Rabbi’s Shabbat Message

There are times in our lives where we go about our daily responsibilities

either oblivious to or at the very least less mindful of the future.

Ironically enough, it is only in moments of great joy or deep emotional

trauma that pause to reflect upon what and whom we wish to become.

 

In a moment of grief, Abraham is seen in this week’s parasha, Chaye Sarah,

as preparing to bury Sarah. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship punctuated

by Abraham’s pawning her off twice to neighboring monarchs as his sister, by

accusation and recrimination over their childless state, and by Sarah’s

vision of Isaac as the continuation of the Jewish people over Ishmael.

 

Ultimately, though, his grief for her turns into his tribute to her and to

his vision for the future. Her life is over yet he seeks a memorial site

where the generations of his family may be buried together. He concedes her

choice of Isaac and now looks to the future by charging is servant Eliezer

to find Isaac the appropriate wife.

 

Abraham sees very clearly what is to be done. To be a people and to live up

to the divine promises he received requires more than just a reliance on

those promises. His close encounter with the sacrificial altar in just the

previous chapters illustrates the ability of people to neglect the divine

promise, to throw away their future (or in Abraham’s case, come close to

it).

 

Abraham’s journey from idolater in Ur to the father of the Jewish people in

Erez Yisrael teaches us that the only way to face the future is with a clear

grasp of who we are, a firm understanding of what is right and a resolute

nature not to give into those voices which would deter us from that mission.

 

We Jews today have that mission. It is articulated by the prophet Isaiah who

exhorts us to be “or la-goyim”, a light to the nations. It means, in

practical terms for us, not just complaining to the school districts when

Jewish sensibilities are trampled but it means to show the world how it is

we live, observe, eat, pray and exist as Jews. It means not just saying, as

Abraham did when God calls upon him “Hineni– Present and accounted for”, it

means translating presence into deed. It means taking life’s worst moments

and drawing resolve from them and taking life’s best moments and working to

replicate them.

 

The trauma of Sarah’s death and burial soon passes. The mundane daily grind

of living in the hostile Negev environment again preoccupies Abraham, and

now Isaac and Rebecca. But the reaffirmation of a clear vision at that time

of despair gives meaning to those daily tasks.

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

Rabbi Ned Soltz