TORAH PORTION: CHAYEI SARAH

Parshat Chayei Sarah

19 November 2022 / 25 Cheshvan 5783

Torah: Genesis 23:1-25:18 Triennial: 23:1-24:9

Haftarah: I Kings 1:1-31

In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parasha by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Buying Land", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions in her D'var Haftarah titled "Royal Mamma Knows Best", and Ilana Kurshan offers a piece called "The Make-Up Sacrifice and the 3D Printer".

Buying Land

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

Abraham received a promise of land and descendants. As this week’s parashah opens, the promise has hardly been fulfilled. So Abraham begins a tradition of taking the promise into his own hands by buying land, a tradition that will be copied by both Jacob and Joseph. 

The promise really has not worked out for Abraham. At the end of the Abraham cycle, the beginning of this week’s parashah, Abraham has held up his end of the covenant and gotten very little in return from God, scarcely more than unfilled promises and terrifying trials. 

Then his wife dies. Sarah had accompanied him from home to be a ger toshav, a resident alien, with him in a land that was not theirs. Together, they had been each other’s home. We read of the way they prepared meals together, argued, laughed, and cared for their child. This parashah opens with Sarah’s death and Abraham “came to mourn for her and to cry over her.” Then he buys a burial plot from the locals, from the Bnei Heth. 

The promise has not been fulfilled so Abraham begins to fulfill it. Abraham buys a burial plot hundreds of years before his descendants will be given the land. He stakes a claim to the land with Sarah’s body. Our parashah ends with his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, burying him there. We read, in “the field that Abraham had bought from the Bnei Heth, there Abraham was buried and Sarah, his wife.” He lays claim to the land of Israel with his body and the body of the woman who had been his home. His descendants will respect that choice and choose to be buried alongside Sarah and Abraham. The grave does function as a homebase for them, a piece of land that is theirs in the land of Canaan. 

Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, also buys land in Canaan. Immediately after returning to the land after his time in Paddan-Aram and then with Esau, Jacob comes to the city of Shechem in Canaan and purchases the field on which he pitches his tent and builds an altar. He wastes no time in actualizing the promise of land and descendants which God had passed down to him. Jacob enters the land already surrounded by his many descendants. The only thing lacking is land, which he immediately buys. His descendants then murder all the inhabitants of the surrounding town from whom he had bought the land. It happens as revenge for his daughter, Dinah, who had wandered out of the land he had bought and consorted with the locals. After this incident, God tells Jacob to leave, to “get up and go up to Beth El and dwell there and build an altar there.” Jacob does not get to stay in the parcel of land he had bought, he does not get to leave behind roots the way Abraham did. Rather, he loses it nearly as soon as he buys it.

Joseph’s land buying is even more egregious. He buys land from the Egyptians for Pharaoh as they sell themselves into slavery to avoid starving during the years of famine. While the land is Pharoah’s, not his, it is during this time that the Israelites settle in Egypt, in Goshen, where they will be until they get taken out during the Exodus. 

Why is Abraham’s buying of land so much more successful than that of Jacob or Joseph? Abraham buys land with complete honesty. He does not attempt to deceive the locals or take advantage of them. Abraham also buys land for the dead rather than for the living. He does not make claims on where his descendants need to be or what they need to do. Rather, he provides an option for them to join him when they “are gathered to their kin.” In this way, Abraham partners with God in fulfilling the promise. He does not try to change God’s decrees, but rather colors in the details within the lines that God had drawn.

HAFTARA

Royal Mamma Knows Best

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

Haftarah

Did Shlomo (Solomon) want to be king? I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. His mother wanted him to be king.

This is not the start of a joke about a Yiddishe Mamma, this is what every woman who bore a king of Judah a son knew: A woman’s path to royal power is paved by her son. The mother of the king, not his wife, holds the most powerful position a woman can attain in the kingdom. As the story continues (in chapter 2) we discover that Shlomo places a seat to the right of the throne for his mother, Bat Sheva. She is the one who whispers in his ear, she is the one who orchestrated his rise to power, and she helps him hold on to it. 

Why the mother rather than the wife? Because a king has one mother (who is a seasoned politician) but many wives. A king’s wives will compete about who will be the next queen-mother, the Gvirah, using great vigilance lest another mother beats her to it.

This might explain some things in the Haftarah. Bat Sheva springs into action when Adoniah, son of Hagit, tries to usurp the throne. Should he not have been described as “son of David”, as that seems to be his claim for the kingship? But our story is about a battle between mothers, Hagit and Bat Sheva, over which of David’s sons will gain the throne.  Adoniah has the claim of seniority, but as it turns out, the mother is the significant factor in the story.

Bat Sheva does not act alone. She heads the “Shlomo to the throne” party, and counts among her loyal supporters Natan the prophet. He suggests that she goes to David and, playing naïve, ask why Adoniah is reigning while the kingship was promised to Shlomo her son. Then Natan will enter and complete the picture.

But Natan’s plan comes up against Bat Sheva’s personality and political savvy. She is primarily Shlomo’s mother and an ambitious politician. She gives David a precise account of who sided with Adoniah and what is going on in that camp. How does a lady in the palace know exactly what is going on in the opposite camp? We conclude that she employs an excellent intelligence-collecting unit, and she knows how to use the information to manipulate the situation. 

Bat Sheva succeeds, and establishes the position of Gvirah, the mother-queen. These mothers continued to be important players in the court through the history of the kingdom of Judah, and their names are always listed when their son becomes a monarch. Some of these monarchs gain the throne while they are mere children, and we understand who runs the country in their name. When reading the book of Kings, pay attention to these ladies.  They may be the key to understanding the politics of their times.

MORE

The Make-Up Sacrifice and the 3D Printer

Ilana Kurshan

Adventures in Mishnah with My Kids 

Matan and I are learning tractate Hagigah, which is about the sacrifices brought on the pilgrimage festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. The Torah teaches that all Jewish males must appear before God on these festivals, and they may not come empty-handed (Exodus 23:15-17). The rabbis understood these biblical verses as an injunction to make pilgrimage to the Temple bearing sacrifices, including Olat Re’iya, a burnt offering of “seeing” in fulfillment of the commandment to appear before God, and Shalmei Hagigah, the festive offering which is partially burnt on the altar and partially eaten by the family that brings that sacrifice. Both of these offerings had to be brought on the first day of the festival. Tonight we are learning what happens if, for some reason, someone did not bring the sacrifices on the first day. Does that person have any possibility to make them up? 

Earlier that day I had asked Matan if he’d received his math test back from the teacher. “She can’t give us back our tests yet,” he told me, “Binyamin was on vacation last week and he never took the test. Until he takes it, we can’t get it back.” I understood. The teacher did not want to have to create a new version of the test, so she was waiting for all the students to take the original test before returning it. “OK, so remember how you told me that Binyamin gets to take a make-up test?” I ask Matan now, invoking what he’d told me earlier. “He missed the test, but he gets a second chance. That’s like the make-up sacrifice in the Temple.” 

And indeed, the Mishnah teaches that the person who is unable to bring a sacrifice on the first day of the holiday is allowed to make it up for seven days. “Only for seven days?” Matan asks. Well, almost. Unless it’s Sukkot, in which case you can also make up the sacrifice on Shmini Atzeret, the eighth day that is added on to the seven-day holiday. Generally speaking, when it comes to making up sacrifices, the Mishnah bases itself on a biblical verse: “You shall observe it as a festival to the Lord for seven days” (Leviticus 23:41). The festival lasts seven days, so the festival offering may be brought for seven days. But once the full week-long holiday is over—plus Shmini Atzeret, if it’s Sukkot—there is no possibility to make it up anymore. “It’s like a make-up test that you’re only allowed to take for one week after the test you missed,” I explain. “You can make it up, but not forever.” 

The Mishnah cites a verse from Ecclesiastes (1:15) to explain the situation of the individual who fails to bring a sacrifice for the full seven days of the festival: “The crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is missing cannot be counted.” At some point it’s really too late. If you miss your chance to offer your sacrifice for the entire holiday, there’s no possibility for reparation. But Matan can’t accept that. 

“That’s not true; you can replace things that are missing,” he insists. “It’s not like there’s no hope.” He tells me that he was once at his friend's house when his friend’s little sister was doing a puzzle. One piece was missing, and his friend’s sister was very upset. “We told her not to worry,” Matan said to me. “We have a 3D printer in our robotics club, so we could just print a new piece for her. With a 3D printer, you can really fix anything. Even if something gets crooked, you can just print it out straight again.” 

But I’m more skeptical. “Do you really think everything can be fixed?” I ask Matan. “Do you think there’s nothing so bad that it’s beyond repair?” I point to the next Mishnah, which is about what exactly is so irreparable and irrevocable. Rabbi Shimon ben Manessiah explains that the verse in Ecclesiastes refers to someone who has a child by a forbidden union. That child will be a bastard, restricted in terms of whom he or she may marry. There is no way to help such a person, says the Mishnah – what’s done cannot be undone; the crooked cannot be made straight. In contrast, the Mishnah adds, theft is reversible, because a person can return the stolen item and mend his or her ways. If you take something from someone else, you can always give it back, or at least pay its value. But once you bring a person into the world, there is no going back. 

The Mishnah concludes with a statement by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who has his own view on what constitutes irreparable damage. “Something is only considered crooked if it was straight in the first place,” he insists. He gives the example of a person who once learned Torah and then stopped. That person was straight when dedicated to Torah learning, but then he or she left the path of Torah and became crooked. “But can’t that person return to studying Torah and become straight again?” Matan wants to know. I sigh, because I envy his innocence. Was there a time, when I too thought that everything could be mended, that every wrong could be righted, that nothing was truly beyond repair? 

I wonder how to provide a response that is not too sobering and unsettling, and then I have an idea. A while back, Matan and I took a break from learning Mishnah at night for a few days – the little kids were going to bed too late, and by the time Matan was ready to learn, I was too tired. When we tried to go back on track, it was really hard, and we were never able to catch up on what we had missed. That is a loss that can never be made up, and those are days that can never be accounted for. 

I think back to the math test that Matan’s teacher has still not returned. “Maybe it’s like homework,” I tell him. “If you miss a full week of math homework, it’s going to be impossible to make it all up. I mean, you get about two pages every night. Can you imagine making up all those pages in your workbook all at once?” 

“I guess a 3D printer wouldn’t help for that,” Matan tells me. “I’d need a homework machine.” In Matan’s world of 3D printers and homework machines, maybe all is not lost. Maybe the crooked can be made straight after all.