by Larry Kaufman
This news just in - the Brits are making a movie based on the parashah Chayei Sarah. They're calling it Two Weddings and Two Funerals. The Israeli version will add the six britot- milah for Abraham's sons by Wife Number Three, Keturah, and will be called Hatching, Matching and Dispatching.

Seriously, though, how ironic it is that a sedrah called The Life of Sarah begins with her death and burial! Her death is treated very matter-of-factly in the text, and has been the subject of much rabbinic speculation tying her demise to her dismay over the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. While there's nothing definitive in the previous parashah about where she was while Abraham and Isaac were out mountain climbing, we learn a lot about the real estate negotiation that acquired her final resting place at Kiryat Arba. Some say Abraham particularly wanted this location for the family plot, because he knew it to be the spot where Adam and Eve were entombed!

Following the fully described real estate transaction comes a second major event -- another acquisition - that of a wife for Isaac. We read our first treatise on the importance of in-marriage, and meet our first instance of a bride actually being consulted on whether she wants to marry the guy. Her willingness to do so without having seen the bridegroom, and probably not even a snapshot of him, may attest to what life must have been like at home with Bethuel and Laban.

The third episode in this installment of the Genesis soap opera covers the marriage of Abraham and Keturah, the birth to Keturah of numerous sons, and their being sent off to college or someplace and told not to come home.

And finally, bringing some symmetry to the events of the chapter, we have the death of Abraham, and the coming together of Isaac and Ishmael to bury him.

My first inclination in preparing this drash was to focus on the women, the dead Sarah, the young Rebecca, and the enigmatic Keturah, and thus it seemed appropriate to concentrate my preparation on the WRJ's The Torah: A Women's Commentary. As a big fan of the Women's Commentary, I knew it would have a lot to say about Sarah - but by the time of Chayei Sarah, she's old news. It also has a lot to say about Rebecca - but most of the good stuff about Rebecca, which is really the bad stuff about Rebecca, doesn't come until the next parasha, Toldot.

Scriptures gives us relatively little information about Keturah, enabling the Rabbis, over the centuries, to speculate that she and Hagar are one and the same...that with Sarah out of the picture, Abraham could bring Hagar back. I side with those who say they are different people. Even though Hagar was somewhat more fertile than Sarah, she still only conceived and gave birth once during the ten years of her relationship with Abraham - while Keturah's liaison with a much older Abraham resulted in six births. A further indication that they are two, not one, is a reference to Abraham's concubines, in the plural. Most translations treat vayikach isha as he took a wife, but the phrase could be read merely as he took a woman. Keturah's secondary status is certainly indicated by her acceptance of having her children disinherited while her adult stepson gets possession of the whole kit and caboodle of his father's considerable wealth.

Two other women characters have bit parts in Chayei Sarah. One is Rebecca's mother, who is unnamed, although we do know the name of Rebecca's grandmother, Milcah. It is Mama, along with brother Laban, who negotiates the marriage arrangements with Abraham's servant. while Daddy Bethuel, after giving his initial consent, seems to withdraw from the scene. Rebecca's parents thus role model the aggressive mother and passive father that we will see in the next episode, The Great Birthright Swindle.

The other bit part is that of Deborah. When I was in grade school, it was a grave offense to read beyond the assignment and get ahead of the class, so those who haven't read ahead may not know who Deborah is, since her name does not appear in Chayei Sarah. It shows up in Vayishlach, three parshiyot further along, when we learn that Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, who accompanied Rebecca on the journey from her home in Nahor to Isaac's home in Be'er Lachai Roi, has died, and that Jacob buried her in Beth El. I see Deborah's function in the story as being to redeem Rebecca's character after her role in the great swindle. If Jacob has cared for his mother's very aged servant for all these years - Deborah's death takes place shortly before Rachel's, so a lot of time has gone by -- clearly his mother has raised him well, passing along some positive Jewish values. To both of them, Kol HaKavod, well done

Rebecca's mother and Rebecca's nurse are not the only characters that go unnamed in Chayei Sarah. In fact, we have no name for the character with the largest speaking part, Abraham's servant. Now some wise guy will comment that his name is Eliezer. That's how he is frequently identified in the captions of those ubiquitous maudlin etchings of Rebecca at the well, and how he is referenced by numerous rabbis and commentators in midrashim and divrei Torah. We do know that Abram had a servant named Eliezer, but we don't know as a fact that the servant of Chayei Sarah is the same as the servant of Lech Lecha. The only place Eliezer is named is in a dialogue between Abram and God, where the childless Abram complains that Eliezer of Damascus will be his heir, and God assures him that will not be the case. But a midrash has it that Eliezer watched the Akedah with the revived expectation of inheriting. Another irony, that the heir presumptive becomes the agent of carrying the Abrahamic line forward by finding his rival a suitable bride.

As I've probably telegraphed, I'm at best ambivalent about Rebecca, although I concede that compared to her mother-in-law, she was an angel. Rebecca's managerial instincts and talents are needed, given her husband's passivity. Forty years old, and he lets the servant pick out a bride for him! But we already know him to be a wimp - passive when his half-brother abused him, passive when his father laid him on the altar as a sacrifice, passive when his wife and younger son deceived him. But maybe his non-confrontational style was right for him - big brother Ishmael got sent away, the ram rescued him from the knife, he had a wife he loved (although we're not told if she loved him), and in his heart, he knew Esau couldn't hack the responsibilities of the Covenant.

Isaac may be the passive character in the sedrah, but at least he's present. The character conspicuous by His absence is God. This is the first parasha where God is not an active player, though he is frequently invoked as one. Abraham tells the servant God will guide him to the right girl, and the servant not only believes he has been guided, but quickly persuades Bethuel and Laban that God has made this shidduch for Rebecca. The narrator doesn't confirm that God programmed the GPS that led the servant is Rebecca. The only mention in Chayei Sarah of God actually doing something is at the very end, where we are simply told God blessed Isaac.

But what does it mean, that God blessed Isaac? Would you feel blessed if all the major decisions regarding your life were made for you by others? Would being your father's sole heir make up for not having talked to him since he was prepared to off you? Isaac's name, as we know, relates to laughter. Should we laugh at him, or can we take him seriously?

Now, what about Rebecca - and particularly her behavior in this week's sedrah. We can admire her hospitality to the stranger and his camels, but was she perhaps overstepping her teen-age bounds to be issuing invitations for dinner and to spend the night without checking in with the parents? What do you make of her eagerness to leave home for a marriage with her unknown cousin? Was it the wealth? Was it the adventure? Or was it escape at any price?

And finally, where's God in all this? Having heretofore conversed directly with Adam and Eve, with Cain, with Noah, and on numerous occasions with Abraham, suddenly God goes silent. Again, if we've read ahead, we know He's going to talk to Rebecca, and wrestle with Jacob, and spend four books bending Moses's ear. So why this spell of tzim-tzum, pulling back?

So - back to the Chayei Sarah movie. The title character, Sarah, is dead, the male lead, Isaac, has no speaking part, and the big dramatic scene -- the one they'll use in all the ads -- has the ingénue, Rebecca, watering camels. The central figure in the series, God, has gone quiet. The flick begins and ends with funerals. But we have to admit that the boy and girl meet cute, when she falls off her camel - and we have every confidence that, barring some sibling rivalry between their sons, they will live happily ever after.

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