Bereshit Rabbah 39, Part 5: Lech Lecha

Good evening, everyone. Let me begin by saying that this evening’s study is dedicated to the memory of a dear niece whose yahrzeit (anniversary of passing) falls today, Chaya Ilan Abadzol, and also to the memory of Chaya Rivkah Torjman — may they rest in Eden. I begin, then, with Midrash 9. Amar Rabbi Levi — Rabbi Levi said (I note that we read it last week; I will come back to it): twice it is written lekh lekha, and we do not know eizo chavivah — which lekh lekha is preferable, which is the more precious: im ha-sheniyah, im ha-rishonah — whether it is the second command of lekh lekha or the first. Let me remind you that the first lekh lekha is the one directing him toward the land of seeing.

The second lekh lekha is the one calling on Avraham to offer up his son as a burnt offering, and this time the text specifies the name — Moriah — though it does not say where it lies. The midrash notes that in the second it is specified: go to the land — once again, the land of seeing — because Moriah shares its root either with the verb ra’oh, to see, or with the verb yarei, to fear. If it is with ra’oh, it is the land of seeing; if with yarei, it is the land of awe. So they deduced: since in the second lekh lekha the place is specified, we may infer that the second lekh lekha is far more important than the first. Amar Rabbi Yochanan: lekh lekha me-artzekha.

Rabbi Yochanan says: “Go for yourself from your land” — me-arfakhi shelkha, from your province; u-mi-moladetekha, from your birthplace — what is called one’s fatherland, though one ought rather to say one’s motherland — zo shekhunatekha, that is your neighborhood; u-mi-beit avikha, and from your father’s house. El ha-aretz asher arekha — “to the land that I will show you.” There are two ways to translate arekha here: “that I will show you,” and a second sense, “where I will reveal Myself to you.” Ve-lamah lo gilah lo? — the midrash asks: why did He not reveal it to him at once? Kedei le-chavevah be-einav — to make it dear in his eyes — ve-liten lo sekhar al kol pesiah u-pesiah, and to give him a reward, a wage, for every single step.

And this is the view of Rabbi Yochanan, for Rabbi Yochanan said: “He said, ‘Take now your son, your only one.'” Avraham said to Him: this one is the only one of his mother, and that one too is the only one of his mother. Indeed, Yishmael is the only son of Hagar and Yitzchak the only son of Sarah. He said to him: “whom you love.” He replied: are there then partitions within one’s innards? Is there truly a partition within my innards? Then He told him: it is Yitzchak. And why did He not reveal it to him? He could have said at once, “Take your son Yitzchak.” It was to make him dear in his eyes, and to give him a reward for every single word spoken.

The Holy One, blessed be He, keeps the righteous in suspense — He makes the eyes of the tzaddikim wait — and afterward He reveals to them the savor of each thing. Thus: “to the land that I will show you”; “on one of the mountains that I will tell you,” there you shall offer up your son. Of Yonah: “and proclaim to it the proclamation that I speak to you” — He does not say which. And to Yechezkel He says, “Arise, go out into the valley, and there I will speak with you.” Since this is one and the same idea, I continue with Midrash 10. Rabbi Berekhiah said in the name of Rabbi Nechemiah: it is like a king who was traveling from place to place, and a pearl fell from his crown, from his head.

The king halted; he stopped his whole retinue there, and made heaps and heaps. He gathered the sand into piles and brought sieves. He sifted the first pile and did not find it; the second, and did not find it; and at the third he found it. And they said: the king has found his precious stone. So too the Holy One, blessed be He, says: what need did I have to trace this lineage? I could only have mentioned them for your sake. In other words, ten generations are enumerated, and the last is the most precious — “and You found his heart faithful before You.”

So too it was said to David. In the same way the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke to David: what need had I to trace the lineage of Peretz, Chetzron, Ram, Aminadav, Nachshon, Salmon, Boaz, Oved, Yishai, David? Why should I enumerate all ten generations from Peretz, David’s ancestor — was it not for your sake? That is why it is said: “I have found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him.” That is the translation of the two midrashim we are going to comment on this evening. The first is lekh lekha, the invitation to Avraham to set out for the promised land; and the second is G-d’s last revelation to Avraham, for there He closed the cycle — afterward G-d no longer speaks to Avraham: He has finished and closed Avraham’s cycle, and we begin Yitzchak’s. But there He specified the destination: the land of Moriah. Earlier I brought out the bond with the land, which is the first command given to Avraham, and through which, in the end, he was to define his first identity.

The identity of a Jew passes through eretz ha-ivrim, the land of the Hebrews. There is no other possible identity. It is the first one given as a definition: eretz ha-ivrim. We know very well that Ever was a descendant of Shem — the one who inherited the land that came to be called Canaan because the Canaanites infiltrated the region and made life impossible for the yeshivah of Shem and Ever established there, that academy which trained the whole elite of the age, for there was indeed a certain elite. Mind you, we are not in a primitive society. No: it has its leaders, and it is declared idolatrous simply because it believes only in the G-d of nature, the G-d of science. It believes only in Elokim, the Creator of the universe — and this Creator of the universe established laws of causality from which man cannot escape, from which he cannot depart.

“Against your will you live, and against your will you are destined to die” — so our sages teach. There is no escaping it. Consequently, Elokim is, in a way, everyone’s G-d. He is the One who called forth the faith of all the righteous, the first righteous men — for there were righteous men before Avraham, who were worshippers of G-d, but worshippers of Elokim. When Avraham comes onto the stage of true belief in G-d — “and he believed in Hashem” — his emunah (faith) was in Hashem, that is, in the One who can override the laws of nature and bring it about that “shall a child be born to one a hundred years old?” — that even at a hundred a man can have a child, and a woman of ninety can likewise regain all the signs of youth and bear children.

So what Avraham brings that is new is this faith in a G-d who stands beyond the laws of nature, beyond the very principle of causality, and who can indeed change the course of nature. For if the course of nature could not change, we would indeed be like animals conditioned by our heredity, since we too have been shaped in our nature independently of ourselves. To bind oneself to an order that is supernatural, supra-rational, is to grant man the possibility of changing the course of things, of holding not to what he is but to what he becomes. And that, if you like, is the difference between the righteous Noach and Avraham. When the Torah speaks of Noach, it speaks of his virtues in the past: “Noach was a righteous man … Noach walked with Elokim.” Very well. With Avraham, his virtues are projected into the future: “I know him” — I am convinced — that he will instruct his children after him to practice charity and justice, kindness and justice.

And when G-d, in the end, presents Avraham to us, He presents him in his becoming, day after day — not what he had been. What he had been does not concern us; the Torah does not even mention it. What it invites us to discover are the stages of Avraham’s growth. Through ten stages — as though it were a new creation, as though these were the ten utterances of creation — there are ten stages of Avraham’s revelation to himself, just as there are the ten utterances of the Revelation. And, paradoxically, when we look at the last utterance of creation, it is na’aseh adam — “Let us make man,” man in the likeness of his Creator.

When we look at the last of the Ten Commandments, it is lo tachmod, “You shall not covet.” Covetousness, says the commentary HaKetav VehaKabbalah, is the worst evil that can gnaw at a person, because he is never satisfied with himself. And so whoever falls prey to covetousness does not believe in Anokhi Hashem Elokekha, “I am Hashem your G-d.” He is incapable of accepting Anokhi Hashem Elokekha — the One who created persons with their functions and their missions, and who apportioned the forces of nature. And the tenth trial in the order of the trials imposed on Avraham is the Akedah, the Binding. The Akedah, as I said earlier, closes G-d’s revelation to Avraham, because a man who has succeeded in bringing his child into the trajectory — into the line of what led him spiritually to this point, and for the welfare of humanity, as we shall see shortly — has reached the true culmination of an entire spiritual evolution. That is the Akedah. And it is the reason why, as I pointed out last week, the verb ahov, “to love,” does not refer in the first place to a wife — Yaakov will give us that example, since he is the one in the Torah who loves his wife even before the marriage. The first proof of love is love for the child — the child who is not necessarily the complete reproduction of what I am, but, on the contrary, the beyond of what I am. He is my olam ha-ba (World to Come), my techiyat ha-metim (resurrection of the dead); he is something new, a new conception, because spiritual revelation belongs to each generation — it is not static. Only halakhah holds the reins of a person’s conduct; but on the plane of the revelation of ideas, of thought, of the text, things evolve with the generations. And that is why we are called to constant chiddushim — to newness, to understanding the text in the light of the day — provided, of course, that we do not cut ourselves off from the source, from the root. Now, to return to the other midrash: Rabbi Levi says that lekh lekha is written twice. We have already pointed out that even Yosef says, “For I was indeed stolen away from the land of the Hebrews” — I was taken hostage from the land of the Ivrim, the land of the Hebrews, the land where man was conceived as responsible — responsible for all of humanity; the man who builds the bridge of communication with all the others, all the other nations, all the other cultures. But there is a second lekh lekha — there is no third lekh lekha anywhere in the Torah, though in another domain, as we shall have occasion to see. So one might have understood it this way: as we advance, we take our distance — from the country, from our birthplace, even from the family, beit avikha — because we are heading, as I said earlier, toward a new revelation.

But it is not easy — on the contrary, it is very hard. It is very hard, it is terrible, this gradual breaking of a being from its roots — as in “therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife.” A man leaves father and mother to cleave to his wife and found a new family, yet always extending, as we saw last week, that filiation — the honor due to father and mother, that respect for parents. But the text says — since He did not specify the place: el ha-aretz asher arekha — simply set out on the way. There are four types among those who go to the beit midrash, the house of study. There is the one who goes to the beit midrash and is simply there, passive; he listens. At most — there is one who is not interested in the study, but who goes to the beit midrash chiefly to know what his conduct should be, without philosophy, without reflection.

Another way: there is the one who goes both to understand and to practice, and who grounds practice in the understanding of things; and there is the one who, having reached the door of the beit midrash, allows himself to play truant. And our sages said: whoever, despite everything, makes the effort — who makes the effort to understand and to practice — holekh ve-oseh, chasid, the one who goes and does is pious; the one who refuses everything is rasha, wicked — he wants to remain what he is, he does not want to move forward, and he will not even have sekhar halikhah be-yado, that is, the reward for walking, the wage of the first. And here the question arises: where will he go? Precisely — the Holy One, blessed be He, does not tell him.

On the other hand, when it comes to the trial of Yitzchak, He tells him: el eretz ha-Moriah, to the land of seeing. In my translation I deliberately brought out the connection with eretz asher arekha — the land where you will reveal yourself to yourself. And therefore, this land where you will reveal yourself to yourself: know that this unveiling of your being will not happen in one leap, like a ba’al teshuvah (returnee to observance) who changed everything overnight — and just as he made a sudden leap, a plunge into pure orthodoxy, he can capsize in the same way. He tells him: no — it is step by step. Every stage, every step. And indeed, every morning we say a blessing: we thank G-d, “who prepares the steps of man.”

This blessing over the steps of man is, in sum, a way of telling us: try to measure your steps and to direct them. One is not always sure of arriving, but the effort one has expended is not in vain: there is matan sekhar, a gift of reward. We do not say it is a debt — we do not say, “Oh, it is my due, and they must pay me.” No: if it is a gift, it is a present. Yes, in reality, every effort I expend brings me an elevation of thought and works in me a change of being — and I do not consider it a wage; I consider it a gift. From my perspective it is a gift, whereas someone else waits for things as for a wage. But we are not like avadim — as we have already translated — we are not like servants who wait for wages for this spiritual journey.

So the text here says el ha-aretz asher arekha — go toward the land of the unveiling of being — and know, know that lefum tza’ara agra: according to the effort, the reward; at the end of all toil there is a wage, there is a reward. Who says this? In Pirkei Avot, Ben He He. Ben He He — who is Ben He He? This is the only place where we find someone named Ben He He. But Ben He He is the “son” of the heh that was added to Avram and of the one that was added to Sarai — which made Avraham av hamon goyim, the father of a multitude of nations, and made Sarai, “my princess,” into Sarah, a universal princess —

— a princess recognized by all. Now, the virtue of this heh in the Hebrew language is, first, to ask the question: ha-min ha-etz — “Have you eaten from the tree?” From the tree that I commanded you not to eat of, have you eaten? That is the interrogative heh, and this interrogative heh calls for a definition of being. Then there is the heh ha-yedi’ah, the heh of knowledge — not everything belongs to the common, to confusion, does it? After the questioning comes determination. And there is a third heh: Yerushalaymah — the heh of Yerushalaymah, when it comes at the end, is the heh of finality, of arrival: Yerushalayim. We find this final heh in some very significant names, but this is not the moment to discuss them.

But this Ben He He who says lefum tza’ara agra — know that this journey, even in silence, calls forth its reward. So the land of Israel is not called eretz Kena’an, it is not called eretz [ha-ivrim]; it is called the land of self-revelation, of self-definition, the land of the ultimate purpose of being. Why is it not specified? This land of the purpose of being is not defined by its national character, if you like. Its purpose of being lies in the last trial, the tenth, which is the goal. Lekh lekha el ha-aretz asher arekha — that is the point of departure. We saw it in the first midrash.

Then there is this saying: kol ha-dar be-chutzah la-aretz domeh ke-mi she-ein lo Eloah — whoever dwells outside the land of Israel is as one who has no G-d. How can it be “as one who has no G-d”? What are we to make of all those Jews who frequent synagogues, houses of study, and so on? No — but they run a risk: the risk of non-identity, of non-identification, of the compromise that must be made with other cultures, of being unable to fulfill themselves completely. And even the practice of the mitzvot remains no more than road markers, posts showing us which path to follow. So it is a march, and we are all on the march. And the places of study and the places of prayer are destined to find their way back, to rejoin Eretz Yisrael.

That is a constant in the thought of our rabbis. And the last — the one in which he is to raise up his child as a burnt offering (I do not say to sacrifice him) — that is the final goal. We pointed out that there Avraham consecrates this trial by naming the place: “Avraham called the name of that place Hashem yir’eh, as it is said to this day: on the mount of Hashem it shall be seen.” It is this sharpness of vision that a person gains at the culmination of his trials: he no longer sees things solely from the perspective of Elokim, but from the perspective of Hashem, of Havayah. Havayah is permanent becoming, is it not? It unites in a single moment melekh, malakh, yimlokh — He reigns, He reigned, He will reign: G-d’s kingship in the present, the past, and the future.

That is how this place came to be called Mount Moriah — and Mount Moriah, the spiritual center of the Jewish people, is located where? Paradoxically, even Yerushalayim is not mentioned at all in the Torah. We do not find it. Always: “the place that Hashem your G-d will choose” — there you shall bring your offerings; there you shall make your pilgrimage: “to His dwelling you shall seek, and there you shall come.” But when we count the number of times reference is made to the place that G-d will choose, we find twenty-one. And twenty-one is the numerical value of Ehyeh, as in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be.” When G-d is to define Himself for the people of Israel, it is through becoming — not because He was, or because He is now, but because He will be, in other events, in other situations. And it is through this notion of the place [that He will choose] that every Jew defines himself. And you see how the text — and this is important — the midrash says that G-d makes the eyes of the tzaddikim wait, and afterward reveals to them the savor — the reason — of the thing. Mind you: He reveals things to them because they set out in search of G-d. They sought on their own to discover the road leading back to their roots. I read, in particular, of a master who, when a student came to study with him, would ask him where he came from. The student would say, “I come from France,” for instance. “And before that, where were you?” “In Poland,” for instance. “And before that?” They had come from Italy, or from Russia. “And before that?” Before that they were in Babylon. “And before that?” Before that they were in Israel, in Yerushalayim. “So,” he told him, “you do not come from France; in your roots you come from Yerushalayim. Shalom aleikhem.”

[…] — and it is, at last, to realize that in every step we take there is a purpose, a presence: that of the unveiling of our being. Why? For what reason? It is said when the Holy One, blessed be He, sends Yonah. What has Yonah to do with the people of Nineveh? Nothing at all! You have fulfilled yourself here? You carry — you are the bearer of — a message of peace? Then go and profess it elsewhere, go and preach it elsewhere, go and spread this message — but from your place of attachment, from your anchorage. Go and say it, because we are responsible for all of humanity. We live at the heart of humanity; as Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi says, we are the beating heart of humanity. And that is why, even when He sends Yonah to Nineveh, which has reached the threshold of destruction, He first calls on Yonah to bring a message of warning, a call to repentance.

Yonah considers that it has nothing to do with him; he wants to flee — but his flight will avail him nothing. He will be bound to carry out his mission. Yet it is not always the moment for it. [To Yechezkel] He says: “Now, when you go out and I reveal Myself to you, I will speak words to you […] — but you, do not insist; wait to receive My words. Ha-shomea yishma ve-he-chadel yechdal — whoever will listen, let him listen, and whoever will refrain, let him refrain. So shut yourself up inside your house.” And here is where we stand: what our sages tell us is that there is a step to be taken that belongs to each one of us. When we study the Bible, when we study the Talmud, when we study the Zohar, we must see to what extent the text concerns us, speaks to us.

We are not reading a story of the past. We are looking at the perspective of our own life, in the present and in the future. Consequently, it is the effort that must be expended, whatever the result we draw from it. The essential thing is first to invest oneself — and what G-d did with the other generations, we are called to do. The second midrash, number 10: Rabbi Berekhiah in the name of Rabbi Nechemiah says: “This may be compared to a king who travels from place to place.” Look: mi-makom le-makom — the people that has moved from place to place is us, it is us. And we lose precious stones in our wanderings; […] but we must try to pass them through the sieve. Because, as I have already had occasion to say, we carry the tendencies of the other cultures, the other nations; we are the synthesis of all the other peoples. And that is why we have so many currents tearing at one another in our midst. In our very innards there can be that same struggle of Yaakov and Esav; in our homes there can likewise be that same struggle of Yishmael and Israel. We do not escape it. But despite everything, we have given — we have spread — a teaching, because we knew how to sift all through our wanderings, so that we could draw out the pearl that had fallen, the pearl scattered in the sand, and recover it. The generations that preceded Avraham were of the same nature.

There was the immense span of time […], the time of Noach. And the Holy One, blessed be He, sifted. Avraham did not come [from nothing]. He came — he is a new creation, just as we are a new creation, a people that was created. So would it be yesh me-ayin, creation from nothing? No: in our bodies, in our present make-up, we are drawn from what exists — we are taken from among the nations, we are part of the whole of humanity. […]

So it is: go for yourself — from your land, from your birthplace, just like the ger, just like the convert. And where is this to lead? The second midrash gives the final destination. You, Avraham, are the fruit of ten generations reckoned from creation — from this creation of eretz ha-ivrim, in which one finds the word ubar, embryo, conception: the land where I conceived you, wholly. But the one who will give the final structure is the one who will conceive of building the Temple once he has fixed the borders of the land: that is David. And David is the tenth of a line: matzati David avdi — I have also found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him.

And from what moment do we begin to speak of Yerushalayim? From David. It was he who dreamed of it. Not that Yerushalayim did not exist — not that the name did not exist; it existed, people knew of it — but they had not yet guessed, had not yet known; it had not yet been revealed to them that this is the beit ha-bechirah, the place of election, the place chosen by the Holy One, blessed be He, the place of recognition and the place of the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose is not the eretz, not the land as such […]; it is Mount Moriah, the place of seeing, the place where, to love, there is added the fear of G-d as well.

Paradoxically, it is in this very text of the Akedah […] that He says to him: “Now I know that you fear Elokim.” For Avraham’s belief was emunah in Hashem, who overrides the laws of nature — yet no, he needs Elokim too; the two must be joined. And that is why we find, intertwined, inserted one within the other in our prayers, the four-letter Name together with the Name Adnut, or with the appellation Elokim — the G-d of nature, the G-d of creation — these two, interlaced. We do not say “Elokim Hashem”; we say “Hashem Elokim.” We begin first with Hashem and end with Elokim, because Elokim is simply the place where Hashem is revealed: it is by way of […], by way of His forces, that the Holy One, blessed be He, shows Himself and reveals Himself to man — by surpassing them, by going beyond all that.

Now David could not build the Temple. He marked out its boundaries, but it was his son Shlomo [who built it]. David had waged many wars; he had stained his hands with the blood of the wars he fought. Shlomo, who knew how to reconcile many peoples around him, is the one who would indeed come to build the Sanctuary. But the merit — as long as King Shlomo had not acknowledged the initiative of his father David, the gates of the Sanctuary would not open. That is se’u she’arim rasheikhem, “Lift up your heads, O gates,” when he called on its gates to open — and they did not. The initiator is David. It is he who joined the lekh lekha of el ha-aretz asher arekha to the lekh lekha of el eretz ha-Moriah — the point of departure and the goal. I will stop here. I can go further if there are questions; please go ahead. […] — Is it possible to ask a question? — You need to speak up a little. — Sorry, excuse me. I wanted to ask you a question that is a little on the edge of the lecture. I remember that in this week’s parashah, three or four times — I no longer recall exactly — the word na’arah, referring to Rivkah, was missing a heh. Na’arah is written without a heh. And in this lecture you in fact spoke of the heh three times — the three hehs.

— […] Yves, I can’t hear you, because… — Excuse me, I’ll repeat. Yes. So, in this week’s parashah we saw three or four times the word na’arah, referring to Rivkah, written without a heh. And in this lecture you spoke to us several times of the famous heh — the heh of Sarah and of Avraham, Ben He He. I wanted to know whether there is a connection between the heh that disappeared from Rivkah in this parashah and the hehs that appeared in Avram, in Sarah, and in Ben He He — all the hehs you spoke of. I had not found an answer as to why the heh disappeared in this week’s parashah, Chayei Sarah.

— I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your question properly. Forgive me. The microphone would need to be raised. — I’ll try to repeat. In the parashah… — I heard the heh of Sarah and the heh of Avraham. Is there another heh? — In this week’s parashah, Chayei Sarah, you have the word na’arah — the word na’arah written about Rivkah without the heh. The heh disappears three or four times in this week’s parashah. — You are right. — I wanted to know whether it was in fact connected — the hehs we spoke about with Sarah and Avraham, and the heh that disappeared from Rivkah — for which I found no explanation. I thought perhaps it was connected.

— All right, now I have heard your question. It is not only in this parashah: in Parashat Ki Tetze too, the word na’arah appears several times without the heh. Now, the word na’arah should be linked to its etymology, na’ar. Ordinarily we translate na’ar as a youth, a young man, and na’arah as a young girl. But in reality — let me give you an example: in Lekhah Dodi, hitna’ari me-afar kumi — shake off the dust. To shake off is to cast away what encumbers us. Well, when one is at the age of adolescence, when one is sorting between what we want to take and what we do not want to take, we are na’ar and na’arah. And the choice Rivkah must make is of that order: will she indeed remain attached to the idols of her father and her brother? Because, mind you, it is the same family — the family of Avraham. We must remember that Lavan is Yaakov’s uncle — Yaakov’s uncle — and Lavan is a gentile. We are speaking here of gerim, of converts. Avraham is spoken of as rosh ha-ma’aminim, the first of believers, the very essence of believers — but Avraham is also spoken of as rosh ha-gerim, the first of the converts.

They were worshippers of other gods, and it is from that family that he comes. That is why I said that, physically, we are taken from the rest of humanity — yesh mi-yesh, something from something; we are no different. It is at the level of the neshamah [that the difference lies]. And there a sorting takes place — na’ar and na’arah. Na’ar and na’arah come from the verb na’or, which means to sort, to rid oneself, to shake off. Hitna’ari me-afar kumi — shake off the dust, rise up. So when it is linked to the verb na’or, there is no such difference in adolescence between masculine and feminine. Another question? — Yes, I have a small question, Rav Benizri. You said earlier — can you hear me? — Yes. — All right. You said earlier that the Akedah was the last trial Avraham had to undergo.

But in terms of important things Avraham accomplished after the Akedah, I would also count the burial of Sarah, the marriage of Yitzchak, and his own new marriage with Keturah — building his life with Keturah, with whom he had other children. Do you count these as mitzvot in their own right, or is there a difference between the mitzvot Hashem commanded him and those he did on his own? — Yes. If you take the text: the burial of Sarah in the land of Canaan, in Hevron. Hevron, as its name indicates, is the place of junction between heaven and earth, between Hashem and Elokim, between the transcendent and the immanent. It is the place where the whole people of Israel is anchored — that is, its place of prayer par excellence becomes Hevron.

And here I will quote a saying of Rav Zaks, zekher tzaddik li-verakhah (may the memory of the righteous be a blessing), who used to say: “In study we listen to G-d, but in prayer we speak to G-d.” Speaking to G-d is more than listening to Him. Listening implies submission; in prayer there is even room for protest. And that is what Avraham did not do, because he wished, so to speak, to seal the acquisition of the land through a burial plot — that is to say, we are bound to this land first of all by the grave of Sarah our mother. What does this grave represent? What does the grave of Sarah represent? It was called Me’arat ha-Makhpelah. Why Me’arat ha-Makhpelah? It is the cave of doubling — but the cave of doubling ought to have been in Sarah’s lifetime,

not at Sarah’s death. Yet precisely, the parashah that recounts Sarah’s death is called Chayei — “the life of Sarah.” It is now that she will live; it is now that she secures life as becoming. And to secure this life as becoming means that even when one is no longer there, life goes on. Even when we have been absent from the land for years — hundreds of years, even thousands of years — the land goes on belonging to us. It lies at rest, but there are those who watch over it. So that is the message of becoming of which I spoke — and it is immediately followed, moreover, by the marriage of Yitzchak, and corroborated by the fact that Rivkah’s entry into Sarah’s tent brings Sarah back to life: “and Yitzchak was comforted after his mother.”

And Yitzchak finds consolation for the loss of his mother, for his mother’s death. So all this forms a whole. And in this sense Chayei Sarah is, if you like, the maftir — the closing reading — of the Akedah of Yitzchak. There is no manifestation of the Holy One, blessed be He, in Chayei Sarah. Everything culminates in the Akedah of Yitzchak — the Akedah of Yitzchak that we invoke constantly in our prayers, and whose merit we carry in our genes, whether we like it or not. I will have occasion to tell it: when Titus set out to destroy the Temple, he told one of his captives, a Jew, to go in and take whatever he wished — it would be his. The whole point for him was to profane the Sanctuary. So the man went in, and came out with the menorah — the most precious object. He was told: “Not the menorah — leave it. Now go back in.” He said: “No. I went in to save this menorah, to take it, because by it I was going to light my way. And if I have offended my Creator once, I will not do so a second time — I am ready to pay for it with my life.” And indeed, he was put to death.

Another question? Thank you very much. — Well then, I will leave you. Thank you very much for listening, and until next week — have a good week back. — Thank you very much, until next week. Goodbye. — Good evening, everyone. Goodbye. — Thank you very much. Goodbye. — Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye.