CHAY’YEI SARAH
(2nd section in triennial cycle - Genesis 24:10 to 24:52)
Hertz: ***; Plaut: 160; Eitz Hayim 132

This week’s parashah is the middle portion of Chay’yei Sarah, which means the Life of Sarah, but which deals with life after the death of Sarah. That apparent conflict of ideas is only the start of our difficulties. The triennial cycle of readings from the Torah is a great innovation for smaller congregations, such as Adath Shalom.  However, the main priority in dividing each annual portion into three triennial portions seems to be creating three more or less equal readings.  With some exceptions, just dividing in three does not work to create good stories. Thus, we get today’s parashah, which starts in the middle of a story and ends before its climax. To provide a better d’var, I will not restrict myself to the designated portion, 24:10 to 52, but rather include all of Chapter 24. 

You will recall that the aged Abraham asks “the senior servant of his household,” who is not named but who is generally assumed to be Eliezer because he is mentioned earlier (15:2), to go to Abraham’s kin in the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in order to find a woman who will agree to become Isaac’s wife. Eliezer goes on that quest, which must be 1500 or so kilometres each way, and meets Rebecca at the well, where she offers him water and also offers to draw water for his camels. Eliezer senses that Rebecca is the object of his quest, and, when he asks about lodging, she takes him to meet her family. Their meeting initiates the betrothal, at which Rebecca is clearly present (24:1 and 53) though she is silent for most of the process. There is more to be said about Rebecca’s role, but at this point all that need be said is that negotia- tions between Eliezer and the family come to a successful conclusion.  It is only at this late stage do Rebecca’s brother and mother state that they should ask “the girl” (na’arah) whether she will go with Eliezer (24:57-58). Rebecca responds with that strength of character that we first saw at the well and that will be so important later in her life. Even though she will not likely ever see her family again, she says: “I will go” (aylaych). And so Rebeca and her maids (read: “chaperones”) leave with Eliezer to Abraham’s home.  When Rebecca sees Isaac from a distance, she puts on her veil, as proper girls were expected to do at the time, and went with Isaac into the tent of his mother. Clearly, Rebecca and Isaac have consummated their marriage, and that they are now husband and wife.

This middle section of Parashat Chay’yei Sarah presents a fine love story even if Isaac and Rebecca had never met. As the old saying goes, “Marriage first; love later.” Rebecca is keeping her forceful personality under wraps. However, as always with Torah, there is more to be said. I will deal with four points—more or less in the order they occurred in the betrothal: 1) God’s  role in bringing the couple together; 2) Abraham’s charge to Eliezer; 3) the question to Rebecca; and 4) how Rebecca got down from her camel when she first sees Isaac.

Rabbi Plaut makes a good introduction to this story in his chumash (160):

The story of Rebekah’s betrothal is set in a society that was becoming increasingly patriarchal and that was also polygamous. . . . With this idyllic marriage . . . /the/ focus shifts from the Patriarch to Rebekah, Matriarch-to-be of the next generation.  Again, the reader is made aware of the ever-present theme of Genesis—behind all human arrangements stands God.  

Most evident is the fact that not just Abraham and Eliezer but also the former’s distant family accept without question that God does and should have a role. Again quoting Rabbi Plaut (168):

The acceptability of marital arrangements was strengthened by an ancient belief that marriages were literally “made in heaven.”  According to one midrash, arranging marriages has been one of God’s important occupations since creation.

Abraham and Eliezer refer to God at every stage of the process. So too does Rebecca’s family.  However, it does seem to me that they are rather casual about God’s role. They even seem to use it as the first step in bargaining over a bride price for Rebecca. And, so far as the text goes, God drops out of any further activity from that point onward.  Therefore, let’s go to the second of my four points, Abraham’s charge to Eliezer.

Given his age, finding an appropriate wife for Isaac must have been deeply important to Abraham.  Otherwise, he would not have dispatched his senior servant on such a long journey, nor would he have given him such explicit instructions as to what he is to do and what he is not to do. He must find a potential bride for Isaac from his own relatives, a family that we have to believe has accepted Abraham’s God and the inherent monotheism.  But Eliezer must not under any circumstances, including failure to find a bride of his family, look for a bride “from the daughters of the Canaanites” (24:3).  So, was our great ancestor a racist in his desires to perpetuate his family?  Not at all, say most commentators, though I must admit I only looked for Jewish ones. Abraham is merely trying to ensure that Issac remains “a stranger in Canaan. . . . What is at stake here is religion and family traditions, not ethnic or racial ‘purity’” (161 in Eitz Hayim).  Plaut suggests that Abraham is more concerned to provide someone from his family to whom God can more easily come through with His promise to deliver to them the land where various tribes of Canaanites currently reside.  A few commentators infer that Abraham is worried because of the alleged moral depravity of the Canaanites, but I see no evidence for their inference.  However, I can accept the following comment in Eitz Hayim (Ibid.):

Here are the beginning strands of Judaism’s strong feelings about mixed marriages—although the term cannot yet, of course, be applied for many centuries.

The third point to which I will now turn stems from the exchange between Rebecca and her family at the end of the betrothal process when she is asked if she will go with “this man” (24:57).  Eitz Hayim notes that, “The Sages cite this verse when they rule that the consent of a woman is required before she may be married.”  Those words are well chosen because, contrary to what most people believe, it is not halakhic; rather, the need to ask the female partner before a marriage is one of those customs that are so widely observed that it is halakhic in all but name.  Evidently, some rabbis objected to the halakhic designation because the question to Rebecca was about leaving her home, not about marriage. Given that Rebecca was in the room listening to her betrothal, I do not see how anyone could argue that point, and my guess is that these rabbis simply objected to giving women the power to say “No!”

Finally, to conclude this d’var about Rebecca’s betrothal with some humour, verse 24:64 says that when the camel train approached Abraham’s home and Rebecca first saw Isaac in the distance, she suspected who he was and—in Hebrew—“tafol” from her camel. Now, I have at home four chumashim, one from each of the three major branches of Judaism, and one from the Jewish Publication Society of America using the then-new 1917 translation.  All four of them say that Rebecca “alighted” from the camel. However, the Hebrew verb “tafol” seems to be ambiguous, and can mean a hurried or a quick descent. That ambiguity allowed some commentators to suggest that Rebecca actually fell off the camel. Personally, I doubt that someone who has just spent a couple of weeks travelling by camel in anticipation of marriage would suddenly fall when she sees someone she suspects to be her future husband. But the alternative view is there in the literature—it takes up a lot of space in Google--and my Toby loves the idea of Rebecca falling off her camel for whatever reason, so you can think what you want.

Shabbat shalom