October 2013
It was my turn to present a drashah for Shabbat at Temple – and it went
both well and not so well. It went not so well in part because I did not read
what I had prepared. But for the same reason, because I spoke about something
else, it went well. And then again, at the end, not so well.
The drashah is given at the tail end of the service. Plenty of time
beforehand to sit and think about what one is about to say. Usually only a few
people are there, under thirty souls, and their attitude is mostly one of
interest and acceptance. Some of them say that they themselves would not want
to give a drashah, whereas I enjoy both the preparation and the delivery. I
experience a pleasurable anxiety, a kind of gentle tickle, when reading what
I’ve written.
When preparing a drashah, it is worthwhile researching wise people’s
commentaries on the portion of the week, until one finds something that
resonates in one’s heart and can use what they say as a basis for further
discussion. But this time, nothing seemed
interesting, and so the drashah turned on what was on my mind; it wasn’t about
the parashah, though a link to the portion was squeezed in at the end, out of a
sense of duty; that link was actually a bit forced, not really right.
One should start by reading the week’s portion itself. But this parashah
was familiar - no need to read it again. Instead, my mind focused on something
that was bothering me at Temple, and in the course of writing about it a helpful
suggestion presented itself which might sort things out. It seemed worthwhile to
talk about it. For once my drashah was ready early, before Friday evening,
before the arrival of Shabbat.
On Shabbat morning, before leaving for Temple, my husband still in bed
with his breakfast on a tray and the newspaper, there was time to settle myself
comfortably in the family room with the Torah, my feet on the red pouf, an hour
of quiet before leaving for the service. Enough time to read the parashah. As usual,
questions arose.
Sometimes Biblical Hebrew has turns and formulations which I find hard
to understand - too remote from today’s spoken Hebrew. Not this time. I read
the portion, the parashah, in Hebrew,
and at the end of each page, I quickly scanned the translation to make sure I had
understood it; I love reading the footnotes, which can take up as much as half
the page - small print, the comments of our sages reaching us over the space of
hundreds of years (“Und wuss sogt Rashi?” – said members of an Orthodox family
I knew, whenever there was a discussion about the rightness of anything – “And
what does Rashi say?”). I am lucky to be able to do this.
The parashah is called Chayei Sarah, Sarah’s life, and starts in fact
with Sarah’s death and Abraham’s acquisition of the cave of the Machpelah as a
burial place. It is offered to him as a gift and he refuses to accept it, he
wants to buy it. He wants to buy it in the most incontrovertible way possible,
he makes sure all the Hittites witness the transaction, as well as any stranger
or visitor who may be passing through the gates of the city. Then he sends his servant
Eliezer to find a wife for his son Isaac.Eliezer is a trustworthy man, steward of all that Abraham owns. The term used
to describe him has been translated as ‘a servant’, but it could also be
‘slave’. His name means ‘My God will help’.
Eliezer arrives at his destination, which is the city of Nahor in
Aram-naharaiim. He has stopped just outside the city by the well and it is the
time in the evening when the young women come to fetch water. He is anxious
about the task he has been entrusted with, so anxious in fact that he prays to
Abraham’s God. He says, I shall ask one of the maidens who comes to the well to
give me a drink of water and if she offers to water my ten camels as well, of her
own initiative, I shall take it as God’s sign that she is the one for Isaac. As
he finishes the prayer, Rebekka arrives at the well and Eliezer asks for water,
and she hurries, and says Here you are, and I shall bring water for the camels
too. She hurries here too, up and down to the well, up and down, filling the
trough. Ten camel beasts, that would be a thirsty lot, but there is no shirking
on her part. The Torah tells us about these two events, the prayer setting the
test, Rebekka fulfilling it. Then later, when Eliezer is talking to Laban,
Rebekka’s brother, he tells him the story too – both of the prayer and the
realization of it. He doesn’t forget to mention that she hurried. So that the
story about Rebekka’s willingness to serve is told four times in one chapter.
The Torah may read like a story book, but it is a book of teaching. One
of the ways in which an event can be highlighted is by its repeated telling.
Eliezer, a clever man, thinks that what happened at the well is important and tells
Laban about it. Pay attention, says the Torah, notice what she does!
I read the entire parashah, savouring the beauty of the Hebrew, and
finding that it makes my heart quicken as usual and I have tears in my eyes. The
writing is wonderful. When Eliezer arrives in the Negev with Rebekka, we are
shown the scene from Isaac’s point of view: he has gone for a walk in the
fields in the evening and he sees from far away camels arriving, and then we
are with Rebekka, and she says “Who is this man?”, and when she sees him, ‘…vatipol’ - ‘…and she fell’ - from her
camel. (At least that is the simplest translation – there are other
interpretations). It is a very powerful
moment, but we don’t know what she is experiencing. She hurries to place herself
lower than him. She also veils herself.
She would have been covered in jewels and fine clothes, would she not? Approaching
the home of her bridegroom after the voyage, a bridegroom she is about to meet
for the first time, who will see her for the first time, she will have asked to
stop for a while as they drew close – though come to think of it, Eliezer probably
would thought of this himself and organized a stop so that she might prepare
herself, wash her face, comb her hair, put on her bridal attire and array
herself in her jewels, silver and gold. She must arrive in the best possible
style. And at the sight of Isaac, she fell from her camel.
At the end, I disgraced myself. When my time to speak arrived, I took my
three pages of typed text about the thing that bothered me, and put them face
down on the lectern, and I talked to people instead about the parashah itself,
which the Rabbi’s wife had read out during the service in a clear voice. I
thought I would talk about the parashah and then turn to what I’d written, but
that is not what I did.
What I did say was good, about the four times Rebekka’s willingness is
recounted, but then I tried to tell people about my great-grandmother’s sign,
and I began to sob, and could hardly get the words out. I embarrassed myself; as
I struggled to speak, I wondered whether I really needed to do this, but it
seemed important to mention the sign, which would give the right shape to the
drashah, to have this twist at the end.
Why is the sign important? In an earlier part of Genesis, in chapter 12,
verse 2, God promises Abraham: “And I will make you a great nation, and I will
bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” The first part
is what God promises Abraham and the second part is what Abraham has to do in
return: to be a blessing. In this week’s parashah, Rebekka demonstrates by
what she does and by the way in which she does it that she is indeed a blessing
- she does what is needed without holding back. There may also be a further
indication, a hint of enlightenment in the fact that there are ten camels, ten being
the number of the Sefirot of the Tree of Life. She gives water to the ten of
them, in haste, devoting herself to the needs of both humans and beasts.
And this is important to me personally, because by my bed I keep the framed
sign which my Aunt Betty gave me long ago, when I asked if there was anything I
might have which came from the house of her
grandmother, my great-grandmother, who was called Rebekka, after the matriarch. Rebekka Gerzon lived in Holland
in a town called Groningen and was much loved and respected by her family and her
congregation. She died in the 1920s, before the Second World War. The sign is
no bigger than a standard sheet of typing paper, and it is no thing of beauty.
The frame is recent, some sort of plastic masquerading as wood. Three words are
painted in old-fashioned Germanic script, white on a black background, conventionally
decorated with a stylised flower. The words say: “Wees een Segen” – which is Dutch for “Be a blessing”.
I cry during services at various times. I don’t know why. I have made up
theories about this: maybe it is sentimentality. Or maybe it is that I grew up
without this wisdom and without the ritual. I was deprived of it, and I missed it
without knowing what I was missing. That loss is linked to the Holocaust. I
have spoken about the sign before, and I cried then too, but I feel that this
time I truly understood its meaning.
It is deemed natural for a woman to have an attitude of devotion, of
caring and service, and maybe it is. Having written this, I realize – at last –
that Eliezer is also ‘being a blessing’, he is a servant, a slave to other
people’s needs and he does his utmost, with the help of God, to serve well.
What a beautiful parashah.
