Chayei Sarah: A Challenging Election Day in America, and the Model of Abraham
The Jewish experience in America was described by Rabbi Soloveitchik with a phrase from this week’s Torah reading, “ger v’toshav” (Gen. 23:4), words that combine two seemingly contradictory ideas, both “stranger” and “resident”. As he put it, “we belong to the human society and, at the same time, we feel as strangers and outsiders.” This feeling is particularly intense in the aftermath of this Election Day, when Jews across America participated in the privilege of voting and yet, in many cases, learned after the polls closed that candidates hostile to their interests, particularly regarding the State of Israel, had been chosen.
It would be understandable for the Jewish American to experience, at this point, a feeling of despair and hopelessness. It is a feeling that Abraham himself may have connected with, as the Torah reading begins with the death of his wife Sarah. The Midrash relates this happened as a direct consequence of her hearing about what was, ironically, Abraham’s great spiritual triumph: the test of the Binding of Isaac. For such a tragedy to occur in conjunction with his having risen to the moment of God’s challenging command to him must surely have been a discouraging and devastating blow.
Yet, as R. Dovid Miller emphasizes in his MiYayin HaRekach, Abraham does not stay down. Instead, Vayakam Avraham me’al pnei meito (23:3), Abraham rose up from the depth of his loss, and moved forward. He understood that the moment confronted him with new responsibilities: not only to attend to the burial of Sarah but also to honor her legacy and perpetuate her values. He moved immediately to find a match for their son Isaac and to lay the foundation for the next act of the Jewish people.
He perhaps felt a sense of guilt over how events transpired, and the fact that, as Nachmanides notes, he was not present when Sarah died. Perhaps too, American Jews may question whether they took the right steps to ensure the best possible environment for the protection of their interests. Yet for both, the question is not about the past but about what comes next. As the Chafetz Chaim told a great scholar consumed by guilt over his own loss, quoting the verse ‘And now, Israel, what does Hashem your God ask of you’ (Deut. 10:12); indeed, what ‘now?’
The message of resilience and recommitment that American Jews may take from Abraham’s model is expanded upon by an earlier American darshan, R. Yitzchak Stollman of Detroit, in his Minchat Yitzchak. He expounded on why the Torah details at length Abraham’s negotiations for the purchase of the burial place for Sarah. This, he understands, was directly relevant to the loss of Sarah, who was not only Abraham’s wife but also his partner in his religious mission. Her death was not only a blow to his personal happiness but also threatened all that he sought to continue to accomplish.
The Hittites perceived this vulnerability and saw it as an opportunity to push him further down and subordinate him to their culture and society. Their seemingly generous attitude, then, was actually an effort to create in him a sense of indebtedness and submission. Abraham perceived this, and, drawing on his inner strength, he “arose” and met the moment of challenge through a reaffirmation of his values and mission, rather than the opposite. He insists on paying for the plot; he will maintain his independence and preserve his character.
R. Miller, in a separate essay, discusses the paradox of the ger v’toshav, conveying it as a reflection of the status of the Jew not only as a citizen of the nations of the world but of his very existence in the temporal world. That existence presents the impression of human control and influence, and indeed we are bidden to reside in that world, building it up, contributing to it, participating in the selection of its government. And yet, it is not the World of Truth; the eternal values of the Jew transcend the temporal framework in which he is tasked to function. Elections matter, in fact they matter a great deal; but they are not the essence of Jewish identity.
R. Miller cites R. Aaron Lichtenstein in explaining how one can genuinely be a resident of consequence in a temporal world: through his connection to God’s commandments and his timeless wisdom, mortal man and his actions bring eternity into the rhythms of daily existence.
The toshav, the resident of the United States, must remember his obligation to participate in the electoral system and exercise his civic duty; the ger, the one who stands apart, is reminded that, ultimately, “the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord” (Prov. 21:1).
A few verses later we are taught that Abraham was elderly and was blessed “bakol”, with everything. The Minchat Yitzchak sees this as a reference to the misleading image of Abraham, and the Jewish people as a whole, as old, exhausted, or irrelevant. In truth, they are blessed with everything: with vitality and resilience that transcend the obstacles of the moment, and write them into the annals of history and the map of the future. The blessing of Abraham is expressed through the marriage of Isaac and the renewal of the next generation.
Politics has been described by Otto von Bismarck as the “art of the possible”. Fortunately, Abraham and his nation are, to paraphrase Ben Gurion, the artists of the impossible; and while that “takes longer”, that is no obstacle for the Eternal Nation.
