casts his story, leaving out some details that might produce a negative response from the family. He rejects any assertion that Eliezer intended to insult Rebecca’s family or that they felt insulted.
The usual English expression is “Man proposes, G-d disposes”. Yiddish, as usual, is much more on point: “Man tracht un Gott lacht” (man plans and G-d laughs). Whether or not Eliezer was seeking to sabotage his mission, he accomplished it with flying colors.
And what of Rebecca? Was she the right wife for Isaac? Was she up to the challenge of marrying a 40-year-old bachelor, probably well set in his ways, son of the world’s first Jewish mother, and whose father had nearly taken his life? Surely a strong sense of kindness was needed, but Isaac’s wife, like the wives of all of our patriarchs, had to have much more.
I like to see how writers envision the characters in the Tanach.
Orson Scott Card, a famed writer mainly of science fiction and fantasy, wrote a series of biographical novels of our matriarchs. He describes Rebecca as a young woman sure of herself and her convictions, who had heard great things of Abraham’s family and who did not hesitate for a moment when the chance came to become part of it. He adds the assertion that her behavior at the well, in addition to showing extreme kindness, also indicated a lack of the extreme modesty often expected of women in that society – women would not normally approach a strange man for any reason.
The author Maurice Samuel, in “Certain People of the Book”, calls Rebecca “The Manager”. He writes: “’Managerial’, too, is the best overall word for Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, and after it, ‘intuitive’, ‘unerring’, ‘competent’, all with a touch of greatness. If I had a problem in human relations it is Rebekah I would want to consult… Not Naomi, who I suspect would solve my problem by making me into the kind of person who doesn’t have that kind of problem.” He describes her as “lively, intelligent, quick in action, even as a girl; a person with a grasp of things... not the submissive and servile Oriental female of popular tradition” He states “Instinct – by which I mean the totality of her character – told Rebekah that it would be good for her husband to know, and to remember for the rest of his life, that when she was called to him she turned to her family and said “I will go – at once.”
Yes, all agree, Rebecca was the right person for Isaac. He had the good fortune to have his wife chosen specifically for him by G-d. A lot of things could have gone wrong in this soap opera, but G-d’s plan prevailed. Who knows, perhaps He enjoyed watching the characters play out this plot. Man tracht un Gott lacht, indeed
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