Shabbat Shalom. Our Torah portion this week, Parashat Chayei Sarah, opens with Sarah’s death. We are told the years that her life numbered, and are left to interpret from this the legacy she left in these years. The great medieval French commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak, or Rashi, assures us that that the repetition of the word “shana,” or “year”, in the opening sentence is to communicate that each year of Sarah’s life was enjoyable and blameless. She was the epitome of a righteous woman, who opened her tent, cared for travellers, and loved her family deeply. We see from the text that she did indeed have her hardships and questionable choices, despite what Rashi would have us believe, but in truth that only makes her that much more human and thus remarkable in her good deeds.
When she dies, Abraham mourns and wails. But then in the very next sentence, the Torah tells us he got up and got to work to do what needed to be done. He not only secured a burial place for her, he purchased the first plot of property in the Holy Land that belonged to a Jew, paving the way for his children and descendants, then he goes on to find a wife for Isaac to ensure that he has descendents to appreciate the property value. He mourns but he does not languish. He does what is right to properly honor her memory and legacy, to fulfill the promise of God that brought them to a foreign land, to care for the family and community still living.
As we celebrate our first Shabbat after the largest antisemitic attack on American soil in history, we must note Abraham’s strength in this moment. We can mourn and wail, but then we get up and do what needs to be done. There are many ways to interpret this, so many ways to ensure the Jewish future and to hold close the community that stands with you in mourning; you must not shrink back in this time of sadness, anger, and fear. Take a moment now to turn to the person next to you or behind you and wish them a Shabbat Shalom. Introduce yourself if you don’t already know the person sitting next to you, maybe hug if you do know each other, and just take a moment to really see the person sitting in Jewish community with you in this sacred moment. *pause*.
Staying in a targeted community after an acute attack can be frightening. Continuing to do the work of ensuring the future of that community without know what the future of our environs might look like is an uncertain endeavor. And for that too, we can gather strength from our ancestors in this week’s parasha. In the next chapter of Parashat Chayei Sarah, the focus shifts from Sarah and Abraham to Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca is just a girl at the well, who sees a man in need and helps him. She goes above and beyond what is necessary, to allow him to drink, and brings bucket after bucket to ensure that his camels have had their fill as well. We don’t know anything about her life before this moment, her own experiences with grief or fear, but we see her behaving as the pure embodiment of chesed. When the man reveals who he is, and asks her to come back with him to meet Abraham and Isaac, to shoulder the responsibilities of being the next mother to this budding great nation, she agrees immediately. Her family is skeptical, wants to wait things out and get more information about the visitor and the family he wants to bring Rebecca to, but Rebecca’s heart is open to a new experience and ready to live life at full throttle. We in the modern world, especially as women, know that of course we do need to be vigilant of our surroundings and not go off with strange men alone. But in the wake of a tragedy when the impulse for many may be to lock doors and keep out newcomers or visitors, to hide in isolation, we can learn from Rebecca to remember to go out into the world seeking love and joy and adventure. Otherwise, what is the point, really?
There is a story from the Holocaust. A group of Hasidim were being marched to their deaths and a Nazi demanded they sing, a la Babylon. At first, one man started to sing a dirge about walking to their deaths, but no one joined in. So he switched to a lively tune and sang the words, “We will out live them,” in Yiddish. Everyone in the group joined in and they danced in that frantic Hasidic way cheerily chanting their new mantra, until they were shot. They knew they would not literally outlive the Nazis, that they were staring down the barrel of the gun that would in fact end their lives. They were singing that Judaism would outlive hate, and that their lives were so full of ecstatic spirituality, even in the worst moments, that they outlive, in the sense of outdo, these heartless Nazis, that they exceed in the art of living worthwhile lives.
The slogan “We will replace” them became a term of Jewish resistance after that and has been used in various circumstances throughout the last almost 80, including of course this past week. We must be true to the origin story, if we want to use that slogan, and true to the legacy of our ancestors. It is not enough to live, or even to live as Jews. We must love as Jews, love being Jewish. We must embrace all that life has to offer, know when to leave home to go and meet our Beshert. We must know when it is time to cry and when it is time to get up and get things done. We must ensure that the world we pass on to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, Rebecca and Isaac, the inheritors of this Torah and their legacies, is one of love and has room for happiness and joyous, diverse, thriving Jewish communities. We must build this world from love. And if we build this world from love, then God will build this world with love. And may we see a day when we are all safe in our houses of worship, free of fear, that we may find all communities open-hearted and full of joy. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.
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