Parashat Chaye Sarah Genesis 23:1-25:18

Haftarah 1 Kings 1:1-31

Dear TBE Community,

This week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, begins with death and ends with the continuation of life. Sarah dies, and Abraham purchases the Cave of Machpelah to bury her. Later, Rebecca arrives from a distant land, marries Isaac, and enters Sarah’s tent with him, ensuring the continuation of generations to come.

Between Sarah’s grave and Sarah’s tent lies a lesson about Jewish identity:

When Abraham negotiates the purchase of the cave, he describes himself to the local inhabitants as ger vetoshav: “I am a stranger and a resident among you” (Genesis 23:4). He belongs, and he does not belong. As he is making his home in this new land, he remains an outsider.

And then Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing Mamre—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 23:19)

In the moment of loss and grief, the grave (note how astutely the location is described) becomes the first place of belonging, maybe even comfort, in the new land. A place that cannot be disputed because it was acquired legally and thus can preserve the holiness of memory for the future “to this day” – even though in these days, Hebron of course is a heavily contested site.

The tension between belonging and otherness rings familiar throughout Jewish history: Jewish communities have lived for centuries in societies they called and call home, and Jewish identity is shaped by a simultaneous experience of belonging and otherness, even in Israel: For example, many olim, new immigrants, are not made to feel they belong like those whose families have lived there for generations.

It is precisely this question of belonging and otherness, and, relatedly, of how Jews see themselves and how others see us, that we will explore during our Scholar-in-Residence weekend with award-winning journalist Esther Kustanowitz: From Fiddler to Fauda, from the images and stereotypes of Jews on screen to the ways Jewish artists, writers, and performers portray their own identities, popular culture offers a mirror of that ancient tension between being both stranger and resident.

Parashat Chayei Sarah highlights another aspect of this tension: While Abraham insists that Isaac marry someone from his ancestral lineage, he is equally adamant that Isaac must not return there to marry: The next generation must remember where they came from without going back.

Jewish continuity is not about recreating the past. It is about carrying something from the past into a future that will inevitably look different. Rebecca, the second matriarch, embodies this movement. When asked whether she is willing to leave her home and begin a new life in a place she does not know, she answers with one word: Elekh – “I will go” (Genesis 24:58), echoing the call to Abraham: Lech Lecha. (Genesis 12:1) Rebecca’s going marks the early chapters of what will become the narrative of inherited identity, an identity that becomes meaningful when we make it our own through our choices and actions, our willingness to keep it alive.

At the end of a week that brought, after the Israeli elections, the highly anticipated US midterms, many of us might be in a similar place like Rebecca: Change has come upon her, and she embraces it, breathing in the fresh air as she mounts her camel. Her voice has the power to shape a future yet unknown. At the same time, that which looks promising might also hide obstacles and dangers – many Jewish Americans this week celebrate the election results while also being slightly apprehensive: What will the new Congress, the new mayor, bring for Jewish life in the United States, in Los Angeles? What is in store for the relationship between the US and Israel?

As we contemplate our unknown future, we also look back at what we know: This weekend moves us toward November 9, the anniversary of the pogrom of 1938, when synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses, homes and lives were attacked and destroyed across Nazi Germany and Austria. It is a reminder of how quickly a sense of being at home can be shattered, how violently the status of ger vetoshav can be ripped apart when a society decides that its Jewish residents no longer belong. As Jews, we are enjoined to remember and preserve the memory of the worlds that were lost. But Jewish identity is not sustained by memorials alone. The Holocaust is not the only identifying marker of what is Jewish. Our mindset of abundance must be stronger than our mindset of scarcity, or fear.

Rebecca returned abundance to the silent camp of scarcity where Abraham and Isaac dwelled after the Akedah and Sarah’s death. Parashat Chaye Sarah moves from burial cave to the tent and next generations, from the important preservation of memory in place and name (that is the literal translation of the Holocaust memorial Yad VaShem) to the renewal of life, to the continuation of a lineage in a new environment. We need to know what was lost and where we stand in order to muster the imagination and courage to build what comes next. As last votes are being counted stateside and the shape of the new government in Israel remains unclear, that work of imagination and courage continues – but whatever the final result, there is a new day on the horizon.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch