The Past and the Future

Parshas Chayei Sarah

Posted on November 14, 2014 (5775) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

The loss of one’s beloved spouse, especially after many years and decades of marriage and shared life, is always a traumatic and shattering blow. Those of us, who unfortunately have also experienced this in our own lives, can testify as to the emotional damage and even physical harm that this sad experience can occasion.

We see from the life of our father Jacob that even decades later he reminds his children and himself of the pain and suffering caused by the death of his beloved wife, Rachel. In essence, it seems that Jacob never again was the same person after the death of Rachel.

Avraham apparently dealt with the death of Sarah in a more stoic fashion. The Torah itself indicates this by inference. In reference to Avraham’s reaction to the tragedy, a small letter kaf is used to describe the grief and weeping of Avraham over the death of Sarah. It is not that Avraham is less grieved at the loss of Sarah than Jacob was at the death of Rachel. It is rather that after all of the challenges and trials that Avraham had endured his attitude towards life and its vicissitudes was affected – he now always looked forward and never dwelt on the past.

Those who live exclusively in the past are doomed to self-pity and great emotional angst. This only causes a sense of victimhood and hopelessness. It reflects itself in every aspect of later life and stunts any further spiritual, social, personal or societal growth.

The greatness of Avraham, as taught us by the Mishnah, was his resilience and continued spiritual and personal growth. Avraham constantly looked forward, ahead – never dwelling on past misfortune.

I heard an outstanding speech delivered by George Deek, who is a Christian Arab and member of the Israeli Foreign Office. In telling the story of his life, he describes how his family lived in Jaffa for many generations and how they fled to Lebanon during the 1948 War of Independence.

Sensing the squalor and political manipulation of the refugees by the Arab powers, whose sole goal was the destruction of Israel and not saving and resettling the refugees, his grandfather escaped Lebanon and somehow brought the family back to Jaffa and Israel. He regained his job with the Israel Electric Company and raised generations of successful professionals, all citizens of Israel.

He said that the Jewish refugees from Europe and the Moslem world attempted to forget their past and build a new future for themselves and their descendants when they arrived in Israel. The Palestinian Arab refugees, under the misguided leadership of their spiritual and temporal heads, reveled instead in their past defeats and in their legend of nakba.

In the main, they have devoted themselves to attempting to destroy Israel instead of rehabilitating themselves. This attitude and mindset has served them badly and cost them dearly. The past needs to be remembered and recalled, treasured and instructive to us. However, it is the future and what we make of it that ultimately determines our worth and our fate. That is one of the great lessons to be derived from the story of the life of our father Avraham.

Shabbat shalom

Rabbi Berel Wein

Yitzchok and Rivka Build a Family

Parshas Chayei Sarah

Posted on November 10, 2009 (5770) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

Death is not only tragic for those intimately affected it also always poses problems of succession and reorganization of the family, company or institution. Avraham and Sarah, the founders of the Jewish nation pass from the scene in this week’s parsha. They are succeeded by Yitzchak and Rivka and in fact the majority of the parsha concerns itself with how Yitzchak marries Rivka and they establish their new home together.

In personality, temperament and action Yitzchak and Rivka differ markedly from Avraham and Sarah. Whereas Avraham and Sarah devoted themselves to reaching as many outsiders as they could and were actively engaged in spreading the idea of monotheism in the surrounding society, Yitzchak and Rivka seem to take a more conservative approach. They attempted to consolidate what they accomplished and to build a family nation rather than to try to attract more strangers to their cause.

As we will see in next week’s parsha the struggle of Yitzchak and Rivka is an internal family struggle as how to raise Eisav and Yaakov and guarantee the continuity of the ideas and beliefs of Avraham and Sarah through their biological offspring. Eventually it is only through Yaakov that Avraham and Sarah continue and become the blessing that the Lord promised that they would be. The world struggle that engaged Avraham and Sarah becomes a struggle within Avraham and Sarah’s family itself.

It becomes abundantly clear that the main struggle of the Jewish people will be to consolidate itself and thus influence the general world by osmosis, so to speak. The time of Avraham and Sarah has passed and new times require different responses to the challenges of being a blessing to all of humankind.

There are those in the Jewish world who are committed to “fixing the world” at the expense of Jewish traditional life and Torah law. Yet the simple truth is that for the Jewish people to be effective in influencing the general society for good there must be a strong and committed Jewish people. King Solomon in Shir Hashirim warns us that “I have watched the vineyards of others but I have neglected guarding my own vineyard.”

The attempted destruction and deligitimization of the Jewish people or the State of Israel, G-d forbid, in order to further fuzzy, do-good, universal humanistic ideas is a self-destructive viewpoint of the purpose of Judaism. Without Jews there is no Judaism and without Judaism there is no true moral conscience left in the world. Therefore it seems evident to me that the primary imperative of Jews today is to strengthen and support Jewish family life, Jewish Torah education and the state of Israel.

We are in the generations of Yitzchak and Rivka and therefore we have to strengthen our resources and build ourselves first. We have as yet not made good the population losses of the holocaust seventy years ago! If there will be a strong and numerous Jewish people then the age of Avraham and Sarah will reemerge. The tasks of consolidation of Jewish life as represented by the lives of Yitzchak and Rivka should be the hallmark of our generation as well.

Shabat shalom.

Rabbi Berel Wein