Adrian A. Durlester


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Random Musings Before Shabbat-Chaye Sarah 5763

Life Goes On

Last year, I pondered on why the Torah includes the speech of Abraham's servant to Bethuel and Laban, explaining all the instructions that Abraham had given him, and relating what had transpired to bring the servant to this point, seeking Rebekkah as a wife for Isaac. After all, the Torah has already told us all of this-why the need to have it repeated, written out, in the Torah?

And something I didn't notice last time, but which now is so strikingly apparent to me. When Rebekkah and Isaac meet, the Torah states simply that the servant "told Isaac all the things that he [the servant] had done." (Bereshit 24:66.)

Fascinating, isn't it? We have this elaborate retelling of the servant's story to Laban and Bethuel. A completely redundant passage. It gives us pause, makes us wonder. Our Torah is quite effective at that, isn't it? Seeing this apparently redundant retelling in print, we are given pause. So we stop and look at the text, and ask questions, and wonder why it is the way it is. Exactly as intended. For every time the text gets us to question the text, the text is doing its job well!

So, after wrestling with the question of why the Torah contains the complete text of the servant's retelling, just this short time later the text presents us with another question.

All this elaborate explanation of how Abraham sent his servant, how Gd guided the servant to kin of Abraham there to find a perfect match for Isaac in Rebekkah. 61 verses in all (24:1-61), including the 15 verses of the servant's retelling the tale (vv34-49.)

Yet the entire story of Isaac and Rebekkah first meeting, and their becoming man and wife, is told in just 6 verses (24:62-67). Why isn't verse 66 replaced with another 15 verses where the Torah relates in intricate detail what the servant tells to Isaac about his mission? Why is the consummation of the marriage of the second in line of patriarchs and matriarchs not given more time in print?

Verse 62-we learn where Isaac is living. Verse 63-Isaac encounters the returning caravan with Rebekkah. Verse 64-Rebekkah sees Isaac and asks who he is. The servant tells her it is Isaac, and she veils herself. Verse 66-We learn that the servant tells Isaac all that he had done. Verse 67-Isaac brings Rebekkah into Sarah's tent, consummates the marriage, and finds comfort. All that in six verses? Amazing.

So what is there to be learned from the Torah here giving the Reader's Digest condensed version of the story, yet having just spelled out the events leading up to it in great detail-twice?

The text, matter-of-factly, proceeds from there to tell us how Abraham took another wife and she bore him 6 more sons.

So what is the lesson here? Perhaps it is "life goes on." Both Isaac and his father Abraham do what they need to do to continue with life after Sarah dies. Isaac mourns the loss of his mother. (How Isaac feels about his father is likely another matter entirely. We've all discussed before the potential mental state of someone whose father tried to offer them up as a sacrifice!)

Perhaps the Torah omits further detail to illustrate how life must go on. Abraham and Isaac (and Ishmael) must put the death of Sarah behind them. Isaac Must also put behind him the trauma of the akedah, and fulfill his obligation to carry on the lineage by getting married. Not much else needs to be said, so this is perhaps why it isn't said.

Yet, if this is indeed the case, it complicates the question of why the Torah so fully relates the exploits of the servant who retrieves Rebekkah. Why does this aspect of "life goes on" (after all, Isaac had to get married if he was to carry on the story) get so fully explicated?

It certainly serves to illustrate how and why Rebekkah is really the right person to be Isaac's wife. She and her family demonstrate hospitality much like their kinsman Abraham. However, the Torah could have made this point without all the other details. It could even make the point that Gd clearly had a hand in these events in a lot fewer words. I've taken a stab at a condensation. You might try your own hand at it. It isn't hard to do so and still convey the general story. But what of conveying the message? Could the message the Torah intends to impart truly be conveyed in another way?

It's all a puzzlement. And that's the whole idea. It makes us stop and think. This is not a simple book of history, of stories. The Torah is meant to engage the listener, the reader, to make them wonder why the Torah does one thing in one place and another someplace else. The rabbis worked so hard to try and smooth over the wrinkles in the Torah. And they achieved some amazing results through their midrashim and other interpretations. Yet somehow, I wonder if this misses the point. Need we try to be apologists for these seeming inconsistencies? Do we have to smooth over the rough spots? Are these inconsistencies and rough spots themselves the lessons, the meat of what the Torah is trying to teach us? Life is not perfect. Stories are not perfect. Things happen. Things seem odd. Yet, through it all, life goes on. Sometimes, we learn all the minute details, other times we do not. We simply have to adjust ourselves to this reality and move on.

So, as is often the case, my answer to the question of "what's wrong with the text?" is that nothing is wrong. All is how it is. Let's learn what we can from it and move on with our lives. As did Abraham and Isaac.

Life must go on. Life does go on. Yet we are fortunate in that Gd has given us the vehicle to suspend the inexorable march of life and time-Shabbat. Use it wisely, so that dealing with the reality of life that must go on is made just the little bit easier and sweeter that Shabbat, out of all time and place, can make it.

Adrian
 ©2002 by Adrian A. Durlester


Some Previous Musings on the same parasha

Chaye Sarah 5757-The Shabbat That Almost Wasn't
Chayeh Sarah 5761-L'cha Dodi Likrat Kala
Chaye Sarah 5762-Priorities, Redundancies And Puzzles


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