Parashat Chaye Sarah Genesis 23:1-25:18
Do Not Return
Why don’t you go home,
they ask the immigrant,
after all that went wrong?
Back to
health care
passport
security.
Family,
the Yemenite rabbi said,
is a husband
children
not
parents
a brother, niece.
Make a chart, the neighbor said.
Why stay?
I want to.
I left.
God promised
land
blessings
a name.
I am the earth.
One grain of sand.
I am the sea.
One drop of water.
I am the sky.
One star.
This poem, the title poem of my first collection of poetry, was written inspired by this week’s parsha:
And Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, “Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by יהוה, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac.”
And the servant said to him, “What if the woman does not consent to follow me to this land, shall I then take your son back to the land from which you came?” Abraham answered him, “On no account must you take (return) my son back there! (Genesis 24:2-6)
Every year when I read these verses, I think about what we imagine the fruit of our efforts and labors to be. Was it all worth it, if a path ends with us? If there are no descendants like sand in the desert or stars in the sky? If there is no future generation to remember and cherish, to modify, reject or preserve – to continue – our journey; the journey of our name, our visions in this world?
The poem hurt my parents’ feelings because they thought that I didn’t consider them family. But that was obviously not how I felt or feel – and it wasn’t what the Yemenite rabbi meant either: Torah has a clear sense of the nuance between being part of a family clan and starting one’s own family:
Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh, it is stated as early as Genesis 2:24.
According to the Yemenite rabbi – and Genesis – we begin a new family, with new allegiances, when we have a partner and children. We may continue to love our parents and relatives, but we have changed status on the family tree.
When I wrote this poem, I wanted to express commitment to the path I had taken, even if it would end with me, even if I would not insert myself in the chain of biological generations. Even if I would always remain a child on the family tree. I resonated with Abraham’s insistence that returning Isaac to the realm he had left, the family clan, would make his entire journey obsolete.
We are free to decide how we want to interpret the paths of our lives. Some may feel, like I did back in 2015 when I wrote that poem, that we must keep going and not look back. Others, like I am increasingly inclined to consider as I get older, prefer to look at our paths as eventually coming full circle. Going back to where we came from doesn’t necessarily make our previous journeys obsolete. It might complete them.
Abraham had no such choice. He had heeded God’s calling and returning or reinterpreting was not an option. Abraham had to make it work. He had to trust in his commitment and in God’s direction. Yet there he was again, even after the Covenant of the Pieces and the deep sleep vision of descendants as numerous as the stars, widowed with a traumatized bachelor son and no grandchildren on the vast horizon.
His situation is exasperated by his refusal to allow Isaac to marry a local girl. The future wife must come from the tribe he left behind of all. On one level, this bears a certain irony: The clan he left is as pagan as the local Canaanites. But he is so adamant that he is ready to accept that the new Abrahamic religion might end with Isaac, if no woman back east is willing to make the same journey into the unknown.
To be clear, I understand and respect the religious reasoning for this tribal allegiance. And yet, on a plain, personal level, Abraham’s fervor can feel xenophobic.
At the same time, and moving away from ethno-religious fundamentalism, I understand this passage as a testament to an individual’s determination to hold on to their belief and convictions, to their visions. And to the bonds we share with the people we feel closest to, even when we had to forge our own, different path in a foreign land.
The poem I shared in the beginning emerged in the intersection of these two – or three – perspectives. And that is the beauty of Torah exegesis: We can hold several impressions, even contradicting feelings when we engage with it. Indeed, tradition says there are “seventy faces of Torah” – seventy ways to interpret text and elicit meaning; to struggle and resonate with, to juggle and balance, to look ahead and come full circle, all at once.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch