Abraham Bowed Low: We Shouldn’t

SERMON    Parashat Chayei Sara     November 22, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson    Temple Sinai,  South Burlington   Vermont

This week’s Torah parsha is “Chayei Sarah.”  It opens with the death of Sarah.   The Midrash tell us she died of either rage, or heartbreak or both at learning that her husband, Abraham had taken their son Isaac to sacrifice him.  Our portion opens like this:

Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.

Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.

Then it reads:

וַיָּ֙קׇם֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם מֵעַ֖ל פְּנֵ֣י מֵת֑וֹ וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר אֶל־בְּנֵי־חֵ֖ת לֵאמֹֽר׃ גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב אָנֹכִ֖י עִמָּכֶ֑ם תְּנ֨וּ לִ֤י אֲחֻזַּת־קֶ֙בֶר֙ עִמָּכֶ֔ם וְאֶקְבְּרָ֥ה מֵתִ֖י מִלְּפָנָֽי׃

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead (Literally from the “face of his dead”, and spoke to the Hittites, saying,

“I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may remove my dead for burial.”

I imagine Abraham in that moment, the ancestor of us all, literally or spiritually.   He is living apart from Sarah, in Beersheva a few hours away, and he hears of her death and rushes to be with her.  He get there, is hugging her, sobbing in heartbreak over the death of his wife, and partner in this great adventure they shared.

But he can’t even take the time to mourn his dead before he realizes that his position as an outsider, as an immigrant, is tenuous, and particularly in moment of great loss when others perceive weakness and opportunity.   So he has to interrupt his mourning, and go grovel for a place to bury her.   He starts by saying “I am an alien living among you.” 

Remember,  Abraham has fought in and helped win wars for the local rulers and brought back hostages taken from them in war.  He is a person of significant wealth, and the locals immediately acknowledge that.  

They say:

שְׁמָעֵ֣נוּ ׀ אֲדֹנִ֗י נְשִׂ֨יא אֱלֹהִ֤ים אַתָּה֙ בְּתוֹכֵ֔נוּ בְּמִבְחַ֣ר קְבָרֵ֔ינוּ קְבֹ֖ר אֶת־מֵתֶ֑ךָ אִ֣ישׁ מִמֶּ֔נּוּ אֶת־קִבְר֛וֹ לֹֽא־יִכְלֶ֥ה מִמְּךָ֖ מִקְּבֹ֥ר מֵתֶֽךָ׃

“Hear us, my lord: you are the Prince of God among us.  Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places; none of us will withhold his burial place from you for burying your dead.”

But Abraham clearly doesn’t feel he can let his guard down, or puff himself up and take the gift.   Instead we read:

Thereupon Abraham rose and bowed low to the landowning citizens.

The Hebrew there is odd.  It says he rose  (vayakom) and bowed low  (vayishtachu).  Which is it?  Did he rise or bow?   He is already ostensibly standing up, so what could it mean that he rose?   As I was reading it this week, it struck me that when his neighbors flattered him, he rose up, he puffed up a bit in pride and gratitude but then he immediately remembered his vulnerable position as an immigrant, as a Jew who did not share his neighbors religious or cultural practices.  So he bowed low to the citizens and insisted on paying an inflated price for a cave to bury Sarah.   That cave is now the cultic center of the city of Hebron, and the tensions continue.

This story is often used as the moment Jews purchased a foothold in the holy land, and that our legitimate claim to that as a homeland is found in this very story.  God had promised that land to Abraham and his descendants, and now Abraham out of grief and fear convinces them to sell him land. 

Reading it this year, it seemed different to me.  When Abraham should be able to grieve and mourn his dead, he immediately felt he instead had to defend himself and his right to be where he is. 

When he left Mesopotamia to migrate to Israel, he was full of hope and the promise of a new life in a new land.  But now, after a series of losses and tragedies in his life, he is an old man, who has no guarantee of his future.  Now he feels he has to beg people he has lived with, he has helped for a place just to bury his wife. 

I think many of us have been feeling this sort of vulnerability in the face of grief these past few years.   We thought we were fully accepted, integrated and appreciated for our contributions.  But in the face of a tragedy, we have had to rise from mourning to defend ourselves.  We feel we have to bow low, literally keep our heads down, and try to convince people we have a right to be here.  All our past contributions seem to mean nothing.   Our hopes start to feel dashed.  Suddenly, like Abraham, we feel like gerim v’toshavim, wandering Jews at the mercy of those around us. 

But there are two other observations I think are relevant.  One is that the people around Abraham were genuinely supporting him but in grief and fear, he could not hear what they were saying to him.   He only heard the threat, and not the support.    This last year has been pretty brutal, particularly right in Burlington.  Are we, like Abraham, just not able to hear the support that is there?  Are we too deafened by the constant disinformation to hear how much support we are receiving?  Defeatism is its own danger and bias.

And there is another way to read this. Instead of a role-model, Abraham is a cautionary tale.  Maybe he didn’t need to bow low.  Maybe instead of apologize for being a newcomer, he should have defended his right to a burial place given all he had contributed to the society.  Maybe, like Menachem Begin said to Joe Biden in 1982 when Biden was on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and confronted Begin with a threat to cut off aid to Israel. 

Begin forcefully responded, “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

This week, that seems particularly timely to remember.  So many people have worried that this feels like the 1930’s, but there is a very important difference.  In the 1930’s, we didn’t have Israel.  We didn’t have the organizations we do now.  We were pitiful victims.  People were nice to us, to our faces, if they were, because we weren’t threatening; they felt sorry for us. 

I think one of things that is jarring to many of us is that people don’t feel sorry for us anymore, and instead see us as powerful. For many of us, this makes no sense because we see ourselves as vulnerable and weak, like Abraham did in that moment.

We are a very small tribe, only .2 percent of the world’s population and about 2 percent of America’s.  So we are vulnerable in number, and those who attack us are much larger in number.  That is not new.  What is new is that we also have power and organization, that we have worked for over decades for moments such as these, and while it is not pleasant, we do not need to bow low, or cower.  We do not need trembling knees.  Instead, we need courage, and resolve, and to have faith in our own future.  Abraham could not have dreamed at the moment, crying over his wife with his children gone that he would still be remembered among his ancestors all over the world, and that he would indeed become the father of a great nation.

Shabbat Shalom.