Haye Sara 5767 Camels and pickup lines

Genesis 23:1-25:18

I had a really hard week this week, And didn’t have time(or energy) to write anything this week. So I’m re-posting last years drash instead.-Shlomo

This week’s portion named the Life of Sarah, ironically starts with her death. Abraham does some land deals to find a proper burial place for his late beloved wife, and then tells his trusty servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac back in the old country. Eliezer, not having a clue what to do decides the best thing to do is pray and to ask for a sign from God. Almost immediately the sign comes to pass, he meets Rebecca, and eventually brings her back to Isaac where she is so blown away by him she falls off her camel. Isaac and Rebecca get married, move into Sarah's old digs, and Isaac is comforted from the loss of his mother. Abraham remarries, (some rabbinic sources say he marries Hagar), and has a few more kids. Even with the death of Abraham, which both of his sons bury jointly, everybody's one happy family until the twins show up next week.

This week also marks the first shidduch, the first time a matchmaker makes a match. Eliezer however doesn't seem to take his job seriously as he uses a rather odd prayer to determine who will be Isaac’s wife:

12. And he said, O Lord God of my master Abraham, I beseech you, send me good speed this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13. Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water; 14. And let it come to pass, that the girl to whom I shall say, Let down your water jar, I beg you, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give your camels drink also; let the same be she whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that you have shown kindness to my master.

The rabbis are rather shocked by all this:

R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Jonathan: Three [men] made haphazard requests, two of them were fortunate in the reply they received and one was not, namely, Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; Saul, the son of Kish; and Jephthah the Gileadite. Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, as it is written, So let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, ‘Let down thy pitcher etc.’ She might have been lame or blind, but he was fortunate in the answer given to him in that Rebecca chanced to meet him. Saul, the son of Kish, as it is written, And it shall be, that the man who kills him (i.e. Goliath), the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter. [He] might have been a slave or a bastard. He too was fortunate in that it chanced to be David. Jephthah, the Gileadite, as it is written, Then it shall be, that whatsoever comes forth out of the doors of my house etc. It might have been an unclean thing. He, however, was unfortunate in that it so happened that his own daughter came to meet him. (B Taanit 7b, cf. Gen R. 51:3)

Was Eliezer careless? There is midrash that Eliezer, a Canaanite servant, wanted to get out of his oath so Isaac would marry his daughter. (Gen R. 49:9) this could be a scheme to do just that - find an impossible or absurd thing that would get him out from his oath. Others think the carelessness is like the case of Jephthah. In Jephthah’s case, he said he would sacrifice whatever come out of his door if he won the war (judges 11:30-31)– and so the first one out of the door was his daughter(11:34), who was subsequently sacrificed (11:39), Ironically, Jephthah’s daughter gets the fate Isaac got a reprieve from. Unlike Jephthah however, God was being nice in the case of Isaac’s bride-to-be.

There is another text about Eliezer that I find an interesting as well:

Rab himself has said: An omen which is not after the form pronounced by Eliezer, Abraham's servant, or by Jonathan the son of Saul, is not considered a divination! (Hullin 95b)

Here he is the ultimate example of the incorrect omen. Divination is of course forbidden by Torah. (Lev 19:26) However, the rabbis did restrict the meaning to allow for some forms of divination. Eliezer, however, prayed for a specific sign. In the rabbinic mind Eliezer was telling God what to do, which is the mark of pagan divination and magic. Once again Eliezer is disparaged by the rabbis for the way he handled this. But Eliezer might have been much more intelligent than that. We have to remember his boss' attitude to things. When recovering from his circumcision Abraham goes running out into the wilderness to some folks he sees on the horizon, asks them to stop for a little bit to eat and proceed to wine and dine them with a full scale banquet.

It is here that we must remember that in the world today we forget how close to the narrative the people who heard it were. They understand the world of the desert and its inhabitants. They would understand the meaning of things differently than we do. Most people know the dromedary camel is quite remarkable beast, but maybe not how remarkable. It can survive without drinking for months. When given the chance however, it can drink almost a third of is bodyweight, about 30 gallons of water, in less than 10 minutes. Eliezer had ten camels with him, thus to water the camels would require 300 gallons of the precious liquid, about five gallons at a time. This would be quite a task for Rebecca, but one not only did she did accomplish but excced by pouring all of that water for the camels (Gen 24:19-22)

19. And when she had finished giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking 20. 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. 21. And the man wondering at her held his peace, to see whether the Lord had made his journey successful or not. 22. And it came to pass, as the camels finished drinking, that the man took a golden ear ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold;

Had Eliezer as a Palestinian working for an Israeli citizen driven up in a caravan of ten Humvees to somewhere in northern Iraq how likely is it that there would be some Iraqi girl who would come up to him and offer to fill up all ten Hummers by hand? But this is close to what Eliezer is asking for. But then again, he’s got, from his point of view, a crazy boss who believes in a god no one else does, not even Eliezer. He does not pray “Oh Lord my God” but instead “O Lord God of my master Abraham.” His prayer then uses a Pagan formula to determine a sign if he had found the correct woman. But the biggest craziness of his boss Abraham is his obsessive hospitality. As crazy as Abraham is to Eliezer, He also probably found it hard to believe that Sarah actually went along with all that without a complaint. Not only that, when she knew they were coming she baked not one cake, but many. Her holiness in hospitality was there when she eavesdropped in conversation, hoping to know what next to bring to the guests.

What Eliezer might have realized is he needs to find a replacement for the Matriarch Sarah. Yes, Isaac would marry this woman, in accordance with Genesis 2:24 “thus a son leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife” But for Isaac that would require the same virtues of his mother in his wife. While God is totally silent in this portion, God’s favorite Shabbos pastime isn’t. One of my favorite stories from Midrash is this one from Genesis Rabbah (58:4):

A [Roman] matron asked R. Jose: ' In how many days did the Holy One, blessed be He, create His world?’ ' In six days,’ he answered. ' Then what has He been doing since then?’ ‘He sits and makes matches,’ he answered, ‘assigning this man to that woman, and this woman to that man.’ ‘If that is difficult,’ she gibed, ‘I too can do the same.’ She went and matched [her slaves], giving this man to that woman, this woman to that man and so on. Some time after those who were thus united went and beat one another, this woman saying, ' I do not want this man,’ while this man protested, ‘I do not want that woman.’ (Straightway she summoned R. Jose b. Halafta and admitted to him: ‘There is no god like your God: it is true, your Torah is indeed beautiful and praiseworthy, and you spoke the truth!’) Said he to her: ‘If it is easy in your eyes, it is as difficult before the Holy One, blessed be He, as the dividing of the Red Sea.’

God loves to make matches, even if they are a major miracle. Nonetheless we read in Genesis 24:15 of Eliezer’s prayer:

15. And it came to pass, before he had finished speaking, that, behold, Rebecca came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, with her water jar upon her shoulder.

And so Eliezer finds Rebecca, whether he wants to or not. He is so astounded that the prayer actually worked, he tells Rebecca’s brother Laban the whole story all over again. Rebecca does return with Eliezer to his masters, Isaac and Rebecca fall in love at first sight, and everyone is happy. It is here that the Midrash throws some light that Rebecca primarily is Sarah’s replacement as Matriarch.

AND ISAAC BROUGHT HER INTO HIS MOTHER SARAH’S TENT (XXIV, 67). You find that as long as Sarah lived, a cloud hung over her tent; when she died, that cloud disappeared; but when Rebecca came, it returned. As long as Sarah lived, her doors were wide open; at her death that liberality ceased; but when Rebecca came, that openhandedness returned. As long as Sarah lived, there was a blessing on her dough, and the lamp used to burn from the evening of the Sabbath until the evening of the following Sabbath; when she died, these ceased, but when Rebecca came, they returned.

Important to this midrash is the idea of the cloud. As we read in Exodus 40:34-35

34. Then a cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35. And Moses was not able to enter into the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud abode on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

It is the Matriarch Sarah and not Abraham which brought down the Glory of the Lord to the tent. Without a Matriarch, the Shechinah was not present in the tent. It was the Matriarch’s hospitality to strangers, holiness in food preparation and Shabbat observance that were critical. Rebecca repeatedly proved she did have the merit of hospitality, the primary merit of the Matriarch, in front of Eliezer.

Eliezer may have been far shrewder than the rabbis thought. Then again, he may have been shrewder than he himself thought. Either way, if “let me water your camels” was a way for him to try to activate the escape clause in his oath, or a way of identifying the merit of a Matriarch to be, it did find Rebecca. But we cannot forget it was with the help of the very conspicuously missing voice from our Chapter: the divine matchmaker. Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu may be missing because the Matriarch is missing. The key to the game was not to find a wife for Isaac, but to bring a Matriarch back to the camp of his master, one who would bring the Shechinah back on her merit. Unlike such lines as “What’s your sign?” “Let me water your camels” may be the greatest pickup line ever, for instead of trying to try to care for the craving of the Self as most pickup lines, it shows the extreme selflessness and caring for others, the ultimate attribute of the next mother of the Jewish people.