Parashat Chayye Sarah (Genesis 23:1 - 24:67)

by Rabbi Kathleen de Magtige Middleton

Summary

Chayyeh Sarah describes the death of Sarah and Abraham’s subsequent acquisition of burial grounds for her. Abraham is a resident alien in the land of Canaan and he is anxious to secure a burial plot as a holding for future generations.

After the burial and the mourning period are over, Abraham focuses his attentions to securing those future generations. He instructs his servant to return to his original home-land to find him a wife for Isaac, his son. The servant meets Rebecca, whose outstanding beauty and care for animals and people indicate that she is the ideal future wife for Isaac – it also helps that she happens to be Abraham’s niece. The marriage is arranged with Rebecca’s consent and she follows the servant to meet her new husband Isaac. Isaac loves her immediately and so finds solace after his mother’s death. Abraham then takes another wife, begets more offspring and dies a hundred and seventy one years old.  

Commentary

The main foci of the portion are two major lifecycle events in the lives of Abraham and Isaac; the death of Sarah – the first significant death in the patriarchal story – followed by the marriage of Isaac. In both instances it seems rather astonishing that the text is more concerned with the legal requirements for the acquisition of land for a burial plot and the and the arrangement of the marriage than the ritual that undoubtedly must have accompanied these two significant events. Obviously the texts seems to intimate that these wouldn’t be important details to the story, or perhaps the text seems to suggest that maybe there weren’t any elaborate rituals. Let us assume for a moment that Abraham did not known how to translate his feelings of bereavement into ritual; ritual that would be applicable to his own, newly established religious outlook on life, and not simply transported from the tradition of which he came, nor borrowed from the society in which he sojourned. In this context we might explain all Abraham’s actions as a reaction to the sudden confrontation with death and his own mortality, for all his subsequent actions are an assertion of life, a wish to secure the future, his future, by ensuring that there will be a future generation for his son, and by establishing a permanent holding in the land. That is why the acquisition of land and wife are so important in the story; they are tangible sureties in the face of the emptiness of death.

The text alludes to these feelings of emptiness and despair as it tells of Isaac’s love for Rebecca. The emptiness which permeates Isaac’s life is only filled up again through love for his new wife, as he brings Rebecca into the [empty] tent of his mother and so finds consolation in his bereavement.

The lack of ritual in our text emphasises the Patriarch’s own need for ritual, as they struggled for security and comfort, the establishment of which became in effect their ritual. It reminds us that rituals have an important role to fulfil for the way we channel those overwhelming feelings which accompany major lifecycle events such as death and marriage. In today’s world we often forget the wholesome role of ritual for they give us a framework in which we, overwhelmed by emotions, can still operate without thinking comforted by the knowledge that others before us experienced the same and found solace.

Rabbi Kathleen de Magtige Middleton