Jayéi Sará 5777 - English

By Rabbi Dario Feiguin

B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica

Parashat Chayei Sarah: Transcending Biology 

One of the questions that Torah commentators ask when they reach this week’s Parashah is why is it called חיי שרה, the Life of Sarah, when in fact it is about her death. Not only that, but it ends this section of the Torah with the death of Abraham Avinu.   

I would like to suggest an answer that comes from the very tales of these biblical chapters. The basic idea is that Life is more than biological life. It is more than a small segment of existence separate from a past and a future and from a much wider and transcendent whole.  

It would seem that for all the riches and depth of our Life, it comes undone as senseless if it is disconnected and isolated.  

It would seem that no matter how big and important our existence appears to be, the cosmic Truth slaps our omnipotence and throws us back into a global context.  

The first thing Abraham does after the death of his beloved partner is to buy the cave of Machpelah: a place of remembrance for the entire family. Almost as if he were suggesting that through memory it is possible to vanquish death. 

The text says that the inhabitants of the place, who knew Abraham, offered the land as a gift. But the patriarch would not take it as such. He insisted on paying for what he wanted. He insisted on it being clear in the eyes of everyone that it was not a gift but a purchase, as the result of a voluntary decision to create a consciousness of continuity. 

It was as if the limits of biological death shook him to the core in order to make him think, decide and do that which would bring him and his own that framing of transcendence. 

After this tale comes another that supports and accentuates this idea. To remember is not enough, because one might stay trapped in the past. The decision is not enough, because Will crystalizes only in concrete action. 

And so Abraham makes his servant promise that he will find a wife for his son Isaac. 

This woman must meet two requirements: she must come from the family and she must be a sensible and tender person. 

Eliezer goes to Aram, Abraham’s original land, and there he meets Rebecca. And the Torah insists upon the two elements. Eliezer arrives tired with his camels and a beautiful woman who was taking water from the well offers a drink to him and to the animals. She then introduces herself as the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, wife of Nahor. 

Eliezer thanks G’d for placing this tender sensible woman from Abraham’s family in his path, who will give him continuity through his son Isaac, and who will become Israel’s second matriarch. 

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If the cave of Machpelah represented the gates towards memory and the past, Rebecca opened the road towards the future.

I don’t think that the appearance of this double concern for Abraham during a time of pain is a coincidence. Along with the pain comes an awareness of the biological limitations on one hand and of the possibility to transcend them on the other. 

All his life, Abraham looked for his destiny. He never just waited for things to happen, he was the one who decided to transform reality and bring it as close as possible to his ideals. From his youthful iconoclastic years in Ur Kasdim, up until those last ones in Hebron. 

It would have been very hard, after the Divine promises of inheriting “as the sands of the desert” and “the stars of heaven,” if his struggle were left floating in the void, like a sigh in the midst of the eternity of the cosmos. 

Many of us live small and insignificant lives. Many of us struggle in a search that involves our entire being, so that our humanity can be realized through actions that give that small life some meaning. 

Even so, understanding that Life existed before us and will continue to exist after us, can make our efforts go beyond our own selfishness, to look at it from a wider perspective than our limited years. 

The decision, the memory, the valuation, the belonging, the sensitivity and tenderness that appear in this story of the Torah are, perhaps, the fundamental elements for this understanding. Because they lead us to comprehend, just like Sarah’s Life after her death through her continuators, that we are more than biology, capable of sowing seeds of love and transcendence in those that come after us. 

Maybe that is why, in Hebrew, the word Life doesn’t have a singular form חיים  = Lives; those we live ourselves and those we sow with love. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Darío Feiguin

Congregation B´nei Israel, Costa Rica