We bring down a clue from the Zohar, classic text of Jewish mysticism, that there was something chaser (missing) in Abraham’s generation that we are still struggling with, those of us who are its inheritors. The clues are everywhere written, and not written (some in black fire some in white fire).
In this portion, called Chayei Sarah (literally the life of Sarah), we begin the life of Sarah with the death of Sarah. Abraham is traveling to an unfamiliar place it seems to negotiate for Sarah’s burial plot.
I will give you everything you ask for, Abraham says, I want this land.
This land this land everyone wants this land. What remains unfinished in the living these ancestors are working out in the dying. We have so much patch-up to do, a river of tears and blood will be spilled over this land.
Isaac and Ishmael will come together once more to bury their father Abraham and Rebecca is born before Sarah dies. Rebecca represents the healing from the future, also the principle that God provides the healing before the hurting. The healing will come from the future.
It’s helpful to think like Sherlock, the clues: The absence of Sarah’s voice in chapter 22 (the binding of Isaac), the implication that she dies alone among strangers in chapter 23 (Targum Yonatan, Aramaic version, has her dying of grief), the intervening genealogy of Rebecca, representing the next generation to whom is passed the legacy of repair.
Rebecca represents the refuah, the healing. The Torah records Rebecca’s birth before Sarah’s death and this is often cited to describe how one righteous person does not depart before another one arrives.
The Holy One provides the refuah, the healing, before the sickness. Rebecca, the next generation, represents the refuah. The healing will have to come from the future generations. We want to know if the future has arrived. We want to know if we are the future. It doesn’t feel like it.
Days will come to Abraham, he is granted a vision of the All (Genesis 24:1), beyond enmity. Long into the future the generations of Abraham Sarah and Rebecca will draw a line in the sand, longer into the future than the present I’m afraid, and one day the future will say: This stops here.
