Last Shabbat (Parshat Vayera) I was invited to a private kiddush where one of the guests was the rabbi of a community up north – a classic haredi Rabbanut sinecure. He requested the host’s permission to give a dvar Torah and then proceeded to deliver a homily in which described the dinner which Avraham hosted for the three strangers as being a Passover Seder, and that this took place three days after his circumcision because no one is allowed to partake of the Seder meal who is not circumcised.

Moreover. this was the reason he told Sarah to rush the baking of the loaves, as matzah must be baked in under 18 minutes.

I found that rabbi’s homily  juvenile, offensive and utterly unnecessary for any appreciation of the  story as it is written.  So I asked him whether Avraham had checked to see if his guests were circumcised, else how could they partake of his Seder? And furthermore, I speculated, if Avraham was so prophetic that he knew to observe the Seder centuries before the Exodus, surely he knew that serving cheeseburgers made from a cow were hardly appropriate.  The rabbi took umbrage at my obstreperous interjections, and argued that on Shavuot evening haredi Jews eat a dairy meal then take a break and continue with meat.  But we are talking here about Pesach not about Shavuot, I retorted.

The conversation did not end well. The rabbi – like most of his sort – had no ability to distinguish between Scripture and Midrash. He considered anything that contradicted the latter fundamentally heretical.

I tell you this by way of leading into my notes on Parshat Hayyei Sarah, because I think it is necessary to revisit the Torah’s text unblinkered by fantasies and fables. Doing so, I argue,  can only enhance our connection to the Torah rather than be baffled by needless embellishments which are, often, patently false

Hayyei Sarah: The strange matching of Yitzhak and Rivkah

To consider the betrothal and marriage of Yitzhak and Rivkah as atypical, if not bizarre, would be something of an understatement.

The action of the Parsha opens with Avraham “coming to Kiriat Arba which is Hebron” in order to ceremonially mourn Sarah and ultimately to bury her there.

Last we heard, Avraham was living in Beer Sheva – several days away by camel. The rhetorical question thus arises whether he and Sarah were, for whatever reason, separated. Indeed, when asked by God to sacrifice Yitzhak, Avraham does not consult with his wife even though he had all night in which to do so, and even though God had once told him to obey her preferences. Hence it may well be that the two were not living together at that time.

At the end of the Parsha, we discover that Avraham, following Sarah’s death, married Keturah (Genesis 25:1) with whom he had six more sons. We are informed as well, that he had sons from additional concubines (25:6).

Whether or not Keturah, as the commentaries say, was Hagar, it is evident she was not just another concubine, but someone he loved dearly as she alone is mentioned by name.

Can it be that Sarah was Avraham’s #1 wife but not necessarily his greatest love? That both by virtue of her ‘yihus’ and God’s preference, she received the honor and distinction of being the wife of our patriarch and, of course, our matriarch, but as often happens among royalty there was a yawning great gap between title and emotion?

So the question is; did Avraham have all these concubines during his marriage to Sarah or did he wait until she had passed away before indulging his desire for additional relationships? I would suggest the latter, otherwise why would it have been necessary for Sarah to promote Hagar to the role of designated child-bearer when there were obviously other options and other children from which to select?

Interestingly, a wide emotional gap between husbands and wives seems to be the rule rather than the exception among our three Patriarchs. Yaakov adores Rachel, but clearly detests Leah. Rivkah and Yitzhak (we will return to them next week) are not even on speaking terms, and dwell in separate abodes. Sarah wields enormous influence on Avraham, but what we see is mostly dynastic mucilage rather than any emotional connective tissue between the two.

Indeed, as is evident in the prior parshiot, Avraham doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with the inevitability of Sarah being ravished by the monarchs of Egypt and Grar so long as he is not murdered en passant. And now we have them apparently living so far apart that he has to arrive to Hevron in order to provide her with a suitably impressive mourning and burial.

In purchasing the Cave of Mahpela for the astronomical sum of 400 silver coins, Avraham displays a remarkable lack of confidence in terms of his
God-given claim to the Land of Canaan. His obsequiousness to the sons of Het and Ephron is unbecoming for such an august and powerful personage, let alone one who has been given the land, literally, by God.

In Avraham’s defense let it be said that as an immigrant to Canaan he, like all immigrants, could never quite accept the fact that this was his country. Like the Yiddish-speaking Jews in America who would sing “Belz mein shteitele Belz” decades after receiving their citizenship in the ‘goldene medineh’, he would forever remain a part of Aram Naharayim, i.e. “my land and my birthplace”.

And he refers to Canaan not as his own land but as the one that God promised to his descendants. Furthermore, realizing that such a sense of ownership can only come from being born and raised in the Land, he does his best to assure that Yitzhak never leaves it.

(Bereishit 23:6-7)

A strange marriage, indeed

Having buried Sarah, Avraham then turns to the business of marrying off Yitzhak who is by now rather ripe in years – a man in his mid 30’s, certainly overdue for a bride.

Avraham entrusts the utterly loyal Eliezer to find a  suitable match from among the girls of his native Aram Naharayim. In this he is much like an early 20th century Greek or Turkish immigrant in America who would send back to the old country to find a suitable bride for his son, or the way a Hindu motel keeper in Alabama today would find a bride for his son back in Uta Pradesh.

Curiously, Yitzhak plays no role in this arrangement. He is both silent and passive. Avraham decides he should have a bride, and how this bride should be acquired. Clearly he trusts the judgment of his slave Eliezer more than he trusts that of his son Yitzhak. Puzzling? Absolutely. Unless , of. course we assume that Yitzhak, if not damaged congenitally, may have been suffering from severe PTSD following the recent ordeal of the Akedah.

Can there possibly be something wrong with Avraham’s designated heir? The Midrash alludes to the damage caused to Yitzhak by virtue of the Akedah, indicating a certain concern the Sages had with Yitzhak’s character. But this, too, is problematic, as Yitzhak’s passivity is manifest even prior to the Akedah when he agrees to go almost mutely along with his father, and allows himself to be offered on the altar despite being a supposedly healthy man in his 30s whilst his father is an absolutely ancient centenarian.

(The subsequent narrative evidence we have of Yitzhak, as evidenced in Parshat Toledot, does not add much to his lustre either as a man or as a man of his times. He is the only patriarch to have but a single wife. He is unable to determine which of his sons should carry the mantle of leadership. He is clearly oblivious to the fact that Esav sold his birthright to Yaakov, when this sort of information travels very fast. And he is easily hoodwinked by his virtually estranged wife Rivkah and her preferred child Yaakov into giving him the blessing he had reserved for Esav.)

Eliezer sets out for Aram Naharayim, seemingly all alone, in quest of Yitzhak’s bride. The highly emotional and romantic narrative of his arrival at the well, and the fortuitous meeting with Rivkah who provides both him and his camels with water is legendary.

(It is parenthetically interesting that after receiving the gold nose ring and bracelets from Eliezer, it is not to her father Betuel or her brother Lavan that Rivkah runs – after all it is they for whom she labors as a water-fetcher, and who should be first informed and asked regarding hospitality. Instead she runs to her mother’s house (24:21). Do we see here a foreshadowing of the apartness that would characterize her life with Yitzhak?)

Up until this point in the narrative we are under the impression that Eliezer was a heroic, solo act. That he traveled alone with his train of ten treasure-laden camels. Indeed there is no mention of Rivkah offering drink to anyone but Eliezer and his dromedaries. It is not until he arrives at the family compound that we first get wind of the presence of others, when water is given to wash Eiezer’s feet and the feet of “the men that were with him” (24:32).

One wonders why this entourage – likely comprising mighty, warrior types who were eminently capable of defending what we now understand was an entire caravan – is painted with such a soft brush that we barely acquire, let alone retain, any lingering awareness of them. Can it be that doing so would diminish from the power of the epic? Or more likely that it would diminish from the stature of Yitzhak who needs whatever fortification we can possibly give him?

We can easily picture the grandeur of the caravan making its way back to Canaan, as Rivkah and her nursemaid are accompanied by a phalanx of eleven mighty men. Surely Rivkah can only imagine that these warriors must pale by comparison to the husband awaiting her at the other end of her journey.

Arriving finally at her destination toward dusk, she spies Yitzhak muttering to himself in the field and asks who he is. Informed that this is her husband-to-be she falls off her camel and then hides behind her shawl:

Tradition would have us believe that she was so awed by what she saw that she lost her bearings on the camel. And that in an act of consummate modesty she veiled herself.

We would like to believe this was the case. Yet if Rivkah was so modest, why during all the time she was traveling as a betrothed woman among eleven mighty men, did she travel UNveiled? Could it be that the veiling had nothing to do with modesty and everything to do with her disappointment? Realizing this man would be her husband, she fell off the camel in shock and despondency, and then covered her face in utter despair?

Let us try to imagine a beautiful young woman, being transported a great distance to a land whose language and customs are unfamiliar, in order to live forever among total strangers. During this journey she would fantasize about the man to whom she was betrothed – a man who would be no less heroic than her troop of protectors, namely powerful, masculine warriors. And to what does she arrive, but the utter antithesis of what she had dreamed of.

Yes, Yitzhak loves her initially and takes her to his mother’s tent; “And he took Rivkah as a wife, and he loved her and he was comforted after his mother”

(Bereishit 24:67)

It is rather strange that a bridegroom would choose to consummate his marriage on the bed of his recently departed mother. One can only imagine what Freud would have to say about that.

There is no indication of emotional reciprocity. We can only assume Rivkah’s mute quiescence to her fate, and the start of a marriage of emotional estrangement that required shrewdness and subterfuge for her to prevail as both mother and decision-maker in determining the course of Jewish history all on her own.

Stand by next week for Parshat Toledot