The Academy of Jerusalem – New Genesis Exegesis: (Genesis 23:1 – 25:18)
Parashat
Haye Sarah – “Lives of Sarah”
The Start of the Eternal Life of Kenesset Yisrael
Introduction - Why “Haye Sarah”?
Sarah, the Goddess, and Kenesset Yisrael
Yisra’el-Israel – A Male or
Female?
1st Conversation – the structure of
Abraham’s negotiations with the sons of Het.
The Makhpelah Cave as a
Lineage Book of the People of Israel/Yisra’el
Finding the Wife for Yitzhak and his Consolation
over his Mother’s Death
Abraham and his Servant (Eliezer apparently)
2nd Conversation –Between Abraham and his Servant, and his
Mission.
The Conduct of the Negotiations by Eli’ezer
About the Raising of the Feminine Waters
– Ma’N
3rd Conversation – the Servant
with Rivqah
4th
Conversation – the Negotiating Conversation of Eli’ezer with the people of
Bethuel’s House
5th
Conversation – the Meeting of Yitzhak and Rivqah.
The Bovine fold - Sarah Rivqah and Rahel, the Golden Calf and Kenesset
Yisrael
The Mutual Moves Among the Fathers and Mothers of the Nation of Israel
Haye Sarah and the Drawing of the Hayut Energy
Part III – The Lives of Abraham after Sarah’s Death and the
Lives of Ishmael
The Earthly Abraham, Birth of Ashur, Sending away Sons of Qeturah.
The Return-Teshuvah
of Yishma’el to the Makhpelah, to Mount Moriah and towards Inclusion within
the Union of Israel.
The Generations of
Yishma’el – About Ismailis and Sufis.
The Encounter of
Yitzhak and Yishma’el as Tikkun for the conflict of Qayin and
Hevel.
From the Tree of
Knowledge to the Building of the Temple
Introduction: Why “Haye Sarah”?
The name “Haye
Sarah” – “Lives (or Life) of Sarah” that was given to this parashah
(Genesis 23:1 – 25:18) is, ostensibly, quite strange. For the parashah starts
with the death and burial of Sarah, and not with her life, and for the most
part it deals with other matters: with the negotiations over the burial estate,
with the mission of Abraham’s slave to Haran to find a match for
Yitzhak, with the encounter of Yitzhak with Rivkah and with the
death of Abraham. But – as we shall see – it was expressly after her death,
that the influence of Sarah over the charting of the fate of the nation grew
and became decisive, so much so that we can see in her post-mortal influence as
amounting to the planting of a Tree of Life for Yisra’el-Israel,
and therefore she merited to have the parashah called after her. The
inside message of the parashah is The Foundation of Kenesset
Yisra’el – a collective entity with eternal life and feminine-matriarchal
character, which is a part of the God of Israel.
Even though
centuries of traditional-patriarchal Jewish (and Christian and also Moslem)
interpretations, gave us as a convention that the Torah is “a patriarchal
document”, yet with a close look things appear quite different. For those who
adopt the approach of “Bible criticism” it is only a small step to proceed and
claim that the author(s) of some very sections of the book of Genesis and the
Pentateuch – what these Bible scholars call “version J” in which is prevalent
the use of the Name of YHWH (which they call “Jehovah), was
written by a woman (or women) as claims the famous literary critic Harold
Bloom. (See, for example the first custom which is related in the second
chapter of Genesis, right after the story of the Garden of Eden: “That is why a man leaves his father and his mother, and
cleaves to his wife…” (2:24), it
is not she who joins his family, but he joins her family). Also if we check the
matter scientific-genetically, we shall find that the family of Terah,
Abraham and Nahor, from which issue the people of Israel,
is more of a matriarchal than a patriarchal family: Sarah, as was found in the
land of Gerar, was the sister of Abraham from a father, not from her mother.
Therefore, the marriage between them was not considered as incest, namely, a
common mother determined sibling relationship. When Sarah offered her maid to
Abraham, she did it “to be built from her”. That is: the child would be legally
the son of Sarah, a phenomenon that would return with the case of the maids of Le’ah
and Rahel (Rachel). When, in this parashah, the
slave came to Haran and asked about her father’s house,
she turned him in fact to her mother’s house.
For those who
adopt “Bible Criticism”, it is only a small step to carry on and conclude that
important sections in the Book of Genesis and the whole Pentateuch – what these
Biblical scholars call “version J”, which is prominent in its use of the Name
of YHWH (in their language – “Jehovah”) – was written by a woman (or women), as
claimed by the noted literary critic Harold Bloom.
We have
already seen in the case of the casting away of Yishma’el the
command to Abraham “In all that Sarah said to thee, hearken to her voice” (Gen.
21:12) could this be plainer? But it is in this parashah
that we see the dominance – Srarah – of the will of Sarah
for generations to come. The pastoral Abraham, the type of Hevel-Ebal,
becomes through her to the like of Kayin, to the owner of Kinyan-landed
property, owner of a burial estate.
There is a
major difference between wide “The Estate of Abraham”, and the narrower “Estate
of Sarah” – which is the Land of Israel. Sarah was the native of a large city,
that also when she came to the land of Kena’an hardly wandered. The
place of her tent was at Hevron-Hebron, there she gave
birth to her only child, and there she died thirty-seven years later, whereas
Abraham as a wandering shepherd, as a contemporary Bedouin Sheik, who wandered
to the desert of Be’er Sheva, and his progeny (children of Hagar, Sarah
and Keturah) filled all the desert regions of the whole Middle East. The
heritage land of all the Children of Abraham spreads much beyond the boundaries
of the Land of Israel, and reaches apparently until India.
In the
Biblical narrative, Sarah is the representative of the material world. She is
the woman, she is the body flesh: “This is now a bone of my bones, and flesh of
my flesh, she shall be called Woman… That is why a man leaves his father and
his mother, and cleaves to his wife…” (2:23-24). According to the Midrash of the Zohar, the word ELoHIM
– God – is made of the two words MI and EleH, which
are mentioned in the verse from Isaiah (40:26): “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who
created these things”, which in the Hebrew original is mi (who)
bara (created) Eleh. (these things). Mi
– the word of question – relates to the hidden, to the spirit world and the
transcendent divinity, and is of a male nature, whereas EleH –
“these things” – the overt, has to do with the earthly world, the immanent
(also immanent divinity), and of feminine nature. Therefore, it is Sarah who
cared for an earthly inheritance (for her son), and who brought Abraham to the
acquisition of the first earthly property. This was ostensibly a burial estate,
in fact – a womb that would beget all the possession of the land.
Let us go a
further step in this Midrash, and after we have associated Sarah with
the manifest world of the EleH – these things (and ElaH
– goddess!), let us check what is derived from the combination of the two
words” “Sarah” and “EleH” = YiSRaEL
(Israel) as the two H’eh return and become one Y’od.
From the loins of Abraham issued a whole group of nations, these are “The Children of Abraham” through them would the blessing
of “and thou shalt be a father of many nations” (17:4), but the Biblical narrative focuses on “Yisra’el”,
the Children of Sarah. It seems therefore that the name of Yisra’el
is derived from that of Sarah, two generations before the
appearance of Jacob who won this name officially.
With the birth
of Yitzhak, Sarah insisted on the sending away of Ishmael;
“for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir
with my son” (21:10). This, even
though there were already precedents of ideal arrangements, brought in the
Bible, such as the family of Nahor described at the end of
the last parashah: Nahor had twelve sons, some of “the
legal wife” and some the sons of the concubine, and all have inherited. But the
house of Sarah-Israel had to wait to the fourth generation to realize the ideal
pattern, whereas Ishmael, who was the son of Abraham but not of Sarah, gained
the pattern of the twelve right away. Among his sons, presumably, there was no
longer the jealousy that that was the lot of the sons of Yitzhak.
On the whole, Sarah
represents the jealous, zealous part. Abraham did not return from the Land of
the Philistines until Sarah’s death. He went for the Akedah, and
also returned from it, to Be’er Sheva, whereas Sarah lived and died at Hebron.
She cleaved to the mountain. She represents the people of the mountainous area,
who throughout history would be more zealous, more insular, and more entrenched
in their traditions compared with the Philistines, residents of the open (Mefulash)
land, near the sea and busy in trade and connections with the rest of the
world. If it was not for Sarah’s death, Abraham might have stayed among the
Philistines (Palestinians). Sara is Israel. At the return of Jacob to Kena’an,
after twenty years of absence, he encountered an angel who examined him, and
found in him the quality of his grandmother “Thy name shall be called no more Ya’aqov,
but Yisra’el - Ki sarita im Elohim ve’im anashim
vatukhal” – “for thou hast contended
with Go and with men, and hast prevailed” (32:29). Only then, he received the name Yisra’el,
as a proper son to the family of Sarah.
Va’yihyu
haye Sara…
(127 years) shne Haye Sarah
The Koren (and
other) translations do not give the repetition, but in the Hebrew, the
expression “Haye Sarah” – “Lives of Sara” – is repeated
twice right at the first sentence, without any grammatical need. The structure
of Makhpela – “doubling” – which is the name of the burial cave
to be discussed, is very appropriate for parashat Sarah, which has two
chapters and two stories – the story of Sarah and the story of Rivqah. In each
of the two stories, there is a hard bargaining between two crafty sides. Two –
Yitzhak and Yishma’el, performs also the concluding part, the death and burial
of Abraham.
The strange
expression Haye Sarah – “Lives of Sarah” – appears, as
noted, not once but twice in the first verse, denoting two ways by which Sarah
gained immortality after her death, as we shall see in the sequel: one through
the establishment of the burial estate at Qiryat Arba, and the second when she
kind of resurrected in Rivqah, that only with whom Yitzhak fell
in love and consoled over the death of his mother. The two stories are
different, but there is much common in the way they took place, and we can
claim that they themselves form a kind of Makhpelah – doubling.
“And
the Lives of Sarah were a hundred years and twenty years and seven years”
The specific
number of 127, and its unusual form of counting, which looks cumbersome or
over-verbose (the Koren translation writes simply “And Sara was a hundred and
twenty seven years old, these were the years of Sara’s life”, omitting both the
repetition of the word “year” and of “Sara’s life”), brought the interpreters
to seek various explanations for this number and to show that it was not random
but symbolic. But even those interpretations (e.g. Rashi’s and in the Zohar) do
not manage to connect the meaning of this number with another appearance of it
in the Bible, in the Book of Esther (1:1):
“This is Ahashverosh who reigned, from
Hoddu (India) as far as Kush (“Black
Africa”), a hundred and twenty seven
provinces”. The semantic meaning of connecting the mention of Sarah’s
years and Ahashverosh’s provinces may indicate a connection of the
number with governance and ruling – in Hebrew Serarah – hinted by
the name “Sarah”.
Recently it
was shown by Meir Bar-Ilan, that it is possible to explain the number 127 as
the combination of two numbers: a hundred, which is ten squared, and denotes a
doubling of the full score; and of 27, which is 3 to the 3rd power
(3x3x3=27), which is an amplification of the Principle of Three - that is a
central principle of the Book of Genesis: three creation stories, three stories
of the establishment of humankind (Adam, Noah and Abraham) and three stories of
patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel. In this, Sarah stands for the essence of
all the triads of these three stories.
(In our
generation, when we are used to the binary arithmetics of computers, we may
sense additional meaning in this number. It is quite evident that the number
127 is actually the binary version of 128, namely 2 to the 7th
power, when the value of 0 too represents on of the possibilities of the
counting. Changing the place of the same digits, we can express the number
mathematically thus: 27-1 = 127. For theoretically, Ahashverosh
might have ruled over 0 countries (then he would not be a king) or Sarah might
have lived 0 years, and there is a point in comparing this initial possibility
with that of who attained the 127th country or her 127th
year. At the end of the Books of Chronicles (II 36:23) Koresh-Cyrus, the emperor of Persia
says about the same kingdom: “The Lord God of
heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth”. The number 127 thus
represents a complete blessing, because things repeat being doubled seven
times. It is as if Ahashverosh’s forefathers have doubled their
kingdom seven times, and Sarah daughter of Terah (as
Abraham admitted “And yet she is my sister; she is
the daughter of my father, not the daughter of my mother”, Gen.
20:12) was granted seven times to double her
years. In other words, his number is the sum of seven consecutive binary
decisions, or “yes” or “no”. Both Sarah and Ahashverosh answer
consecutive “yes” to the question of rulership.)
The domain of
the 127 countries or provinces of Ahashverosh is broader than all
the boundaries of the promises given to Abraham, and it includes all of the
Bible lands, including those to where “the Ten Tribes” were exiled. This is
perhaps the domain for all the Children of Abraham. It is customary for Jews to
count just four matriarchs, but in fact, the scriptures count seven mothers – Sarah,
Hagar, Rivqah, Le’ah, Bilhah and Zilpah.
If we regard the blessing brought about by each mother as “Makhpela-doubling”,
then the doubling to the seventh power, the blessing of all seven mothers
brings to a count of 127 blessings. It is worth also noting that the full
number of matriarchs and patriarchs (which includes also Esav-Esau
and Yishma’el-Ishmael) is a dozen, because, as we shall
repeatedly observe, the Torah believes in “The Principle of the Dozen”, as
determining the full blessing.
Vayihyu
Haye Sarah
– “And the Lives of Sarah were”
The word “Vayihyu”
- “and they were” (or “and they would be”) – has the gematric value of 37,
which is the age of Yitzhak-Isaac at the Akedah, according
to the calculation of the sages, as Rashi claims: “the death of Sarah was
joined to the Akeda of Yitzhak, because through the rumor
of the Akedah, that her son was taken to slaughter and was almost
slaughtered, her soul flew away and she died”. The 90 years that Sarah was
barren were not considered as years of real living, but 37 years of motherhood
redeemed also the 90 barren years, and made all the 127 years to count as full
and fulfilled. {The ARI’zl explains that 37 also explains that 37 is the
“filling” of the name of 63 – SaG (Y’od H’y W’aw, H’y)
over its base of 26, the “filling” being “the backside of the name of YHWH”,
or the neck, and that Sarah’s vitality came from the quality of sternness-Gevurot
and stiff-neckedness}.
Sarah,
the Goddess, and Kenesset Yisrael
The Biblical narrative opens with a turning point in human history. As we have shown at the introduction to the Book of Genesis, it is possible to match the scriptural events with feminist-archeologist claims, that about 6000 years ago, there came a turn from a matriarchal (or nowadays more likely to be called “participatory”) society to patriarchal society. Among the other cultural changes, there changed the religious rituals, including the passage from the cult of “The Great Goddess” of fertility to the cult of a masculine God of heaven. In the arena of the Biblical events, which is the Land of Israel (on both sides of the Jordan river), the echoes of this transition and contention can be found in the contention between native cultures of agriculturists and the nomadic-fighting shepherds.
We may sum ten important
differences between these two inimical cultures:
Attribute Agriculturalists shepherds-fighters
Supreme
value land fighting
Model nature chivalry
Admired
figure woman,
mother male
World-view cycles,
destiny, passivity, victory,
activism
Regime partnership rule
Luminary sun,
day moon,
night
God
figures animal-gods anthropomorphic
gods
Habitation permanent
settlement wandering
Symbol ring,
the ouroborous weapons
Treatment
of dead burial cremation
of bodies
Parashat Haye Sarah is much
connected with the conflict between settled-agrarians and wandering-shepherds,
and points to the Biblical synthesis, which makes it a very important model for
our times and for future conduct. It is no accident that our parashah
begins with the tenth attribute that we brought above, with the burial of
Sarah. By Abraham the Hebrew-Ivri, the passer and wanderer,
accepted for himself to establish the family burial estate for the
parent-figures of the Israelite nation, he accepted to a large extent the rule
of his wife “In all that Sarah said to thee, hearken to her voice” (Gen.
21:12). The wandering people of the Hebrews-Ivrim
(passers by) came to a process of settling in the land and confrontation with
the gods of the land – and with the question of the cult of the goddess.
The answer of the Bible is more complex than the
simplistic assumption that it is the basis of a clearly patriarchal religion.
As we saw, “Sarah” herself is (in fact or as a symbol) a/the goddess of Israel.
With her interment at Hevron-Hebron, there started a
process of assimilation that proceeded for thousands of years. The first step
was the interment of the old goddess in the ground, a burial that is in
conversation with the ancient fertility cults, where the god was killed and
buried in the earth as a seed in the ground, in order to resurrect with the
sprouting of the corn (let us recall the possibility we raised at parashat
Bereshit, that the “Tree of Knowledge” was wheat). The Biblical narrative
turns around the idolatrous cult as known then: not the son-god was the dead
buried in the ground, but actually the mother-goddess, and she is the one who
takes care that also the father-god figure will be brought by his sons to be
buried beside her.
We know today that the cult of the goddess was quite
common in the ancient Israel (see, for example, Raphael Patai’s book “The
Hebrew Goddess”). The Bible admits, even if with reservation, that King Shelomoh-Solomon
built an altar for the Ashtoret-Ashera goddess and that the
people continued to sacrifice at the altars – that altar and many others – for
still hundreds of years after the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem. It
seems that there was prevalent then a popular syncretistic religion of many
faces/facets in the divinity, which is testified by archeological finds,
including votive clay tablets for “YHWH and His Ashera”
[1]. The sages admit that only with the return from the
exile (Shivat Tsion) “the taste for idolatry was removed from
Israel”. In fact, if we check this closely, this taste was not removed from
“Israel”, but only from Judah, since the state that the Shave Tsion
established was the province of “Judea-Yehudah” and not the
Kingdom of “Yisra’el-Israel”.
Is it possible that the story of Saray-Sarah
is that of the Asherah, or of “The Hebrew Goddess” (as the
language and title of Patai’s book), who was already doctrinally removed, but
was still dwelling underground, influencing her children and may, perhaps,
return at the Resurrection of the Dead? We shall follow this story, as we
ponder over the appearance of the figure of the Shekhinah and of Kenesset
Yisra’el through the continuation of the development of Jewish religion
and folklore.
We have noted that at the old matriarchal culture, the
gods were represented by figures of animals. The Egyptian goddess Isis was
marked by a cow head, and the Roman goddess Juno was characterized by having
“cow’s eyes”. It is worth noting that the names of all the Biblical matriarchs
are connected with the concept of the goddess, especially in a way that
stresses nature femininity. The (feminine) name “Sarah” is
connected to the (masculine) word “Shor-bull”, and we know that
the figure of the bull figures much as a symbol of Israelite divinity, such as
with the Golden Calf (and perhaps with the mysteries of the Red Heifer), the
calves that King Yorov’am placed at Dan and at Beyt El
as representing the God Of Israel (I Kings 12:28-33), and with the figure with
“the bull’s face” that carries the Divine throne-Merkavah in
Ezekiel’s vision (1:10; 10:14). The name
“Rivkah-Rebbeca” means “Cow” or “harnessed”, one of a bovine pair
harnessed together (we also know the expression “Egel marbek” –
“fattening calf”), whereas “Rahel-Rachel” means an ewe.
The Hebrew name “Le’AH” in a different letter order gives “ElaH”
– “goddess”.
The archetype of the goddess and of “The Great Mother”
actually exists within any woman, but the Biblical figures are the models
offered for the enactment of these archetypes. Sarah is the figure of the
Hebrew goddess, and she in engaged in the labor of a new creation, of a
creature called “Yisra’el-Israel”, an entity that gets gradually
perfected through the subsequent generations that get gathered at the Cave of
the Makhpela – Sarah with Abraham, Rivkah with Yitzhak,
and Le’ah with Ya’aqov-Yisra’el.
One of the interpretations to the name “Rivkah
is (according to the Arabic root) a means of harnessing and tying together. Let
us then substitute her name with the mathematical symbol that is used by
convention for the action of tying an adding – the plus sign “+”, and place it
in its chronological order, between Sarah and Le’ah. The system of the three
matriarchs is then summed in Hebrew by the expression:
SaRaH
– Rivkah – LeAH = SaRaH + Le’AH = YiSRa’EL
As will be explained mre at the end of the chapter, the expression is also exact mathematically-gematrically. If we give the gematrical value of the addition of the Hebrew letters of these two names we get:
SaRaH
(505) + Le’AH (36) = YiSRa’EL (541)
If we recall that the ensamble of memories embodied at
the Makhpela Cave includes also the burial places of Eve-Havah
and Adam, the ensemble of the matriarchs at “Qiryat Arba” – “The
City of the Four” – would be:
Havah-Sarah-Rivkah-Le’ah =
Havah-Yisra’el
And in other language, the Makhpela Cave
and the field and all trees at the Field of Makhpelah comprise “Havat-Yisra’el”
– namely “Estate of Israel”, and a part of the Garden of Eden.
In the myths of the ancient East, the goddess (e.g. the Babylonian Innana) is the one who planted the Tree of Life. This task was also appointed for the Hebrew Goddess, in her secret enactment, in the figure of our Mother Sarah.
Yisra’el-Israel – A Male or Female?
The Book of Genesis is the description of the creation
of the entity of “Yisra’el-Israel”, an entity that may bring
blessing for the whole of humankind, namely “a Messianic Entity”. Is it
possible to characterize this entity as male or female? Or is this entity both
male and female?
It seems as if the male form of this entity is “Am
Yisra’el” – the Nation of Israel – whereas the feminine form of this
entity is “Kenesset Yisra’el” – “The Assembly of Israel”. There
is a possibility, and a tendency, to perceive in these entities something
divine, or much connected with the divinity. The divinization of Am
Yisra’el – the People of Israel – is likely to lead to stark Fascism,
but Kenesset Yisrael is a more delicate matter. The way in which
this figure was developed among our Sages of blessed memory and in the Kabbalah
made it into an acceptable matter, because it is based on the sayings of the
prophets, namely expressed from God’s viewpoint. From the prophets of Israel
and to the interpretations of the sages and the Kabbalah to the Song of Songs
(Canticles), there is an image of a love relationship (which does not lack also
frustrations and anger) between “the Holy One blessed be He” and Kenesset
Yisra’el, and in the language of the mekubalim
(Kabbalists), “between ha’QB”H ve’Nuqbato” – “The Holy One and
His Female”.
This feminine and created entity of Kenesset
Yisra’el is engaged in complex relationship, which continually develop
and evolve, with the Holy One blessed be He, as is summed at Midrash Raba
for Exodus (tract 52): “It is
allegorical to a king, who had an only daughter and he was loving her
exceedingly. And He use to call her “my Daughter”, and he did not desist from
loving her until he called her “my Sister”, and he did not desist from loving
her until he called her “my Mother”. Likewise is the Holy One Blessed be He to Yisra’el.
The masculine Yisra’el-Israel is of the
figure of “The divine Son”, supported by the verse “Yisra’el
is my son, my firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). In her book “The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah”, Leonora Leat
asserts that the priests of the Jerusalem Temple had secrets that allowed them
to become “Sons of God”. The expression Ben-Adam - “Son of Man” – in the Book of Ezekiel and Bar-Inash
in the Book of Daniel, and even more so Ben-Adam in the
apocryphal Book of Enoch-Hanokh which is the closest to
the time of Jesus of Nazareth (the author of the Book of Enoch lived,
apparently, at the times of the Hashmonean revolt) are
buttressing the claim that the figure of the “Son” – Ben – in the
Kabbalah is derived from ancient secrets of the Temple worship that were geared
to the formation of “Son of God” – Ben Elohim – (something akin
to the famous Christian concept, that was probably the reason that this concept
was hidden and withdrawn in the Torah of the Jews).
It is probably for a reason that the divine “son” is
derived in the Kabbalah not only from the Holy name of BeN (which
is derived from the combination of the letters in the “filling” of the Name of YHWH
as Y’od H’h W’aw H’h, which has the gemtric value of 52 – which
is, we recall, the value of the word BeHeMaH-animal), but also
from the Holy Name of MaH (the “filling” of the Name of YHWH
as Y’od H’e W’aw H’e, whose gematria value is 45 – which is also
the value of the word “AdaM”. This way, the name of “Ben
Adam” can be interpreted as relating to the combination of the two
Names of Being-HaWaYaH – the Name of BeN (Son) and
the Name of MaH (Adam-Man).
The prophets thus relate to Yisra’el
both as to a male and to a female, though the feminine regard is always
accompanied by an additional name, which is inherently feminine: Betulat
isra’el (the virgin Israel), She’erit Yisra’el (the
remnant of Israel) etc. The sages added the expression Kenesset Yisra’el
(the assembly of Israel), which became a major concept of the Kabbalah, until
it became regarded as the most essential and manifest part of the very
divinity. The feminine part of “Yisra’el” as we saw, derives from
Sarah.
Already in parashat Lekh-Lekha we learn
that “Saray your wife… Sarah shall her name be. And
I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her; and I will bless her, and
she will be a mother of nations; kings of people shall issue from her”
(Gen. 17:15-16). This is in contrast to
Hagar and the wandering Yishma’el, who thus resenbles Abraham and not Sarah.
From Ishmael would issue twelve princes – Nesi’im – but not
kings. The kingship is for Yisra’el, and Yisra’el issues
from Sarah.
“And Sarah died in Qiryat-Arba; that
is Hevron, in the land of Kena’an”
Rashi gives two explanations to the name Qiryat
Arba – “the City of Four”: “because of four giants that lived there…
another thing, because of the four couples that were buried there, husband and
wife: Adam and Havah, Abraham and Sarah, Yitzhak
and Rivkah, Ya’aqov and Le’ah”. There are three insights her that are relevant
to our study: a) if also Adam and Eve-Havah were buried at the Makhpelah
cave – then it figures that the cave is situated by a gate of the garden of
Eden; b) if “Qiryat-Arba” is named for the four couples that were buried
there, then it is the very burial estate, the Makhpela Cave
itself, is the real “Qiryat Arba”, and it is the facility that
has the future objective of “Hevron” – of Hibur
(connection and socialization) together; c) if Qiryat Arba was
called so because of the four couples that would be buried there in the future
– then this is a kind of a prophetic name, that hints at prophetic qualities.
Since Sarah is the cause of tying the family of the patriarchs with Qiryat
Arba – we shall undertake in the sequel to check whether she can be
attributed with prophetic qualities. Or according to the verse “from my flesh..
I would see God” (Job 19:26), it needs to
be examined whether Sarah, who is the flesh, the material, was blessed with a
capacity to behold God.
If one examines the scriptual text, if becomes evident that Abraham and
Sarah lived separately. Abraham lived at Be’er Shevah, at the place from where
was sent out his beloved son Ishmael, far from the authority – Serarah
– of Sarah, who resided at her tent in Hebron-Hevron
(some 30 miles away, over a day’s journey). During her life, Sarah did not
succeed to keep her husband by her side, but at last, with her death, she
managed to ground Abraham and to bring him to invest in real-estate, in the
field of the Cave of the Makhpelah, from where there would sprout
the genealogical tree of her children. We shall hence see why was the burial
site so dear in the eyes of Abraham, who aquired it for Sarah as the one
compensation gift that was appropriate for his cruelty towards here. For
according tot he Midrash, Abraham killed Sarah, in his haste to enact the Akedah.
Sarah was the one who saw to it that Abraham would have the capital to
acquire the filed at Hevron. Only because his wife Sarah
was bartered to the king of Egypt and to the king of the land of the
Philistines Abraham became so rich; and now, after Sarah’s death, the
humiliation was at last going to pay: Sarah would obtain the most magnificent
burial estate in the future “Land of Sarah – the Land of Yisra’el.
With all of Abraham’s wealth, Abraham did not have the technological means that
would eventually be available for Joseph, to embalm the body of his father (and
later of himself), so it is preserved and able to be brought for burial with
the foreparents. He was forced to bury Sarah at the place that she planned, at Hevron-Hebron,
and through this there was determined the place where he, and his progeny after
him, would be buried.
The death of Sarah forced Abraham – the “Hevel-Abel” side
of the couple – the man of spirit-wind (same word in Hebrew), the wandering
shepherd who does not cling to the soil, to take the part of his mate, the
“side of Kayin-Cain. Abraham made the first practical step of
settling in the land. He conducted negotiations with the native people of the
land. The terms that he used – would then become the inalienable properties of
residents of the land, and we shall return to discuss them. In the sequel, we
shall see also a parallel between the “structure” of the negotiation of Abraham
with the sons of Het to that of the negotiation of Eli’ezer
with the family of Nahor.
In fact, there are related in the parashah not just two, but
four procedures of negotiations, in themselves a Makhpelah-doubling.
We shall hence bring them chronologically, as they took place. The first
negotiations proceed at this stage between Abraham and Efron.
1st Conversation – the structure of Abraham’s negotiations with the
sons of Het to buy his Burial Estate
The course of Abraham’s negotiations with the sons of Het
over the field of the Cave of the Makhpela delineates
the future course of David, in purchasing the threshing ground of Arawnah
the Yevusite as the site for the building of the temple.
Abraham, who rose from mourning his dead, has now become a new person. He is rid of that compromising attitude of the one who twice gave his wife for the rulers of the land, who did not take any from the property of those he saved, and who yielded to Lot and to Abimelekh over the land promised him by God. Now he was negotiating with determination, in order to acquire for himself and for his progeny a piece of the land, an estate that would not be contested for generations.
In the negotiations with the greedy `Efron, Abraham was
driving the transaction to become a public auction, where he was buying the
property for a price that could have no competitors, and our of conviction that
the investment would pay.
The conduct of the negotiations, the building of the family burial
estate and the organization of the burial were the last trial that Abraham had
to stand to.
And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spoke to
the sons of Het, saying, I am a stranger and sojourner with you; give me
a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my
sight
Abraham knew the exact place that he desired, and that he needed to get
the agreement of `Efron. But at first, he had to receive the
right of possession in principle. It appears that the sons of Het
were not ready to allow strangers to acquire burying place among them,
evidently because it is specifically a burying place that gives title and
possession. That is why Abraham presented himself as Ger ve’Toshav
- “stranger and sojourner”. If he had not the rights as stranger, he merited
the right of sojourner. In this started a process, dance-like, of seven steps,
in the course of which Abraham stooped again and again to the ground, and kept
raising the obligations, both his and of the sons of Het.
And the children of Het answered Avraham, saying
to him, Hear us, my lord; thou art a prince of God among us; in the choice of
our sepulchers bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his tomb, but
that thou mayest bury thy dead.
This was a most polite and hospitable answer, but also the way in which
the sons of Het refused in effect to give to Abraham an exclusive
burying place for his family for generations. Instead, they offered him any one
of their own tombs. The meaning of this was that the tomb of Sarah would become
one of their own tombs, and probably also the tomb of Abraham would become a
local “Sheikh’s Tomb”, a remembrance of “a prince of God” – Nesi Elohim
- who dwelled among them, and in effect the assimilation of his memory in their
own history. The facts demonstrate that this is what actually happened in
effect: the Arabs of the contemporary Hebron regard the tomb of Sarah as the
tomb of one of their own sacred mothers, without recalling the sending away of
Yishma’el against her.
Abraham’s next step was made upon the respect that the sons of Het
gave him as a “prince of God”: “And Abraham stood
up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, to the children of Het”
(a behavior which we shall see later with Jacob-Ya’aqov who was trying
to appease Esau). When a prince of God bowed down, how could they refuse his
plea: “If it be your mind that I should bury my
dead out of my sight; hear me, and entreat for me to ‘Efron the son of Tsohar,
that he may give me the cave of Makhpelah, which he has, which is in the end of
his field; for the full price he shall give it me for a possession of a burying
place among you”, he asked. Abraham knew well that ‘Efron was
present among the audience, but by addressing, “the people of the land” – Am
ha’Aretz – he has put ‘Efron in a situation where it would be difficult
to refuse, and it will also become impossible to decline his request because of
the local custom, because as conducted, the transaction would be made with the
agreement of all the notables. He asked for only a small thing, only the cave
at the end of the field; and on the other hand he insisted on paying for it in
full cash, so that it would become his estate for eternity.
At this stage it becomes evident that ‘Efron has indeed been sitting
all along among the children of Het, and he rose and answered Abraham in
front of all the people by the gate of his city, and offered him both the cave
and the whole field in which the cave was situated, ostensibly as a gift.
Abraham suspected that he would be permitted to bury his dead there, but the
place would remain the property of the family of ‘Efron the Hittite, and
the tomb of Sarah and Abraham would remain there as a guest.
So when ‘Efron came, Abraham again bowed down, to him and to all the people of the land – the same Abraham who would not be ready to marry his son to one of the daughters of the land – and his answer after this further bowing down to “the people of the land” was: “But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will give thee the price of the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there”. He understood that he had to buy the whole field, for the full the price, in front of all the people, and only then, he would have the full rights over it, whether for sowing and reaping, or for a burying place, and that way he would no longer be “a stranger and a sojourner”.
‘Efron’s answer (the sixth step of the process) took full advantage of all the tokens of respect that were shown there so far. “My lord, hearken to me: a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that between me and thee? Bury therefore thy dead”. What was raised was actually a huge, almost imaginary, sum – eight hundred years later, when David came to acquire the threshing floor of Arawnah, he would pay only 30 shekels of silver, one thirteenth of the sum. But in the manner that the declaration was made, ‘Efron left Abraham no room for bargaining over the sum.
And then, during the concluding seventh step, the transaction was
realized: Abraham did not hesitate, in spite of the huge sum: “And Avraham hearkened to ‘Efron; and Avraham weighed to
‘Efrn (here the name is written without the W’aw, the “O” vowel, in the
form of Afar or Efer, namely dust of the earth) the silver, which he had named in the hearing of the
sons of Het, four hundred shekels of silver, currency money with the
merchant”. After the payment of such an imaginary sum in sight of al the
sons of Het, it would have become inconceivable to evict him or his sons
from there, and Abraham was left with this piece of land and dust, to fulfil
what was said “for dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return” (Gen.
3:19).
We may add, for this matter, that the number 400 is certainly
meaningful: at the beyn ha’Betarim covenant, Abraham was notified
that his children would have to be exiled for 400 years, and Esau came to face
his brother who returned from his exile, along with 400 men with him. According
to the Kabbalah, 400 represents the four lower Sefirot of Olan
ha’Beri’ah: Malkhut, Yesod, Netsah, Hod. The numerical value n
each Sefirot of Olam ha’Beri’ah is one hundred. The
Malkhut represents the earth itself, the Yesod 0
the connection with it; the Netsah and Hod
represent the earthly places of dstinction, as the saying of Rabbi Akivah (Bab.
Talmud, Berakhot 58 page1): “The Netsah
is Jerusalem, and the Hod is the Temple (Beit ha’Mikdash)”.
With 400 shekels did Abraham then connected with the land, and acquired therein
a permanent earthlly possession: And the field of ‘Efronwhich was in Makhpela,
which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was in it, and all the
trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were
made over to Avrahamfr a possession in the presence of the children of Het,
before all that went in at the gate of his city. But only then, and after he
rose and buried his dead as one who sows the seed into the soil, only then
really “And the field, and the cave that is in it, were made over to Avraham
for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Het”.
The entire negotiations were characterized by a idrection of descent
to the earth:
1) “and Abraham stood up from before his
dead…” (23:3); 2) “And Avraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people
of the land” (23:7); 3) “And Avraham bowed hinself down before the people f the
land” (23:12). And the process
was not complete (Shalem) untill all the money was paid (Shalem).
Only then came the descent under the ground, the burial of the wife and her
interment in the cave, to which Avraham would also come when his time came. The
consequence is a return upwards – “And the field
and the cave that is in it, were made over (Hebrew va’Yakom
– “and it stood up”) to Avraham for a
possession of a burying place by the sons of Het” (23:20).
In Midrash Bereshit Raba 58 are brought four assertions
for the source of the name “Qiryat Arba”. Among them is brought
the assertion (which we quoted above from Rashi), that eventually was also
accepted in Moslem traditions: about Adam and Eve-Havvah being
among the four couples buried at the cave, on whose name is Qiryat Arba
called, and by association about the closeness of the cave to the opening of
the Garden of Eden.
Corresponding with “And a river went out of
‘Eden to water the garden: and from thence it was parted, and branched into
four streams” (Gen. 2:10), there
is “Qiryat Arba” and the four tombs of the ancestors in it (tomb
of Adam and Eve, tomb of Abraham and Sarah, tomb of Yitzhak and
Rivqah, and tomb of Ya’aqov and Le’ah). But those that are important, we
assert, for the great creation for which the cave of Makhpela was chosen – the
creation envisioned by Sarah – were not the four couples as much as the four
mothers. Just as for the birth of the Children of Israel Jacob-Ya’aqov
needed four mothers, for the birth of the entire people there was a need for
four mothers. (or we may return to the Mandelbrot formulae, and see in the four
mothers of the children of Ya’aqov a fractal part from the larger
picture of the four mothers of the nation). The Makhpelah cave (namely
“duplication cave”) was the tribal womb, the hollow in the ground to which are
returned the seeds, in order to sprout the pedigree tree of the Tribes of
Israel, in order to grow the Tree of their Common Life, as a covenant of
brothers with common fathers and mothers.
The tribal memories echo between the four-paired tombs that are
arrayed, it becomes evident, in the pattern of the Tree of Life. The Makhpelah-multiplication
that the cave represents is the multiplication of the qualities of each one of
the three parent couples in the others. Abraham and Sarah, multiplied by Yitzhak
and Rivkah, multiplied by Ya’aqov and Le’ah equal the
cubical womb in which the natoion is due to be born. The seed that is sowed
within the earth are the bones (Atsamot) of the parents, their
unique self (Atsmiyut) attributes. From this seed they are
destind to become the parents of the nation, the roots of its Tree of Life. The
image is erotic: the cave penetrates to the opening of the Garden of Eden. But
it is worth recalling that “God made the one
opposte the other” (Ecclesiastes 7:14) – “between the Garden of Eden and hell there is only a handbreadth” (Psikta
2). The Cave of Makhpela could lead to either.
The system of tombs of the four couples at the Cave of Makhpelah
is a system for routing the relationship of longing between heaven and earth, a
well for raising “The Feminine Waters” (or Ma’N, in the language
of the Kabbalah).
The raising of that Ma’N is attributed for the Mothers,
as we shall presently see below, in the discussion about Rivkah-Rebbeca.
The Alter Rebbe (the Old Rabbi) of Habad (chabad), Rabbi
Shene’ur Zalman of Liadi, conceived of the Mothers as being generally on a
higher level than the Fathers, because they are the Mashpi’ot
(influencers, givers of divine plenitude-Shefa, raisers of
the Ma’N). The Fathers do draw from above to below (deal with
spiritual affairs), but the women influence from below to above (as we have
already explained about Sarah. A woman’s being material, earthly, is of the
quality of derekh eretz qadmah la’Torah – “The Way of the Earth
is prior to the Torah”).
Woman is, has to do with, the living earth-Adamah. In the
Beginning-Bereshit – “in the day that
the Lord-YHWH made the earth and the heavens” (2:4) – Adam knew to give names to all the animals, but did
not know – or did not find necessary – to give a name to his wife, and just
called her “woman, because she was taken out of man” (2:23), until after they were both expelled from the Garden
of Eden and became cursed. Only then “And the man called his wife’s name Havah;
because she was the mother of all living (Hay)” (3:20), but “the mother of all living” was the earth, or in
today’s language “Havvah”, Hebrew for “homestead”: a piece
of land that is owned exclusively by a particular person. (In Hebrew,
“ownership” is ba’alut and “to own” is liv’ol which
is the same as “to take sexual possession”). After they were expelled from the
original Havvah-Estate of Eden, Adam found some
consolation in his wife Havah, a token of the taste of the
Garden of Eden. Eventually, Sarah would turn into a Havah,
and so her daughter in law, and her daughter in law. Each woman, in turn, would
become the opening of paradise for her man, and thus also their tomb would be
an entrance to paradise.
The Father of humankind, Adam, and the parents of the Israelite nation have never died, in a certain sense. They are still alive to this very day, and influence our beliefs and our self-identities as their progeny. Their mythical union and multiplication is a single memorial-site, make their different memories, as well as their opposite characters, into an integral part of our values and cultural heritage. No less so – also of the values and cultural heritage of the Moslem inhabitants of this land. With all the religious fanaticism between Moslems and
Jews in Hebron, which is centered on the present burial place, it is worth noting that the Moslems regard Sarah – the one who, according to the Bible, expelled their father Ishmael to the desert – their own righteous mother that merits their prayers at her tomb. Sarah may still – four thousand years after her death – bring to a measure of reconciliation among the children of her husband, of whom she is considered mythically as the cause of their distance. This includes the sons who usually prefer to identify themselves actually with the Philistines.
The identification of the Cave of Makhpelah at the heart of the city of Hebron is accepted since the Middle Ages. But it is possible – and perhaps necessary – to doubt the reliability if the identification of the present site, which has become a place of contention and strife. According to the research of the architect Tuviah Sagiv, the place that the tradition regards as the Cave of Makhpelah, is an ancient Edomite idol shrine, whereas the locus of the original cave in less known and is now – as in the time of the Patriarchs – still a field. Perhaps we may still be able to walk in that original field, “the cave of the field of Makhpelah before Mamre”, which would serve as a integration- and reconciliation-ground for the memories of the people of this land.
The sacred tombs within the cave create between them a system of
relationships that define the domain of “The Tree of Life” of the Kabbalah.
Also beyond Hebron – towards Jerusalem – there was added the tomb of Rahel-Rachel,
in Betlehem, on the Efrat Road. This feature has much meaning, where eventually
Bethlehem would become the birthplace of David, who would establish his
kingdom at Hebron, but would return and turn northward – to his birthplace and
further north, to establish his new capital at Jerusalem.
This system of tombs create the seed and the root stem for the growth
of Yisra’el-Israel, an entity that is regarded in the Kabbalah as
“Ze’er Anpin” (Microscopus), the “Small Face” of the Godhead that
appears in our world. The Makhpelah Cave integrates the Sefirot Ze’er
Anpin, which are the the Sefirot of the Midot (emotions)
– there is the known triangle of Abraham at the side of the Hesed-Mercy,
Yitzhak-Isaac at the side of Gevurah-rigor
and Ya’aqov-Jacob at Tif’eret-Beauty; and in
correspondence with them the triangle of the Mothers: Sarah – to
whose authority Abraham yielded – at Netsah-victoy/eternity;
Rivkah-Rebbeca – who stooped to watered the camels – at Hod-Yielding;
and Le’ah – the “Mother of the Sons” (Em haBanim) the Tribes of
Israel – at Yesod-Foundation. This triangle of the Mothers serves
to ground the conceptual triangle of the Fathers in the social matrix of the
People of Israel and their collective memories. In addition, the hidden to
these six Sefirot Binayn (the “Sefirot of Construction”, which
also parallel the Six Days of Creation) come the hidden tombs of Adam and Eve-Havvah
– paralleling the Sefirot of Hokhmah-Wisdom
and Binah-Understanding; whereas the tomb of Rahel-Rachel
– that stands prominently outside – points at the direction of the development
of the Kingdom of Israel – onward from Hebron in the direction of Jerusalem –
paralleling the Sefirah of Malkhut-Kingdom.
By her choosing Hebron, contrary to Abraham’s choice, Sarah showed her
grasp of Geomancy – the wisdom of the Earth. The business of Geomancy is the
planning of the estate and the building upon it, in agreement with the covert
forces within the earth, forces that affect the human subconscious, as well as
the behavior of animals and the fertility of the soil. Those who deal with this
science in our times (usually relating to the ancient Chinese Feng-Shui theory
of earth energies) speak about straight “Ley Lines” that fix associated flow
lines of earth energies, which tend to move in curves. Places of worship and
sacred tombs were always fixed – by all ancient cultures – at peaks, which were
aligned by straight lines for the whole length and breadth of the country of
dwelling. In this way it became possible to fix the lines of energy, and with
them the unconscious, collective drives of the dwellers of the land and their
archaic fidelity to it/her; namely, the directions that orientate the
collective spirit, in our case – that of Israel.
Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem indeed delineate the main axis of the
land. The Land of Israel, both to the West and East of the Jordan river, is
characterized geologically by the Syrian-African Fault rift – the Jordan valley
– and with mountain ranges going in a north-south direction with a little turn
to the North-East. The Hebron Mountain is the most southerly peak in that range
within the settled land. It marks a clear dwelling domain for a tribe or a
small kingdom. At the northward continuation of this range, the natural
consolidation points are at Beth-El – the dwelling place of the Tribe of
Benjamin (and nowadays Ramallah) – and at the Shomron (Nablus-Shekhem,
Tirtsah, Shomron) – the traditional dwelling place of the Tribe of
Ephraim and the center of the old Kingdom of Israel. In these distinct areas
there may develop fairly different character of the local people. The residents
of the Mount Hebron are tough hardy people. The hardness (the side of rigor-Gevurah)
connects at Hebron with religion for fanaticism. Here live people who would not
forget the traditions hallowed by their forefathers.
Sarah, whose prophetic ability we’ve already mentioned, could foresee that when the tribes of Israel would settle in the land, they may go after the charms of “the daughters of the land” and cling to their idolatrous worship, and that the Kingdom of Israel would be likely to disintegrate. Therefore, the seniority should go to the dwellers of the (eventual) Land of Judea, who would be more likely to enforce the monotheistic tradition upon all of Israel. Those put in charge of the inheritance of Jerusalem are therefore not the children of Ephraim at Shomron, but the children of Judah at Hebron, and they should have in their domain the tombs of the patriarchs – with their mythical influence – for all generations till our days.
Even in our time Hebron designates the direction in the contemporary struggle over the division of the land, a struggle whose symbolic-emotional pinnacle is at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The axis that the ancient Mothers have drawn still orients and directs the collective emotions, and the religious fanaticism is likely to direct the historical moves. But there is also an alternative. It is possible that, by renewed contact with the roots, those entombed at the Cave of Makhpelah, we may reform (in the language of Kabbalah “sweeten”) the roots that issue from them. Through renewed descent to the roots, it is possible to renounce the harness, the severity, the xenophobia, and to reach the Tree of Life anew. For this is the gate for the Garden of Eden, not just bones and burial caskets, but also the river that issues forth from Eden and the seed of the Tree of Life that is within the Garden.
The Makhpelah Cave as a Lineage Book of the
People of Israel/Yisra’el
Our forefathers were shepherds, people with no fixed property, without books and without burial estate, and thus both free to roam and lacking in historical memory. There might have been storytellers who knew to recount the generations and the lineage of the tribe, but this must have been a weak memory that could easily be severed.
Through Sarah’s insistence to cling to the land, which brought to the acquisition of the Makhpelah Cave as the burial estate for Abraham, there got formed the historical connection that could serve also a nation destined to become agricultural and become able to inherit the land. It was the existence of the estate of the tombs of the patriarchs of the nation that would give their offspring the justification to inherit the land and see it as theirs, even if they endured a long exile. As the system of the three couples of the ancestors’ caves got established, a whole assembly of national memory was formed, which gave identity definition and multi-faceted national mythos, which we may regard as the lineage record of the nation, of the People of Israel.
Over time, when the people became “The People of the Book”, there were already genealogy books that could maintain the historical identity, even through centuries of exile. But “the material scripture” of the burial estate in “Qiryat Arba, which is Hebron” served also as an ownership deed over the land.
The story of the Garden of Eden in parashat Bereshit came to
describe the turning point in the relationship of Adam-humanking
and Adamah-Living Earth. “Adam” is an individual, but also the
whole of humankind, and in order to have “help to match him – ezer
ke’Negdo – there was formed for him a human mate – Eve-Havah.
But Havah or Havvah is also a
homestead, a piece of land owned by that person “to
cultivate it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Through Havvah-homestead a man becomes a
“husbandman” of the land, to the extent that he can cultivate and keep it
(and/or through the work of his wife). The essential choice between wandering
and settling, which is exemplified by the two sons of Qayin-Cain and Hevel-Ebal,
is decided by the Havvah, the homestead, the grasping of
the land through the toil of the woman.
Parashat Haye Sarah
repeats the same story: “Abraham” is an individual, but he is also the whole
People of Israel, and “Sarah” is the feminine principle at the foundation of
the nation. Sarah’s assiduousness brings Abraham to invest a great portion of
his capital in acquiring a piece of land, “the
field, and the cave which was in it, and all the trees that were in the field,
that were in all the borders round about” (23:17). And in this cave, which according to the Midrash
is at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, there starts the gathering of the
investments for the formation of the nation – the very bones of the ancestors
that are guarded in one place.
We saw three creation stories, which lead to an explanation for the
disintegration of humankind. From this pattern, there are extended three
discrete stories about the commencement of the divine experiment to create the
appropriate human culture, starting with Adam, with Noah and with Abraham. But
in contrast to Havah-Eve who came and separated, Sarah
came to gather and to unify. The three stories of the fore fathers, of Abraham,
of Isaac-Yitzhak and of Jacob-Yisra’el, get
gathered together through the estate-Havah of the family
burial site, and become components of one story. Three cords interlace, forming
an “Estate Rope” –Hevel Nahalah – (a Hebrew word
for domain) and even “Rope of the Messiah” – Hevel Mashiah
– (Hebrew for messianic preparation and thus a Hebrew word pun), joining into a
coherent redemptive story.
Finding the Wife for Yitzhak and his Consolation over his
Mother’s Death
In spite of his joining with the land – in the presence of the native people and their testimony – Abraham did not seek to join with the native people of the land. On the contrary: he sought to keep the estate promised him by God only to himself and his family. Had Yitzhak married with the daughters of the land – then all the issue of the inheritance of the land would have been so much simpler. He would have inherited as other heirs do. But Abraham stayed loyal to his own people, and therefore his confident servant had to return to Haran, to the family of Terah. There was only one stipulation that Abraham made for his servant: whatever may transpire – “only bring not my son back there” (24:8).
“And Avraham was old, advanced in age”
After having mourned for his wife, “And Avraham stood up from before his dead” (23:3) as a new and determined man. “Advanced in age”, but also young. Only 137 years old – exactly the whole life span of Yishma’el – Abraham rose up for a new life, without the yoke of Sarah. He had “baKol mi’Kol – in all and everything – and with another 38 years to enjoy a new wife, and to beget six additional children. In addition, Abraham was relieved of Sarah’s fanaticism against Ishma’el. The Qur’an tells that Abraham met Ishmael at Mecca, and there they together built the temple of the Ka’aba for God-Allah. It is reasonable to assume that such a visit (which is veridical for any Moslem) took place only after the death of Sarah. With Sarah’s death, there was fixed the lineage for her children, but there was also opened a door for the return of the children of Ishmael to play with the children of Yitzhak.
But from the perspective of the Biblical narrative, Abraham seems to have lost his significance after the Akedah, and he had only three things to complete, which were all dictated by his dead wife: 1) To acquire the family burial estate; 2) To bring to her son Yitzhak a wife from her parents house (namely, not to allow the native daughters and sons of the land a part in the future inheritance); 3) To assure that Yitzhak would receive the whole inheritance – “And Avraham gave all that he had to Yitzhak. But to the sons of the concubines, which Avraham had, Avraham gave gifts, and sent them away from his son, while he lived, eastward, to the east country” (25:5-6).
The aging Abraham, advanced in years, started to get worried about his son. Even though he himself was ordered to go away from his country, and his kindred, and his father’s house, still Abraham insisted, as noted, that the inheritance would become the estate only of his kindred, for those who came out with him a part of the way. When things come to a head, he did not want to severe the connection with them, but to strengthen it: “but thou shalt go to my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife to my son Yitzhak” (24:4), with one provision: “beware lest thou bring my son back there”, because “The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, and who… swore to me, saying, To thy seed will I give this land; … Only bring not my son back there”. It seems that also behind this desire – to find for Yitzhak a wife from the house of Abram and Saray at Haran – there stand the dead Sarah, so concerned about the inheritance. “As mothers s daughters”: Rivqah would eventually behave as if she were Sarah’s daughter, when she would bring Yitzhak to command her younger son Jacob to go to Haran, to find him a wife from there.
For no less than this is the story of the Life of Sarah, this is also the story of the Life of Rivqah, and the way in which she replaced Sarah. The narrative discloses how Rivqah became a “Sarah clone” in the way that Yitzhak became consoled over his mother: “And Yitzhak brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent”, and only then “took Rivqah, and she became his wife”, an only then “and he loved her; and Yitzhak was consoled after his mother’s death” (24:67).
With the completion of the act of buying the estate and the swearing of the servant for his mission, both Sarah and Abraham disappear from the stage, and the story is entrusted to the hand of the messenger, Abraham’s servant, and to the legs of the ten camels, carrying the treasures which he took, who had the role of convincing Lavan in the way he best understood.
Abraham
and his Servant (Eliezer apparently)
The narrative
expounds and recounts about the mission of Eli’ezer, out of any proportion to
the scarcity of information about the great and hidden acts of the patriarchs. Three
days of journeying for the awesome act at Mount Moriah contibuted to us no
details at all, but the chattering of the servant about the miraculous journey
he had (according to Rashi, his saying “and I came
this day to the well” (24:42) – “I
have left today and arrived today, which means that he had the miracle of Kefitsat
ha’Derekh”) he repeats and doubles and compounds details.
It seems that
the Mothers were barren and the Fathers taciturn. Abraham probably knew that
Yitzhak, had he been sent to Haran alone and would have arrived
at the well (as would eventually arrive his sun Jacob) might not have known
what to say and how to chat with Rivkah, as closed as he probably had been
within himself. But the tongue of the sevant was not tied. So there was only
the question of trust left: “put, I pray thee, thy
hand under my thigh; and I will make thee swear by the Lord…”. Thus
Abraham swore in his servant in the manner of those days, to fulfil the mission
in full loyalty, without any personal interests.
We have
already shown that the Midrash regards the two “young men” of Abraham
who accompanied the journey to Mount Moriah (22:3) as if they were Ishmael and Eli’ezer. We have also
noted that tradition associates Ishmael with Islam, and hinted that it is
possible to interpret Eli’ezer as an early representative of (future)
Christianity, the religion of the apostles, and that Jesus is regarded as
similar to Isaac-Yitzhak, as the only son of the High Father in
heaven, as the bound and sacrificed son.
Also Jesus, who
must have regarded himself as the Messiah, appointed twelve apostles to
propagate his message about the kingdom of heaven upon earth. Their role was to
talk as much as possible and to tell stories about their master (the Messiah,
according to their creed). It may be easy for a learned Jew nurtured on much
study to slight those messengers, but the scriptures come to tell us, as the
sages noted that “The chat of the servants of the Fathers’ houses is more
enchanting than the teachings of the sons” (Bereshit Raba 60). As the Rabbi of Gur adds, these chats are of the
status of derekh Eretz qadma la’Torah – “gentility preceded the
Torah”.
2nd
Conversation –Between Abraham and his Servant, and his
Mission.
In this short
conversation there are only four moves: 1) Abraham seeks to swear the servant
for his mission; 2) the servant raises an important question; 3) Abraham
clarifies his position; 4) the servant swears to fulfill the mission, and from
here the initiative passes to him.
As we shall
later see, the servant was better than his master in the conduct of practical
negotiations. He did take with him ten camels with all the goods of his master,
but instead of spending all this treasure, he returned with a doubled treasure:
the gifts, which were predominantly given to Rivqah-Rebbeca,
returned with her, and the treasure got multiplied by bringing Rivqah to grow
the new nation.
The Conduct of the Negotiations by
Eli’ezer
The simple text indicates that the conduct of negotiations and what happened to the servant by the well form a clear sign for coming generations about what is worth repeating twice and thrice. Rivqah was placed – without her awareness – in a divine test in which her inner quality was assessed. The watering of the servant and of the animals was the examination, it we must understand its meaning:
“And he made his camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water at the time of evening, at the time that the women go out to draw water”
The servant, who was well familiar with the habits of the region, knew also the meeting by the well. At that stage, he did not expect specifically a woman from the family of Abraham, and Abraham did not even make such a stipulation. Eli’ezer expected, by all probability, for a girl from a poor family, who would draw water by herself and that the goods upon the camels would impress her and her family, and he might have been content with that. The arrival of Rivqah, of all women, was already like a sign from heaven.
“And he said, O Lord-YHWH
God of my master Avraham, I pray thee, send the good speed this day, and show
kindness (Hesed) to my master Avraham. Behold, I stand here by the well of
water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water” (24:12-13).
There are three points that the servant makes in his
speaking before God, and on account of which he expects divine grace – Hesed:
1) the Hesed is “to
my master, Abraham”; 2) “I stand here by the well of water”, this is the most appropriate place for the appearance of
Hesed is the place of water coming out of the earth; 3) “the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water” – even though the natural inclination is to reserve the
precious water for the use of the local people, the very drawing of water out
of the well, by lifting the water up for the use of humans and animals, a
built-in act of Hesed.
“And let it come to pass,
that the girl to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I
may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let her be she
that thou hast appointed for thy servant Yitzhak; and thereby shall I
know that thou hast shown kindness to my master”. The activities that serve
as indications and signs from God are the drawing of the water from the womb of
the earth and the watering of the wanderers who thirsted in the desert.
About the Raising of
the Feminine Waters – Ma’N
With the revelation of Rivqah, the narrative starts to
elucidate the secret of the operation of the feminine side of every human, the
operation that the Mekubalim call “the Raising of the Feminine
Waters” – ha’ala’at haMa’N. A basic principle of the Kabbalah is
learned from the verse “from my flesh I
shall behold God” (Job 19:26)
– for “in the image of God He created him;
male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27)
– and the phenomena of the human body are a examples and allegories to what
also takes place in the higher worlds, within the divinity. The natural human
inclination for sexual union is evidenced by the raising of “the feminine
waters”, the vaginal fluids, as the natural preparation for union and for
satisfaction. The action of drawing up water from the well characterizes “the
theurgical action” of humans – how a man returns and influences his Maker
through “the Raising of Ma’N”. For the kabbalistic theurgical act
of “the raising of Ma’N” there is demanded much effort, in
controlling the natural inclination as well as its complete release, in order
to enable the experience of the supreme joy.
All of Israel, the collective entity of “Kenesset
Yisra’el”, the carrier of messiahship, the craving for the perfection
of the world, are aggregated and joined into one collective entity of a
feminine nature: a woman craving for her man, who is the image of the Lord of
heaven and of earth and the Maker of the world.
The appearance of Rivqah by the well and her drawing up of
the reviving waters, to bring them up to water both man and animal, is the
Biblical revelation of the cosmic feminine principle. What we have not found
with Sarah, who may appear as dry and calculating, we find in the juicy Rivqah.
The attitude of this girl to the camels is – in the eyes of the servant – the
sign and testimony of her becoming to be the wife of the son of his master.
From the perspective of the Mekubalim, this is extended to the
whole of Israel: every performance of a divine commandment by an Israelite has
to do with “the raising of the Ma’N”, and this is precisely what
Rivqah was doing, in the most natural manner. She raises water from the well to
revive the thirsty soul of man and beast.
Sarah had set the stage, and Rivqah, when her time came,
raised the waters in reality, and her son Ya’aqov-Jacob – saw Rahel-Rachel,
fell in love with her, and id for her and for her animals just the same act
that his mother did, and more. He drew immense strength and opened the cover of
the well, in order to draw from t water for all the flocks. In this, the
raising of the Ma’N took root in Israel, and the seal of the
Mothers was embossed over the Israelite Tree of Life.
3rd Conversation
– the Servant with Rivqah
This conversation proceeded in several steps. It started as
a short exchange, fast and direct as if without any sophistications: “And the servant
ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I beg you, drink a little water from your
water jar”. He asked only a little water for
himself. The answer came in two stages of “saying and doing”. First came a very
short direct response, only for the expressed request: “And she said, Drink, my
lord;” and then “she hurried, and let down her water jar upon her hand, and
gave him drink” without wasting any words. Rivqah was not talkative. Only “when
she had finished giving him drink”, when the immediate request was well
fulfilled, without any verbal attempt to make an impression, “she said, I will
draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking”. She
performed her offer without waiting for a reply or for thanks. “And she
hurried, and emptied her water jar into the trough, and ran back to the well to
draw water, and drew for all his camels”. Also Eli’ezer
did not say a thing “And the man wondering at her held his peace, to see
whether the Lord had made his journey successful or not.”
Now that the servant received the sign which he was
expecting, he made an impressive step and took “a golden ear ring of half a
shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold”,
and only then he started talking to the girl and asked two questions together –
1) “Whose daughter are you? Tell me, I beg
you.” And 2) “Is
there room in your father's house for us to lodge in?”. The answer of Rivqah was again short, matter-of-fact and
generous: 1) “I am the daughter of Bethuel
the son of Milkah, whom she bore to Nahor”.
Here she innocently revealed to the man that not only did the good Lord bring
him a good and proper girl for a wife for his master’s son, but that she was
precisely the ideal woman as far as lineage was concerned, as close to Abraham
and Sarah as possible. 2) “And she said to
him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.”
The next utterance was not directed only to her directly,
but also to the Lord of the universe: “And the man bowed down his head, and
worshipped the Lord. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham,
who has not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth; As for me, the
Lord has guided me in the way to the house of my master's brothers”. In spite of the amazing discovery and the opportunity to chat
over all the family stories, Rivqah did not utter any additional word, but did
most promptly what she saw as her task: “And the girl ran, and told those of
her mother's house these things”. It is
interesting that even though the servant asked her about her father, she
answered about her father and mother together, and when she went to arrange the
practicalities, “told those of her mother's house” specifically, and not “her
father’s house”.
4th Conversation – the Negotiating Conversation of Eli’ezer
with the people of Bethuel’s House
Unlike with the other conversations, the one who opened the negotiations was not Eli’ezer but Laban son of Bethuel. “And Rivqah had a brother, and his name was Laban; and Laban ran out to the man, to the well”. One might think that he was as prompt in doing a favor as his sister, he ran, indeed, but the scripture hints about his motivation: “And it came to pass, when he saw the ear ring and bracelets upon his sister's hands,” this was the first reason, the ear ring and bracelets, of ten and a half shekels weight, and only second came his interest if the family reasons of what the man told his sister. It is evident that Laban was expecting the precious gifts that the camels were carrying, and insisted to bring the treasure-carrying camels into his house, “And he said, Come in, you blessed of the Lord; why do you stand outside? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels”. The servant thus met with good hospitality, but now came his opportunity to speak: “but he said, I will not eat, until I have told my errand”. And the hosts had to agree to this. Here Eli’ezer meandered, expanded and related and compounded his words and repeated all that the readers already know, through fourteen long sentences. If we examine those sentences, we find that he changed a few details and the order of other things. Thus, he told that Abraham commanded him to come specifically to the house of Bethu’el “But you shall go to my father's house, and to my family, and take a wife for my son”. As a matter of fact, this was not as it had been said, but the way that Eli’ezer related it, the conclusion is unavoidable: “The matter proceeds from the Lord; we can not speak to you bad or good. Behold, Rivqah is in your presence, take her, and go, and let her be your master's son's wife, as the Lord has spoken.”
Eli’ezer’s response was somewhat similar to that of Abraham in his negotiations with the sons of Het – bowing down – but this was actually bowing to the Lord, amplification to their saying that it all proceeded from the Lord. He immediately brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and garments - but these he gave only to Rivqah, whereas to her brother and to her mother he gave just condiments – migdanot. It seems that to the father of Rivqah, Bethu’el, he did not give any thing. (This act, and the counting of Laban as belonging to the mother’s house, strengthens our claim that there was a matriarchal rule at the house of Terah in those days, whereas Abraham’s servant, who was already used to the habits of Kena’an, was asking about the father’s house).
The answer of Bethu’el and Laban was quite akin to the answer of the sons of Het: you can have all you want, but this was said in a non-committal manner. It was still possible, that they would agree for the marriage, but not agree that the girl would leave her father’s home, and then Yitzhak would be obliged to come over to Haran. This was the possibility and the worry that Eli’ezer raised already while talking with Abraham, and this was precisely what happened eventually to Jacob, who married the daughters of Laban, and was obligated to stay and live with Laban and to work for him.
Therefore, Eli’ezer took the next step already as all rose up in the morning, and he hurried to perform his mission: “Send me away to my master”. Here came a hesitant answer. Bethu’el, who had already given his consent, could not go back on his word and kept quite, but Rivqah’s brother and her mother said, “Let the girl stay with us a few days, at least ten; after that she shall go”. Bethu’el’s silence still would allow him to come, after this period, with further conditions. But as the hosts expressed willingness to see in this case the will of God, Eli’ezer would not quit and did not go with the customary politeness: “And he said to them, Hinder me not, seeing the Lord has prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master”.
At this point the mother and brother used another delaying tactic: “And they said, We will call the girl, and inquire at her mouth”. Eli’ezer had no way to object to that. “And they called Rivqah, and said to her, Will you go with this man?” in a style of address that gives no encouragement. Rivqah’s answer was again short, in one word “And she said, I will go – elekh”.
5th Conversation – the Meeting of Yitzhak and Rivqah.
The setting for the meeting of Yitzhak and Rivqah was, significantly, that Yitzhak “came from the way of the well Lahai-roi”. The well and its name are connected with the message to Hagar about the birth of Ishmael: “Sarai tormented her, and she fled from her. And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur… Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael; … And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, Ata Hay Ro’I (You, Living God see me); for she said, Have I also here looked after him who sees me? Therefore the well was called Be’er lahai-roi; behold, it is between Qadesh and Bered” (Gen 16:7-14). This place, between Qadesh and Bered, is quite far from the camp of Abraham at Be’er Sheva. It is possible to learn from this that Yitzhak did not live with his father. In fact, the Akedah was the last occasion in which it is mentioned that they were together. It is not even mentioned that Abraham untied Yitzhak after he was bound. It is only told that “So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-Sheva” (Gen. 22:19). Only Abraham and his young men are mentioned, but Yitzhak is not mentioned among those who came back to Be’er Sheva, and it is given to us to understand.
The Bible chose to tell about the meeting of Yitzhak and Rivqah specifically by the well of Yishma’el, and this calls for comment. Yitzhak went “lasu’ah ba’Sadeh”, literally “to walk in the field, but also (as the traditional interpreters stressed) “to meditate in the field” and literally “to converse in the field”, and he did it specifically by the domain of Yishma’el. At Midrash Raba (60:14), there is an attempt to contend with this affair: “Said Rabbi Levi… “And Yitzhak came from the way” – he came from death. and where did he go? “well of lahay-Ro’i” (“the Living sees”) – he went to bring back Hagar, the one who had set by the well and told Hay Olamim (“The Ever Living” – an appellation of God) please look at my misery. “And Yitzhak went to walk/meditate – lasu’ah – in the field at the evening time” – a sihah (conversation) can only mean prayer, as it is said (Psalms 102:1) “A Prayer of the afflicted, when he faints, and pours out his sihah before the Lord”, and it is also said there (Psalm 55:18) “Evening, and morning, and at noon, I pray – asihah - and cry aloud; and he hears my voice”. According to this Midrash, immediately upon the death of his mother, Yitzhak went to try and restitute the issue of Hagar’s deportation. And even if he did not meat her there, it seems that matter of his prayer to God was the restitution of this injustice. And precisely there and then, when he proceeded to restitute for the deportation of Hagar and Ishmael, that Yitzhak found his own mate, Rivqah, with whom he could be consoled of his mother Sarah.
“And Yitzhak/Isaac went out to meditate in the
field at the evening time”
The Bible abounds with words about the journey of the servant to Haran and of his meeting with Rivqah, but does stop for any dialogue between Yitzhak and Rivqah as they met. The impression of the servant at the sign he received from God is in the realm of the manifest and spoken, whereas Yitzhaks falling in love – just as his feelings at the Akedah – are in the realm of the hidden and sublime.
There
are two fields which are mentioned in the parashah, a veritable Makhpelah-doubling
of fields: the field at the Makhpelah at Qiryat-Arba which is
in Hevron, and the field by the well where Yitzhak
went to stroll at twilight time, on the day that Rivqah arrived from Haran.
The sihah ba’Sadeh – “conversation in the field” – reminds of what is written at the second Creation Story “And every plant of the field – si’ah haSadeh - before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man - Adam - to till the ground” (Gen. 2:5). It is Adam-humankind that raises the waters up from the earth, as complement for the rain from the heavens, and thus brings growth and fertility. In parashat Haye Sarah we are witnessing the very moment when the reconstructed “New Man-Adam”, the progeny of the wantering Avraham ha’Ivri, gets connected to the Adamah – the Living Earth – of Kena’an.
We have already mentioned that the subject of this parashah are conversations, fruitful negotiations. Also the concept of the “Makhpelah-Doubling is of the secret of dialogue – du-Si’ah (literally “twine plants”) The conversations that are recounted in this parashah are therefore of the nature of “Si’ah ha’Sadeh” (literally “the plants/conversation of the fields”), conversations that lead to to the fertility of the earth – and this last conversation, between Yitzhak and Rivqah, is silent, like the silence of the Adamah (“Demamat ha’Adamah”, a clear phonetic connection).
And he lifted up his eyes,
and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming.And Rivqah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw
Yitzhak-Isaac, she fell off the camel
While there were no talks and no words in this meeting, it is evident that something big transpired there. The falling off the camel can be compared with the Midrash according to which Sarah allowed Abraham to visit Yishma’el, on condition that he would not alight off the camel, or in other words, that Abraham would not be able to sit-settle in Arabia. Whereas here Rivqah, falling off the camel as soon as she saw Yitzhak nearby, started thereby the settlement of the land and completed the leaving of her “land and kindred and her father’s house”.
And Isaac-Yitzhak
brought her to his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah-Rivqah, and she
became his wife;
Yitzhak did not want, or was not able, to take him Rivqah for a wife, without first coming into the tent and the presence of his mother, as if to ask for her permission. In Midrash Raba (60:17) “and Yitzhak brought her to his mother Sarah’s tent” – all the days that Sarah was alive, there was a cloud tied to the entrance of her tent. When she died this cloud disappeared, when Rivqah came, that same cloud returned….”, and likewise it is told there that Rivqah appeared to Yitzhak in the very likeness of his mother. Such an event is likely, and has obvious psychological explanations. But from the perspective of the epic narrative (or mythos) of the Torah, this means that Sarah sort of resurrected and became embodied in Rivqah, and the appropriate place for that was the tent.
It should be noticed and understood that Sarah’s tent at Qiryat Arba that is Hevron was already mentioned no less than five times, all of them around the visit of the angels that herald the destruction of Sedom and the building of the House of Abraham. This was the tent to whose entrance sat Abraham when his miraculous visitors appeared, the tent inside which Sarah was staying at that moment and heard their words. This tent was a part of the sacred precinct of the grove of the Terebinths of Mamre, the dwelling place of Sarah even while Abraham was leading a nomad’s life in the region of Be’er Sheva, and it seems that it was a place of religious significance. We see that the Makhpelah Cave was bought because it was facing the sacred grove of Mamre: “And the field of `Efron, which – asher – was in Makhpelah, which – asher – in front of Mamre and the cave which – asher – was in it, and all the trees that – asher – were in the field, that - asher - were in all the borders around, were made over to Avraham for a possession in the presence of the sons of Het” (23:17-18). The Hebrew auxiliary word “asher” – “which” – which appears no less than five times in that one sentence (even though ostensibly it is not at all needed grammatically for understanding the sentence) discloses the type of cult implied, which is mentioned in other places by the names of “Asherim” and especially “Asherah” – the goddess of love and fertility[2]
Sarah’s
tent stood as a religious shrine in its place even after her death, and waited
for the next woman who would come to it from the land and kindred and father’s
house of Sarah, in all probability one who was well versed in all the cult of
that tradition (see later the affair of the idols – Traphim – of Rahel-Rachel
and Laban), in effect a priestess to the cult of the fertility goddess, who was
associated with the grove of the Terebinths of Mamre and “all the trees that – asher – were in the
field, that - asher - were in all the borders around”.
“And he loved her;”
Up to that instance, there was not a single mention in the scriptures of any love of a man to a woman. There were impulse (Yetser) and desire, but not the subtlety of love. In the second story of the Creation it is written: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh… Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh”. (Gen. 2:23-24). In the third story of the Creation, it is told that: “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were pretty; and they took as wives all those whom they chose” (6:2). But there is nothing mentioned about love.
The Mekubalim categorized Abraham as representing the Hesed, namely Love, even though the scriptures attributed love to him only once – love of son and not love of the woman. It was actually Yitzhak, who was categorized as belonging to “the side of Din-Judgement” which is opposite to the side of Hesed-Mercy/Love; he was the one who brought marital love in the Bible.. Only after the two stages of “And Isaac-Yitzhak brought her to his mother Sarah's tent”, and then “and took Rebecca-Rivqah”, that the love developed. This love was quite different from the imm3ediate falling in love of Jacob with Rachel over the fountain. Yitzhak first needed his mother’s approval, and as she was no longer alive, the approval of her tent. He did not take for a wife the beautiful girl whom he met in the field, but the one who came into his mother’s tent. This love still grew after Y. took R. for a wife. There are cases of loves that lead to marriage, and they often get gradually extinguished as marriage becomes established. Yitzhak’s love to R. was a love that started with marriage and grew with it as a continuing conjugal process.
The Bovine fold: Sarah Rivqah and Rahel,
the Golden Calf and Kenesset Yisrael
In the Book of Shmu’el-Samuel chapter 6, we read about the return of the Ark of Covenant from its capture by the Philistines to Qiryat Ye’arim. When the cows were harnessed to the cart that carried the Ark of Covenant, it is said that “the cows went straight way towards”, namely: they chose themselves a straight course, and without any coach or leader they went straight to the camp of Israel and towards the eventual real resting place of the Ark of Covenant – to the Temple of David and Solomon-Shelomoh in Jerusalem. This was something above and beyond the natural order.
The figure of the Cow repeats often in the Bible, and is connected with a certain type of divinity. The Israelites made them in Sinai a golden calf, and called to it “These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (exodus 32:4). King Yorov’am placed two calves’ statues in the temples that he built at Dan and at Bet-El, and the people must have had no doubts that he intended to represent the God of Israel and not a foreign deity. In parashat Huqat (Numbers 19) is described the rather mysterious issue of the Red Heifer, and from the association of issues it is hinted “This is the ordinance of the Torah” as if this issue of the red heifer is the very heart of the ordinance of the Torah. This suggests that even if we do not really understand the point about that heifer (the Midrash (Yoma, 14a) tells that this is the issue about which even King Solomon, the wisest of people, said (Ecclesiastes 7:23): “All this have I proved by wisdom; I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me”), it is clear that this has a great significance, and can bring the purification of the people from defilement, even in preparation for the renewal of the Temple worship. Likewise, the issue of the beheaded heifer (Deuteronomy 21:1-9) is aimed to remove guilt of murder from a whole community of Israel. In the vision of Ezekiel is given a description of the throne of glory of the God of Israel, which is carried atop of four animals, one of which is characterized by a bull’s head (or rather each one of the animals has four heads, one of which is a bull’s).
It might be unnecessary to add that cow-like or bull-like idols were prevalent in the ancient world. We may mention here just the Egyptian goddess Hathor, the “Cow-eyed Juno” of the Italics (and from them the Romans) and the sanctification of the cow among the Indians. The bull that ploughs the earth is a symbol for the terrestrial power that brings fertility, and so on.
And here we see that in parashat Haye Sarah there starts to be drawn a line of cows, or of entities symbolized by cows – namely the matriarchs. We have already noted that the name “Sarah” may be connected with the Asherah, as well as to Shor – that is Bull. The names of the Mothers who continue her course are actually names of animals. The name “Rivqah” – like marbeq – means a cow, one of a pair of cows or bulls that are used for plowing, whereas the name “Rahel” (Rachel) means a young ewe. Even the name “Le’ah” may be explained, through a most basic letter interpolation, in the very meaning of “Elah”, namely “goddess”.
If as it is said in the Midrash (Bereshit Raba 47) that “The Fathers are the Merkavah” (Chariot), then the Mothers are those who move that chariot, and without them this chariot would have arrived nowhere.
The Mutual Moves Among the Fathers
and Mothers of the Nation of Israel
Abraham and Sarah came together from Haran, where they left brothers who continued the traditions of the original family, with a marked matriarchal conduct, and this character did not disappear but strengthened over time. Abraham obeyed the command of “get thy out of thy country, of thy kindred and of thy father’s house”, and Saray obeyed and followed him and we know of no expressed objection from her side. But she did express her attitude to the women of the land of Kena’an. The fact is, that the family that he raised repeatedly brought her women from the original family at Haran. It is not written that Sarah commanded to bring for Yitzhak a wife from Haran, but Abraham’s determination to do so right after he buried his wife, shows that he felt obliged to fulfil her wish and to fulfil her last request, whether it was expressly said or that he surmised it. The fact is that Rivqah, her daughter in law, already expressed this explicitly: “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Ya’aqov takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these who are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life be to me?” (Gen. 27:46). The sequel is known, Ya’aqov-Jacob took him for wives the daughters of Lavan son of Milkah from Haran.
It is interesting to follow the travels of the Fathers for these matches. Avram must have known Saray still at Haran, and traveled with her to the Land of Kena’an, as well as to Egypt and to the Land of the Philistines. Yitzhak did not leave the land, and it was the servant who went and met Rivqah by the well at Haran, and invited her, and she personally decided of her own will to make the Aliyah, the immigration, to the Land. Ya’aqov went himself back to Haran, and there, probably by that same well, he met Rahel and immediately fell in love with her, until he got bound for twenty years of labor for her sake, and then he repeated the journey of Avram to the Land of Kena’an, he and his four wives, two of whom from the house of Lavan, his mother’s brother.
Such zigzag course set a pattern for the zigzag courses in the moves of “Kenesset Yisrael”, between the exile and the Land of Israel, and between the (male) clinging to “the separate intelligences” and the (feminine) reality of connecting with the land and her inhabitants.
Haye
Sarah and
the Drawing of the Hayut Energy
We have treated above the activity called in the Kabbalah “raising the Ma’N” from below upwards. The parallel and complementary activity is the “drawing the Ma’D”, the “Mayim Dukrin” , that is, “Masculine Waters”. A principle of the Kabbalah and Hassidut that arousal-of-the-above and the descent of the “masculine waters”, such as the falling of the enlivening rain upon the parched land, is connected with the prior “arousal-from-below”, and when a drop rises from below, then the upper waters are awakened and descent in plenitude. When the people of Israel “raise the Ma’N through the fulfilment of God’s commandments, then they draw downwards divine blessing of Ma’D.
But whereas the name “Ma’N” (which, as shown, is quite meaningful by itself) is very common in the Kabbalah Hassidic literature, this is not so with “Mayim Dukrin” or Ma’D. The common terms for describing the divine blessing that descends from on high are “Shefa” (in the older Kabbalah) and “Hayut” – “vitality” – (in the later Kabbalah and Hassidut). The full course of the connection of earth and heaven, the3 human and the divine, is that of “Raising the Ma’N” and then “Drawing down the Hayut”.
So, the very name of “Haye Sarah” enfolds within it the whole practical essence of the Kabbalah and represents the full course of relationships between humanity and divinity.
Part III –
The Lives of Abraham after
Sarah’s Death and the Lives of Ishmael
The Earthly Abraham, Birth of Ashur,
Sending away Sons of Qeturah.
With the ending of the mourning time over Sarah, Abraham took him a new concubine, Qeturah, and begot six further children. This means something rarely noticed – that Abraham had not two, but eight sons, a number with much significance[3]. The sons of Qeturah are “Bnei Qedem” (peoples of the Orient). The most interesting progeny of Abraham and Qeturah is perhaps Ashurim (Assyrians). Children of Abraham’s son Dedan (Gen. 25:3). The Kingdom of Ashur-Assyria was on the upper Euphrates, near Haran, from where Abraham’s family derived. The Assyrians, progeny of Abraham, are those who eventually brought the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel; one could speculate that had they not been sent away still in the life of Abraham, they might have been included within the covenant of Abraham. The insistence of Sarah about the exclusivity of Yitzhak in Abraham’s inheritance eventually exacted a very heavy price.
The Return-Teshuvah
of Yishma’el to the Makhpelah, to Mount Moriah and towards Inclusion within the
Union of Israel.
At the end of the parashah, we reach another chapter in the relationship of Yitzhak and Yishma’el. They both came to bury their father Avraham at the Cave of the Makhpelah (which implies that it is inheritance for both). Yitzhak settled by the well of Lahay Ro’I (as mentioned, the well where Hagar was announced the birth of Yishma’el), whereas Yishma’el returned to the expanses of the desert. There, Yishma’el received his fortune of begetting twelve sons who were destined to inherit a huge territory, all the area east of the Land of Kena’an, from Egypt onto Ashur. Yishma’el, the firstborn, was thus the first of the children of Abraham who succeeded to reach the expected sacred pattern of the Twelve.
The Cave of Makhpelah was a natural continuation for the life of Sarah, and for her dwelling at Qiryat Arba by Mamre. But the burial of Abraham at that cave was more meaningful: Abraham, the wandering shepherd also found there his resting place, at the place where the kingdom of David wold start. Only with the interment of Abraham did the sacred cave really become a “Makhpelah” – a balanced place that includes both the feminine and the masculine sides. The mention of the visit of Yishma’el-Ishmael at the site for the purpose of the burial of Abraham has a great symbolic significance, and completes – and perhaps upturns – the meaning of the relationship of Sarah and Yishma’el, and with it the relationship of Yisra’el and Yishma’el.
It should be noticed that Yishma’el was born from Sarah’s Egyptian maid. From where did Sarah, who came from Ur-Kasdim, have an Egyptian maid? Receiving the maid must have been a part of the presents that Sarah received following her stay in Egypt, at the court of the Pharaoh. It seems as if the stay of Sarah at the court of the Egyptian king had an intimate-cultic character[4], but Sarah repeated and participated in a similar affair at the court of another king, that time at the Land of Kena’an – at the house of Abimelekh king of the Land of the Philistines, as described at parashaat vaYera.
We know that Hagar the Egyptian at first seemed to Sarah suitable to be built through her, even though it was important for her that everyone should know that the mother is her maid, and thus that the son she would bear would be Sarah’s, and not Hagar’s. That way, Sarah sort of gained a son through her being handed to the Egyptian king. But after Sarah repeated that same strange (and humiliating?) cultic affair, she became blessed with her own born son, and she preferred to cast Yishma’el out, to be built through Yitzhak and to insist that only he would inherit her. This parashah ties Sarah and Abraham in an intimate-cultic connection with the Philistines too, a connection that gets soon confirmed in the covenant that Abraham made with Avimelekh. This relationship receives much meaning in our times, when the biggest problem of modern Israel is how to relate to the Palestinians, the nation of the native people – Amm ha’Aretz – whose main center is at the Gaza region, which is the heart of the Land of the Philistines.
Yishma’el, when returning to the domain of Sarah, his mother by law, at her burial estate, in order to join to her his biological father Abraham, re-connects with the House of Israel. While the majority of the People of Yishma’el remain among the dwellers of the desert, through the length and breadth of the immense realm promised to Abraham (but not to Sarah), but there is a part of them who tied their destiny with Hebron and with Philistea-Palestine.
This is also the implication of the saying of the sages of blessed memory that Yishma’el made penance. In discussing the verse “and the Lord-YHWH blessed Abraham in all things – bakol” (Gen. 24:1), Rabbi Levi said, there are three “bakol”: bakol – that He made him rule over his impulse, bakol – that Yishma’el made penance – Teshuvah – in his own life, bakol – that his countenance did not loose anything” (Bereshit Raba, Haye Sarah, 59:7). The important term “Teshuvah” means both “penance” and, literally, “returning” or “turning back”. So the return of Ishmael to bury his father together with Yitzhak amounts to penance, as well as reconciliation.
The Generations of Yishma’el – About Ismailis and Sufis.
We have noted that it was Mohammed who revealed to the Arabs their being the Children of Abraham and Ishmael. We may note here a fascinating but little known chapter in the history of the Children of Abraham, which is the growth of the “Ismaili” (namely Ishmaelite sect of Islam, an important sect of the Shiite Islam, which claims direct inheritance of the religious and prophetic authority from Mohammed. The sect derived its name from Isma’il ibn Ja’afar al-Tsadek, of the ninth century CE, from the lineage of Ali, Mohammad’s son-in-law. Obviously, this name would not have been the name of an important Islamic sage if it were not for the “rehabilitation” of Ishmael through Mohammed and the Qur’an. An important sect of Shiitete Islam is of “Twelver Shiites”, whose members believe in a spiritual hierarchy of twelve Imams, the first of whom was Mohammad, but he is not considered the exclusive spiritual authority and not “the seal of prophecy”. The last Imam, the twelfth one, is the hidden Imam who is still alive but is hidden and is destined to become revealed. This is actually a whole Islamic messianic teaching, which contains much of the religious intensity of the Shi’ah, and feeds the fundamentalist Islamic arousal (which is largely Shiite) in Iran and other Moslem countries. It seems that the sanctification of the twelve-fold pattern derives from the bible, in the divine promise to Yishma’el, who would merit to establish a union of twelve nesi’m (Emirs) of his seed. And thus we find among the Shiites, and especially the among them Ismailis, the feeling about their leaders being the heirs of the (almost divine) prophet, in an inheritance both biological and spiritual, and the emergence of the pattern of the Twelve through that inheritance.
Western scholars of Islam (such as Henry Korbin) speak of “Isma’ili Gnosis”, because this sect much developed the theological and mystical speculation, and assimilated into it, very probably, from the best of the secret traditions that still existed in the Middle East. As shown by the researcher Shelomoh Pines, many of the apparently-Islamic mystical traditions derived much from Jewish and Gnostic-Christian secret traditions, including the remnants of the original Christian Church of Jerusalem, which did not accept the divinization of Jesus (and was eventually persecuted as heretic). It is likely that remnant of the mysteries of the Jewish Temple that had been destroyed reappeared eventually in places such as the Kabbalah and these sects, along with some Gnostic notions. The outcome of this process was the formation of the Sufi spiritual movements, in Islam and in the world at large. As the late Sufi leader Idris Shah showed, Sufi sects had an orientation to Jerusalem and admiration for King Solomon, the builder of the Temple, and members of a Sufi brotherhood were among the builders of the Dome of the Rock as an alternative shrine and orientation for the Ka’aba of Mecca.
The Encounter of Yitzhak
and Yishma’el as restorative step – Tikkun - for the
conflict of Qayin and Hevel.
In the story of Adam, a mortal conflict appears right from the first generation. The one, Hevel-Abel, represents the shepherds who wander freely from place to place, and the second, Qayin-Cain, represents agriculture and property – Qinyan. This contrast was the essence of conflict in much of the ancient world, and especially at the region, we now call “the Middle East”. The second experiment after Adam was with “No’ah the Man of the Adamah” who, even though he was “a just man and perfect in his generations”, he immediately failed through the terrestrial intoxication of the fruit of the vine. Abraham was the third experiment, and there was a similar division (as noted above) between him and his wife). Then Abraham too had two sons, who were divided by this same distinction, and they too had the same conflict. The division already existed between their parents: Abraham was the shepherd, the nomad, whereas Sarah insisted on matters of property, inheritance, and estate. Yishma’el was born to first be “a wild man” – Pere Adam – the word Pere is associated with the desert (Isaiah 32:14; Job 24:5; 39:5-6); while Sarah took care that Yishma’el would not inherit with Yitzhak and be sent to the desert – where he managed to survive and to prosper, through the grace of God and his own toughness and daring. As tragic as the sending of Yishma’el might seem, this was not a mortal conflict as there was between Qayin-Cain and Hevel-Abel.
What is the nature of that “Wild Man” – Pere Adam, and is this quality a permanent “sign of Qayin”? Even though the Biblical narrative treats from here onwards only with Yitzhak and his children, the Bible takes care to show that Yishma’el grew and matured and reached a very respectable status. The scriptures have much appreciation of “the noble savage” of the shepherds of the desert, and deep suspicion of the process of settlement and enslavement of the agriculturists who are represented mainly by the people of the Land of Kena’an (and also the Tribe of Issaskhar in the blessing of Ya’aqov, Gen. 49:14-15). The God of the Bible is the God of the nomads, who rules equally throughout the world, without regard to national borders, and the period He loves in the history of Kenesset Yisrael is “Thus said the Lord; I remember you, the devotion of your youth, your love like a bride, when you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2). Also in the figure of Yishma’el – the “Pere Adam” – there is a dimension of glory and nobility. The quality of Grace – Hesed – of Abraham, famous for his hospitality, is of the respected qualities of the Arabs of the desert, who are associated with Yishma’el, who are commanded to be hospitable even to their bitter enemy. Among the two sons, Yishma’el is decidedly “the child of Abraham”, whereas Yitzhak is, firstly, Sarah’s child.
By
noting the participation of Yishma’el alongside Yitzhak in the burial of
their father and describing his subsequent situation, the Bible intended to
leave us with a positive attitude towards Yishma’el, and to mark the
possibility, in principle, of integrating some of the Children of Yishma’el
within the assembly of Yisra’el-Israel. (More on the positive regard of the
scriptures and the Sages towards Yishma’el, contrary to the negative regard by
Jewish interpreters since the rise of Islam, see our discussion about Yishma’el
at Parashat va’Yera).
Through his visit to Hevron Yishma’el did not dispute the rights of Yitzhak over the place. Nonetheless, his act of participation in the burial puts him in a certain connection to the Land of Israel, and in this estate, he appears as Abraham’s son and Yitzhak’s brother, though without the seniority. And thus, apart from his own big and complete domain at the fringes of the settled land, he has a certain hold at Hevron and the Cave of the Makhpelah, and thus also a hold in the line that leads to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. True, the Temple Mount is Mount Moriah, which became sanctified through the Akedah of Yitzhak, but still Yishma’el and Yitzhak are bound to each other, as if the hand of Yishma’el was held at the heal of Yitzhak. When matters come to their appearance at Hevron or Jerusalem, then they are both bound-together until this day, and perhaps ever more.
From the Tree of Knowledge to the Building of the Temple
The first Adam was appointed over the trees of the Garden of Eden, was warned over the Tree of Knowledge and failed through it. No’ah failed through a Tree of Knowledge of his own – the vine that he planted upon exiting from the Ark. Assuming that Abraham is their successor – we may look at his story for the motive of the Tree of Knowledge.
It seems that Abraham was engaged in a search for the Tree. The course of his wanderings in the land is strongly connected with various trees. God was revealed to him by the Terebinth of Moreh and the Terebinths of Mamre, at Be’er Sheva he planted a tamarisk, whereas the total salvation of him and his seed at the Akedah, occurred when “a ram caught in a thicket by his horns”. Not a specific tree, bearing a name, but some typical Israeli thick grove.
The last tree that is mentioned at the stories of Abraham is that at the Cave of the Makhpelah: “And the field of `Efron, which was in Makhpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was in it, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders around” (Gen. 23:17). This is the closing of the circle that was started when Abraham came to the Terebinths of Mamre, after his separation from Lot, and the covenant that was made at that place. That is why the Midrash sees the Makhpelah Cave as the entry to the Garden of Eden. The Midrashic claim, according to which also Adam and Eve – who are associated wit the Garden of Eden – inside that cave also amplifies this connection. “The field, and the cave which was in it, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders around” – this is a scale model of the Garden of Eden. So that the first estate that Abraham acquired in the Land of Kena’an was a scale model of the Garden of Eden, and at the same time, an entrance to the original Garden.
So, at the Cave of the Makhpelah and the field around it, there was established an early model of the New Garden of Eden, which is actually also an early model for the Temple.
© Tirtsah Arzi and Yitzhak Hayut-Ma’n.
[1] Examples can be found in the (Hebrew) book of Shmuel Ahituv: “Collection of Hebrew Texts”, the Biblical Encyclopedia series of The Bialik Institute and the Society for Research of the Land of Israel and its antiquities. In the section on Kuntilat Ajrud, in the Sinaiare examples of dedications to “YHWH Shomron va’Asherato” and “YHWH Teiman va’Asherato”. These are attributed to the 8th century BCE.
[2] See
previuos note, as well as note __ in parashat va’yera for the
prevalence of the cult of the Asherah
[3] Abraham’s number (by gematria) is 248, half of the “perfect number”, 496 and the traditional count of the positive commandments. This number divides by 8 (8 x 31 = 248), a number associated with the supernatural (see MaHaRaL). At the existing Makhpelah edifice at Hebron, Abraham’s chamber is octagonal, a form that is also connected with the plan of the Dome of the Rock.
[4] This topic is treated much in Sabina Teubal’s book “Sara the Priestess”.