Focus on the Future
Parshas Chayei Sarah
Posted
on October 31, 2018 (5779) 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
occurrence of Avraham’s life 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. However, Avraham apparently dealt with the death of Sarah in a more
stoic fashion. The Torah itself indicates this by inference, when it wrote
concerning Avraham’s reaction to the tragedy by using a small letter kaf in its
description of the grief and weeping of Avraham over the death
of Sarah.
It is not that Avraham is less grieved
at the loss of Sarah then Jacob was at the death of Rachel, It is rather that
after all of the challenges and trials that Avraham had already
endured, his attitude towards life and its vicissitudes was now always one of
looking forward and never dwelling 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 – and never dwelled on
past misfortune.
I heard an outstanding speech delivered by George Deek, a
Christian Arab who is a 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 in saving and resettling the refugees, his grandfather escaped Lebanon and
somehow brought the family back to Jaffa and Israel, regained his job with the
Israel Electric Company. He 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, in their legend of nakba (the catastrophe
of Israel’s formation) and, in the main, devoted themselves
to attempting to destroy Israel rather than rehabilitating themselves.
That 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
The Search for Unity
Parshas Chayei Sarah
Posted
on November 1, 2018 (5779) By Rabbi Yaakov Menken | Series: Lifeline | Level: Beginner
Readers know that I have written about anti-Semitism for a
long time. Our hearts reel at its manifestation in a Pittsburgh synagogue last Shabbos morning.
The Medrash says that Sarah passed away
when she believed that her son Yitzchak had indeed died at HaShem’s command.
Not only was he her only son, but he was the representative of Jewish values
into the next generation. Considering all that she and her husband had done to
condemn human sacrifice, so common in the pagan world, she believed that all
was lost.
It is the mission of the Jewish nation to carry forward
these same holy values, and it is for this reason that we are hated. Blame for
anti-Semitism lies only with anti-Semites, with those who encourage
anti-Semitic tropes and lies. As Jews, our response to tragedy must begin, as
always, with prayer and sincere Teshuvah (repentance) and introspection. We
must focus again upon the Jewish mission, and upon the fact that we, all Jews,
are in this together.
The words of the Chief Rabbi of Israel, which were horribly
distorted and misreported, were correct. What he said, and what we must all
endorse, is that we should reject any effort to discuss what “type” of Jews or
synagogue was attacked. This is no time for disputes between Jews. They were
Jews going to synagogue to pray as Jews, and it is for that reason that they
were targeted. Anti-Semitic violence affects all of us precisely because Robert
Bowers, like Haman and Hitler, took aim at each and every one of us. He didn’t
care who you voted for, where you pray, or what you believe. Every single Jew
was fired upon last Shabbos, solely due to being a Jew.
That Farrakhan referred to Jews as termites, while Bowers
referred to a “kike infestation,” is no coincidence – because their ideology is
the same, at least when it comes to Jews. The image of Jews as parasites was
common in Nazi literature, and long before.
As always, we must look at anti-Semitism through the lens
of our long history. We have seen this before, and constantly: the
Overland Park, Kansas JCC in 2014, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2009, the Crown
Heights riot of 1991. 2006 in Seattle, 1999 in Los Angeles, 1991 in Crown
Heights. It is why synagogues from France to Denmark are defended with armed
troops less than 75 years after the Holocaust… and, of course, it is the “why”
of the Holocaust itself.
As it has been for thousands of years, it is about hatred
for G-d, Torah and values — and the same genocidal mission shared by Haman,
Hitler and Bowers: “All Jews Must Die.”
That is exactly why all decent people must fight it, and why all Jews must continue to proudly identify as Jews. Together.
