D'var Torah

Have you ever had a time in your life where it felt like everything was happening all at once?

Maybe it was a convergence of joyful moments and sorrowful ones, or the juxtaposition of a joyful personal life and fearful world events (or visa versa). Maybe it was a period of enormous transition after years of stability. Maybe it was an onslaught of news – good or bad or something in between – after a long period of uncertainty. 

This week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, takes us through a time like that in the character Isaac’s life – as well as his wife Rebecca’s, his father Abraham’s, and even his brother, Ishmael’s. Chayei Sarah means “[the] life of Sarah,” but it starts by telling us of her death, and the long process her husband, Abraham, went through to mourn and bury her. After this vignette, we cut suddenly to the story of the betrothal between Rebecca and Isaac, Sarah’s son, which at 67 verses is the longest uninterrupted narrative in the Torah. The 67th verse tells us that Isaac fell in love with Rebecca, and through his loving relationship with her, found comfort after his mother’s death. From here, Chayei Sarah cuts back to Abraham, telling us briefly about the final years of his life, and eventually, his death and burial – an event for which his two estranged sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came together. 

There is so much in these stories. There is a lot to be said about the literary ways Rebecca, Abraham’s daughter-in-law, is coded as his successor (maybe over and above his son Isaac), the Torah’s category of “ger toshav” (“resident foreigner”) as applied to Abraham and what it means for our lives today, the role of kindness in the portion and in our lives, and more. 

But what stood out to me most this year, re-reading Chayei Sarah, was the way the portion allows grief and love and loss and new beginnings to crash together, the way they often do in many of our lives, too. How can we navigate moments like this, moments of terrible and wonderful and complicated convergence?

In Chayei Sarah, time seems to speed up or slow down, depending on the importance of events – a kind of subjective dilation. Sarah’s death and burial and the story of Isaac and Rebecca’s meeting are given far more space than other events in the portion, perhaps a reflection of the space they must have also taken in the minds and hearts of the people who lived through them. It lets us spend a lot of time with Abraham, Isaac, and Rebecca, (and a little bit of time with Ishmael, too), as they navigate many different types of change. And one of the most important things that seems to jump out of all of these stories as a whole is the power of conversation, and connection. In Chayei Sarah, over and over, conversation is what allows different people to learn about each other and help each other, and being present with one another is what allows for growth, and healing. 

Though the idea didn’t yet exist when Chayei Sarah was written, the way the portion describes people being with each other, through good times and bad, reminds me a lot of the Jewish tradition of gathering together a minyan, a group of at least ten people over the age of 13, in celebratory moments and in moments of sorrow. For a lot of Reform Jews, we don’t literally bring together a minyan for every moment our predecessors might have gathered one (for example, many lovely weddings have fewer than ten guests), but we still carry forward the tradition of doing our best to show up and support each other – through good times and hard times. This week, I’m carrying with me especially the memory of our amazing and moving Rodef Chochma (Adult B’nai Mitzvah) ceremony last Shabbat, for which our sanctuary was completely full (big thanks to Clyde for carrying in extra chairs as the service continued), and the memory of much more somber moments too, when I’ve been deeply moved to see the many ways the TRS community shows up for one another.

And so my prayer for us this week, the week of Chayei Sarah, is that we keep showing up for one another – that we find new ways and old to reach out to each other, and be there for each other, as we navigate life’s many seasons.