Chayei Sarah / The Life of Sarah

Genesis 23:1−25:18

D'var Torah By: David Segal for ReformJudaism.org

Deliberate Destiny

Different circumstances demand different paradigms of thought and action, and the Jewish people have advanced through history by fulfilling the action demanded by the moment. Even God's promised blessings only are achieved through human agency. Our patriarchs and matriarchs showed a sophisticated variety of approaches to ensuring the transmission of the Jewish story. Taking any one episode from their narratives out of context robs us of the benefit of their worldly wisdom, creativity, and commitment.

Two episodes in Chayei Sarah illustrate this lesson. The first is Abraham's acquisition of the Cave of Machpelah as a burial site for Sarah. Upon Sarah's death, Abraham mourned and then set about to make arrangements for her to have a final resting place. He approached the Hittites, residents of the land, with humble nobility: "I am a foreigner living for a time among you; sell me a gravesite among you, that I may bury my dead here" (Genesis 23:4). Having already proved himself a powerful military leader, Abraham surely could have taken the land by force. After all, God already had promised that it would belong to him and his children. Instead, Abraham chose a path of respect and peace, insisting that he pay a fair market price. Ephron the Hittite negotiated with Abraham according to a pattern known from ancient Near Eastern sources.1 It was in Abraham's interest to purchase the land contractually in good faith; land given to him on a whim could just as easily be taken away, but a legal exchange endures.
 
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Vayeira

Genesis 18:1–22:24

D'var Torah By: Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg for ReformJudaism.org

Hearing the Cries of Mothers and Children

    Pack your loads on my back. / Force me to your destination. / I will go the mile you demand, and even a mile further. / With your guns and your authority / you can force me to do your will, / but never can you take way my freedom, / for that lies deep within my soul / where your bullets and harsh words / can never reach. / No load is as heavy / as submitting to slavery, / and that load I will never bear.

    (Nyein Chan, resident of a refugee camp in Myanmar [Burma])

Mishkan HaNefesh, the new Reform High Holiday prayer book introduced this year, offers some Torah passages that previously were not chanted in most Reform temples on Rosh HaShanah. These include Genesis 21 (part of this week's Torah portion, Vayeira), which also appears in traditional prayer books. This passage is sure to launch a lot of sermons and provoke some controversy. After all, its main subject is the expulsion of Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden to Sarah and mother to Abraham's son, Ishmael. Ishmael is also expelled. They almost die.

These words from Mother Teresa resonate with this week's text:

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Lech L'cha

Genesis 12:1−17:27

D'var Torah By: Edwin C. Goldberg

Answers Are Important, But Questions Matter More

Who's there?" is the first thing we read in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It encapsulates the topic of the entire play. "Where are you?" is the first question asked by God in the Torah (Genesis 3:9). From a metaphysical point of view, it captures the topic of the entire Bible. Paying attention to questions is a clever way to get to the heart of any matter. As the physicist Isaac Rabi used to recall, when his mother greeted him at the end of the school day, she always asked, "Did you ask good questions?"

In his excellent business primer, Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ron Heifetz defines leadership as the ability to ask the right questions. This week's Torah portion, Lech L'cha, gives us the chance to ponder Abraham's leadership potential and why God chooses him to begin the enterprise that will lead to Judaism and the Jewish people.

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Noach

Genesis 6:9−11:32

D'var Torah By: David Segal for ReformJudaism.org

The world's first "skyscraper" was built after the great Flood. All of humanity, unified by a single language, decided to build "a tower that reaches the sky" (Genesis 11:4), known today as the Tower of Babel. I've always taken this story as an act of defiance and hubris; God reacted by dispersing the people and confusing their speech.

A midrash depicts the height of the people's arrogance: " 'Come,' they said, 'let us make a tower, place an image on its top, and put a sword in its hand, and it will seem that it is waging war against [God]' " (B'reishit Rabbah 38:6). If there was any ambiguity in the Torah, the midrash has removed it. These people were asking for God's retaliation!

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B'reishit

Genesis 1:1−6:8

Deconstructing Adam

D'var Torah By: David Segal for ReformJudaism.org

Biblical literalism is on the rise. You can see it in the growth of Bible-based mega-churches where the "word of God" is preached as inerrant truth. But any serious reader of the Bible knows it contains contradictions, ellipses, and vague commands that require interpretation to be understood, let alone followed.

The most apparent challenge to biblical literalism occurs at the beginning of the Bible. The first two chapters of Genesis tell two starkly different stories of the Creation of the world and of humanity.

In the first story, humanity is created "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:27), with no mention of the physical body's creation. In the second story, man is created from dust, and God breathes life into his nostrils (Genesis 2:7). Similarly, the first Creation story culminates with humans created together, "male and female" (Genesis 1:27). In the second, Adam is created first, followed by the fish, birds, and beasts; only then does God derive the woman from Adam's rib. While the first account mentions only the word Elohim to refer to God, the second uses the Tetragrammaton (the Hebrew letters, yud-hei-vav-hei) as well as Elohim.

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Chol HaMo-eid Sukkot

Holidays Exodus 33:12–34:26

D'var Torah By: Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

The Torah reading for the Shabbat of Sukkot (Exodus 33:12–34:26) includes the reconciliation between God and Moses following the Golden Calf, the inscription of the second set of the Ten Commandments, and the verbal covenant that accompanies this second giving. Two brief sections have direct connections to the holiday of Sukkot. The first is God’s response to Moses’s request for more knowledge of the Divine Essence. Moses, in essence, has said to God, “I can’t go on unless You tell me more about Yourself.” This answer has been parsed as the Thirteen Attributes of God, and is included as a liturgical addition to the Torah service on festival mornings:

    “The Eternal! The Eternal! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations” (Exodus 34:6–7).

The second section with connection to Sukkot is a listing of the three—or more—festivals themselves. The mention of the festivals is part of what may be seen as an alternative (older?) version of the Ten Commandments. This is a summary of Exodus 34:10–26:

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Haazinu

Deuteronomy 32:1–52

D'var Torah By: Shira Milgrom for ReformJudaism.org

I've always thought it curious that it is customary on the holiday of Shavuot to eat foods made of sweet dairy (cheese blintzes, cheesecake, and so on). In all my childhood and adult years, I never heard a reason for this that made sense. (Perhaps I'll learn others as a result of this column.)

One year, in my reading of this week's parashah, an idea jumped out of the text: almost the entirety of Haazinu is the Song of Moses. This is his second shirah, "song," as the people of Israel stands poised to enter the Promised Land, the end of the wilderness journey. The first shirah catapulted the people into this journey at the shores of the Sea of Reeds. This second poem is filled with images of God: circling, guarding, and carrying the Israelites as an eagle would its young (Deuteronomy 32:10-11); a rock—steady, faithful, and perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4), a father—who created and made us (Deuteronomy 32:6).

Most surprising in this poem are the many feminine images of God. First, the Rock: "You neglected the Rock who begot you, forgot the God who labored to bring you forth" (Deuteronomy 32:18).

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The High Holidays are upon us, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit