Questions for the Shabbat Table: Chayei Sarah
A printable study booklet: one question per page, the Rav’s answer, its source, and a lesson to discuss as a family.
This lecture continues the study of the chapter of the Me’arat haMakhpelah (the Cave of Machpelah), the “cave of doubling,” and raises a fundamental question: why does Avraham insist on paying for land that has already been promised to him? Rav Raphaël Benizri answers by bringing together two acquisitions that the tradition sets side by side — that of Efron’s field and that of a wife. Each of them consists in leaving raw matter and its endless possibilities in order to give form to a life. The session closes on the meaning of the four hundred shekels and on why the parashah is called “the life of Sarah.”
The Rav begins from the Hebrew name for the cemetery, the “house of the living,” and from what it implies: such a house is needed only to bear witness to the passage of those who contributed to history and who knew how to live on two levels. Three people, he says, tasted the World to Come in this world, and it is for them that the cave serves as a refuge. From there he redefines the evil inclination — not as an appetite, but as the state of one who stands before several paths without ever choosing any of them.
The lecture then proceeds through a series of comparisons: the verb used for taking a wife and the verb of acquisition, the praise of the woman of valor, the dimensions of Adam in space and in time, the three definitions of the wise man, the etymology of silver and of longing, the reading of a land where milk and honey come from impure sources. It arrives at Kiryat Arba as the place where the four energies of creation are gathered, and at the Machpelah as a house of the living rather than a field of graves.
What this lecture teaches
Avraham pays for what already belongs to him. The promise of the land had been made to him, and virtually it belongs to his descendants; but if it must be conquered, why not invest oneself in it? The Rav poses this investment as the question of the chapter. To pay, here, is not to buy back a contested right: it is to commit something of oneself to what was as yet only a word.
The cemetery is called the house of the living because it bears witness to a past. Such a place is needed only to record the existence of people who contributed to the history of humanity and who absorbed the relationship of a life lived on two levels, this world and the World to Come. It is not a place of disappearance but a residence — the residence of the living in the past. This is why the Machpelah is the place of refuge for those who were granted a taste of both worlds.
The evil inclination is not appetite; it is indecision. It is commonly understood as a vulgar urge, but in reality it is what keeps you in the quandary of several possibilities, several paths, without your having yet chosen any. One remains in a trial period, tasting a little of this branch, then of that one. What results is a fragmented life, like those calendar pages torn off one after another. Yet a life ought to be harmonious — that is, to concentrate all its possibilities within itself instead of scattering them.
The Torah links the acquisition of the cave with the acquisition of a wife. The verse that establishes the obligation to marry does not say “when a man marries,” but “when a man takes a wife,” using a verb of acquisition. That verb implies that one must pay, just as Avraham paid for the field of Efron where he buried his wife. The Rav immediately warns against a hasty reading: the point is not to make the acquisition of a wife the equivalent of buying a grave, but the very opposite.
Without the feminine, man remains raw matter. As long as the woman has not been discovered and acquired, man remains in matter, like unworked raw material. That matter offers a great many possibilities, but it has not been directed toward any purpose; it has received no form. The one who is invested in the world of reality, of practice, of giving shape to life, is the feminine, which creates and generates life. It is the feminine that offers man the possibility of fulfilling himself in his future world and of doubling himself.
Avraham praises his wife in the words of Proverbs. The Rav recalls that the eulogy takes up the conclusion of an entire book of counsel given to man so that he not remain in the state of raw matter. He reads a passage from it: guard yourself against the evil woman and the smooth tongue of the stranger; do not covet her beauty in your heart, do not let yourself be caught by her allure, for on account of a harlot a man is brought down to a loaf of bread — can a man stoke fire in his bosom and his garment not be burned? The failure spoken of there is always the same: remaining in the realm of multiple possibilities.
To choose is to invest. The Rav gives the example of someone who has a great deal of money and does not invest it: as long as he keeps it, that money offers him many possibilities. But when he chooses to place it in a specific enterprise, he gives it form and direction; he has, as it were, buried all the other possibilities in a single one. That is what a life is: having made a choice. To remain scattered is to hold many assets and be able to succeed at many things, without ever accomplishing one.
Adam had the dimensions of the universe, in space as in time. Our Sages say that when G-d created man, he stretched from one end of the universe to the other — space is on a human scale — and that he extended likewise from one end of time to the other, from the beginning to the end. He also had the dimensions of the precepts that structure his life. The six hundred and thirteen commandments divide as follows: three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, like the days of the year, each day coming with its own warning; and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, whose number corresponds to the structure of the human body.
Three definitions of the wise man, and Avraham unites them all. The text says of him that he was old, “come into days”: he had lost not a single day, he carried them with him, and the word that describes him is read as “one who has acquired wisdom.” The wise man is first one who knows his place: he does not seek to take another’s, nor to defy his own capacities, but fulfills himself according to his aptitudes and gives them their full reality. He is next one who projects himself into the future, who weighs the consequences of his actions and examines the repercussions of his commitments. He is finally one who seeks to learn from every person, without disdain or contempt, knowing that anyone may shed new light for him. Avraham acquired these three facets of wisdom, and that is how he carried his days.
The blessing of totality is impossible without the feminine. In the grace after meals, we ask to be blessed as the Patriarchs were blessed, each with a formula built on the word “all.” To bring all the possibilities at our disposal back to a perfect unity — that is precisely kingship, and this work cannot be done without the feminine. The Rav also mentions a reading according to which this word designates a daughter of Avraham. These verses serve as the introduction to the choice of Yitzchak’s one and only wife.
Hevron unites heaven and earth. The name comes from a word meaning to join, and what it joins are the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew word for the heavens is read from “there”: that which lies beyond. That is the world of reality, where everything comes together, where matter is completed in its form. But one reaches it only through the earth, which is the universe of desires, of aspirations, and of longing.
In Hebrew, silver and longing bear the same name. The Rav dwells on this word, which speaks both of the metal and of lack — the soul that yearns for the courts of G-d. Silver is the means, the coin with which one buys gold; one does not buy silver with gold. It represents the many possibilities at one’s disposal, and when one wishes to give them stability, one chooses gold, whose name our Sages read as “with this you learn to hold fast.” It is a process that puts desire and will to the test.
One marries with a coin of little value, and that says everything. The acquisition is made with an object worth a few shekels — almost nothing. It is a way of saying: it is all my many possibilities that bring me to choose you, and I am ready to pay any price, with all my money, because I regard you as the precious jewel of my life. The trifling sum does not measure the value; it signifies the commitment. It is the same gesture that Avraham performs before Efron.
To be a stranger and a resident at once. Avraham presents himself to the sons of Chet as a stranger and a resident. The Rav reads this double condition as a program: to seek an identity while being a full citizen, and above all not to repeat things but to gather, day after day, the message of each day. The Hebrew word for “day” is linked to what each day brings that is new. Nothing is ever acquired for good: every year calls for a new harvest.
A year exists only once time has a structure. As long as one has not passed beyond the first unit, that of ten, one remains in fragmented years, shards of time. Only when our time has received the structure of the stages of creation does one enter what the text calls completion — a word the Rav connects to totality. Completion consists in gathering, in fusing this whole set of possibilities into one. This is what Avraham does, and by that very act he attests to the future ownership of the land.
Milk and honey come from the impure. The land is described as flowing with milk and honey: yet milk comes from blood, and honey from an insect — two impure sources — and both are permitted as food. What was blood, what was an insect, has become a food that contributes to the balance of human health. The Rav reads in this the very meaning of the acquisition of the Machpelah: the transformation of raw material into something that nourishes.
Kiryat Arba gathers the four energies of creation. Water, fire, dust and air: this is where the raw materials that surround the world come together. Each can go astray — earth toward laziness and slackness, fire toward passions and desires, air toward slander. The price of four hundred shekels has received several interpretations, and the Rav connects it to this number four. Once the field and the cave were acquired, what had been redeemed were these very energies.
The parashah ought to be called “the death of Sarah,” yet it is called “the life of Sarah.” It is there that she proved that her entire life formed a harmonious whole. The text details her beauty: at a hundred she had the beauty of twenty, at twenty that of a child of seven — and the beauty of a seven-year-old is entirely natural, without makeup or added style. That beauty is inward; it was not relegated to a corner of existence but holds together with everything else. This is what the verse means when it says that Hashem knows the days of the wholehearted. And that is why the cave becomes a house of the living and not a field of graves.
Full transcript of the lecture
Everyone, let us continue our reflection on this chapter of the Me’arat haMakhpelah, the “cave of doubling,” which Avraham takes pains to acquire with his own money — even though the promise of the land had been made to him, and even though, virtually, the land belongs to us, or at the very least to his descendants. But if it must be conquered, why not invest oneself in it? Invest oneself, because it matters. We do not have a cult of the dead. But the beit almin, the cemetery, is called beit haChayim: it is the house of the living, the residence of the living — the residence of the living in the past. For we need such a house only to record the past of people who contributed to the history of humanity and who, in fact, absorbed the relationship of a life on two levels — a penthouse, so to speak — that is, Olam haZeh and Olam haBa (this world and the World to Come). That is why the Me’arat haMakhpelah is the place of refuge of three people to whom G-d gave a taste of this world and of the World to Come. He let them taste the World to Come in this world, and He spared them the yetzer hara.
We always translate it as “the evil inclination.” Now, the evil inclination in its crude, popular sense — we all know what that is. But in reality, the evil inclination is what keeps you in the quandary of several possibilities, several paths, when you have not yet chosen any of them. You are in a trial period, tasting a little of this branch, a little of that one, and so on — and this is what makes our life fragmented. It is like those calendar pages we tear off one after another, whereas in reality this life ought to be a harmonious life, a harmonious life that concentrates all possibilities within itself. And that is why the Torah draws a link between the acquisition of the Me’arat haMakhpelah and the acquisition of a wife. You know that we learn the obligation of acquiring a wife — for a wife is acquired — and where do we learn it from? Kichah kichah mi-sedeh Efron — “taking” is learned from the “taking” of the field of Efron. For the text says ki yikach ish ishah — “when a man takes a wife.” It did not say “when a man marries a woman,” ki yisa ishah, in the language of marriage, but ki yikach. And ki yikach means that he must pay for his acquisition, just as Avraham paid for the field of Efron where he buried his wife.
Do not rush ahead and say that the acquisition of a wife is the equivalent of a burial — quite the contrary. For as long as we have not truly discovered the woman and have not acquired her, we remain in matter, like raw matter. Raw matter offers an enormous number of possibilities, but it has not been directed toward any end, any purpose; it has not given form to the original matter. Now, the one who is truly invested in the world of reality, of practice, of giving shape to life, is the feminine that creates, the feminine that generates life. It is this feminine that offers man the possibility of fulfilling himself in his future world, of doubling himself. And when we analyze this chapter of the field of Efron, where the Me’arat haMakhpelah — the cave of doubling — is found, we see that Avraham is conscious of who Sarah was: the only woman whose years the Torah recorded, and the Torah gave importance to the way in which she was buried, with all the respect due to an eshet chayil, a woman of valor. For when Avraham delivers the eulogy of his wife, our Sages say that he did so with the conclusion of Mishlei (Proverbs) — Mishlei, which throughout gives man counsel not to remain in the state of raw matter. What did it tell him? Let me read you a short passage.
“To keep you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the stranger. Do not covet her beauty in your heart, and let her not captivate you with her eyelids. For on account of a harlot a man is brought down to a loaf of bread, and an adulteress hunts a precious soul. Can a man stoke fire in his bosom and his garments not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:24–27). In any case, the failure lies in man remaining in the realm of his many possibilities. Take someone who has a great deal of money but does not invest it. As long as he holds that money, it offers him many possibilities; but when he has chosen to invest it in a specific enterprise, he has given it form, he has given it a direction. He has, in a sense, buried or gathered all the other possibilities into a single one. That is life. When one has made a choice in one’s life… which is to say that when we remain scattered, we certainly have many assets; we could succeed at many things, along many different paths. Except that — you know — our Sages said that when the Holy One, blessed be He, created man, he stretched from one end of the universe to the other. That is in space: space is on a human scale. In time, too, he extended from one end to the other, from the Beginning to the end. That is how Adam haRishon, the first man, was. He himself had the dimensions of the precepts that guide his life, that structure his life.
Now these mitzvot, six hundred and thirteen in number, divide as follows: three hundred and sixty-five, like the days of the year — mitzvot lo ta’aseh, prohibitions, things one must not do. In other words, each day comes with its own prohibition, its own warning. And two hundred and forty-eight commandments of positive action — a number that corresponds, in reality, to the structure of man. So what does it mean to fulfill a life? It is when one has taken into account this human time, this human space, and has made of it a reality in the World to Come. Indeed, when this chapter ends, it opens before us another chapter — the choice of Rivkah for Yitzchak. We will have occasion to comment on it; there is no need to go into it now. But what is important is that our Sages say of Avraham zaken ba bayamim — “Avraham was old, come into days” (Genesis 24:1): Avraham was old; ba bayamim, he carried his days with him.
He had not lost a single day; he had not cast away a single day. Very well: that is zaken. And zaken — zeh shekanah chochmah, “this is one who has acquired wisdom.” Unfortunate are those who have not known their elders, their sages. One may ask: what is the connection between zaken and zeh shekanah chochmah, one who has acquired wisdom? Our Sages have opened a door for us here: Eizehu chacham? — who is called wise? Hamakir et mekomo, one who knows his place: one who does not seek to usurp the place of another, nor to defy his own capacities, but who fulfills himself according to his own aptitudes and gives them their full reality. That is the first definition of the chacham. The second definition of the chacham is one who projects himself into the future, who grasps the consequences of his actions and analyzes somewhat what the repercussions of his commitments might be. And the third definition: halomed mikol adam, one who seeks to learn from every person, who has no disdain, no contempt for others, but knows that each person may indeed shed new light for him.
And Avraham — which of these is he? Avraham is the one who acquired all three facets of wisdom. And that is how he carried his days. VaHashem berach et Avraham bakol — “and Hashem blessed Avraham with everything” (Genesis 24:1). I said earlier that there are three people who were granted the World to Come in this world: Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. And in Birkat haMazon, the grace we recite after meals, we ask to be blessed as our Patriarchs were blessed: Avraham bakol, Yitzchak mikol, Yaakov kol. As for bakol, the Sages draw on all its forms, because to bring all the possibilities we have back to one point, to a perfect unity — that is malchut, kingship. This work is impossible without the feminine […].
Some even interpret this bakol as a daughter whom Avraham had, whose name was Bakol — uVakol shemah, “and Bakol was her name.” […] This bakol serves as the introduction to the choice of the one and only wife of Yitzchak — she who is called to transform the raw matter that the man brings from his field. Whether it be wheat or cotton, she makes of it food, a garment; she transforms it, she gives it form. Well, this is the tribute that Avraham pays to Sarah, in reserving for her [a place] in the Me’arat haMakhpelah, where the man — the first man — and his wife Chavah had already been buried. And this place is Hevron.
Hevron — from the root chaver, to join, to unite. It is what unites heaven and earth. Heaven and earth — what does that mean? Where does the word shamayim, heaven, come from? From sham, “there” — that which lies beyond. It has a double vocation, a double sense — yes, quite simply because that is the world of reality where everything comes together, chomer and tzurah, matter and form: matter completed in its ideal form. But how does one reach it? Through the eretz, the earth. The eretz is the universe of desires, the universe of aspirations, the universe of longing — the universe of kesef. Silver, money, in Hebrew is kesef; but longing, too, in Hebrew is kesef. To languish belongs to the same family of words as kesef — to languish for the house of G-d: nichsefah vegam kaltah nafshi lechatzrot Hashem, “my soul yearns, indeed it pines, for the courts of Hashem” (Psalms 84:3).
Yes: kesef and zahav, silver and gold. Kesef, silver, is the means — it is the coin with which one buys gold. One does not buy silver with gold; it is with silver that one buys. It is with the different possibilities, the many possibilities that money offers when we have it at our disposal. And when we wish to give it stability, then we choose gold — and our Sages have read zahav differently: “with this you learn to hold fast.” It is a process that will indeed put your desire and your will to the test. So let us not be surprised that the acquisition of a wife is made first and foremost with something of little value — it makes no difference whether it is worth five shekels or ten. It is a way of saying: it is my many possibilities that bring me to choose you, and I am ready to pay any price, with all my money, with all my money, because I regard you as the precious jewel of my life. That is the text; I am changing nothing. And that is the whole subject of this particular chapter which Avraham devotes to the burial of his wife, and which, on another level, expresses in a certain way the destiny of the Jewish people, even in the midst of the nations. It is not for nothing that the name of the Bnei Chet, from whom Avraham bought this plot of land, appears ten times. We know this number ten very well: in creation, in revelation, in the very unfolding of history, and in the measure of every personality. So this is our relationship with the world: to acquire from it all the possibilities there are, the raw matter, and to give it a form, a reality on the scale of the Torah, on the scale of creation, on the scale of time in the universe.
Given this, it is only at the end of a life that it can be reckoned. Normally, the title of this parashah should have been Mot Sarah, “the death of Sarah.” No — Chayei Sarah, “the life of Sarah.” It is there that she indeed proved that her entire life had been a harmonious whole — and not only in one respect: at a hundred she had the beauty of a twenty-year-old, and at twenty the beauty of a seven-year-old. Why should it be the beauty of a seven-year-old at twenty? Because at twenty, there is already makeup; one is already giving one’s own beauty a somewhat different style. The beauty of a child of seven is entirely natural; it remains in its natural state. And what is this beauty? It is inner beauty — a beauty that completes, as it were, a whole.
This beauty was not relegated to a corner; it holds together with everything we want to make real. And that is yodea Hashem yemei temimim — “Hashem knows the days of the wholehearted” (Psalms 37:18). That is what Hashem cherishes: the days of the wholehearted, because they did not grow up, did not develop, with fixed and rigid principles. Ger vetoshav anochi — “I am a stranger and a resident” (Genesis 23:4): I am always in the status of a stranger; I seek an identity, yet at the same time I want to be a full citizen. Being a ger, a stranger, is simply my way of wanting, day after day, to gather the message of each day. It is not repeating things, but discovering the message of each day. The day, yom, is so called in Hebrew because each day offers a yam, a sea, of possibilities.
This is the language that Avraham exchanges with the Bnei Chet. You know that chet means broken, shattered: “the bows of the mighty are broken” (I Samuel 2:4) — they do not reach their mark. That is what sometimes happens to us when we undertake several things at once […]. Now, tarbut, general culture, counts one’s years, one’s age, in springs: “I am twenty springs, thirty springs.” Not so for us. What do we call our youth? Yemei chorpi — “the days of my youth” (Job 29:4). Chorpi comes from choref, winter. Yes — it is then that everything was sown; the seed is dying beneath the earth. What interests us is maturity, how it comes about — that is the moment. Nothing is ever acquired for good: every year calls for a new harvest. And this is also why, when we speak of shanah, a year, it means one has gone beyond the notion of ten, the first unit, ten. As long as one has not reached it, we are in shanim, many years — fragmented; they are shards of time. But when we have given our time this structure — the structure of the sefirot, the structure of the Tablets of the Law, the structure of creation — then we are in the world of vaychulu (completion), which comes from the word kol, “all”: in completion, and in the act of gathering or fusing this whole set of possibilities into a single possibility. And that is what Avraham does, and by that very act he, as it were, signed and attested to the future ownership of the land.
It is because in this land — eretz zavat chalav udvash, as I believe I have told you, a land flowing with milk and honey — milk comes from an impure product, blood, and honey from an impure sheretz (creeping creature), the bee; and yet these are permitted as food. We have the raw, the natural state: it was blood, it was a sheretz, an insect — but we make of it a food that contributes to the balance of human health. That is the meaning of this acquisition of the Me’arat haMakhpelah, since it cost four hundred shekels. Four hundred shekels — there are several interpretations. It is the place where all the energies of creation are gathered — Kiryat Arba: esh, fire; mayim, water; afar, dust, matter; ruach, air.
Of course, they can go astray: afar toward atzlut, laziness, slackness; esh, the fire of passions and cravings; and ruach, air, toward […] slander. Well — to these raw materials […] he gave their purpose: Vayakom sedeh Efron… vayakom hasadeh vehame’arah asher bo le’Avraham la’achuzat kever me’et Bnei Chet — “And the field of Efron was established… the field and the cave within it were established as Avraham’s, as a burial holding, from the sons of Chet” (Genesis 23:17–20). […] And so the Me’arat haMakhpelah will be a beit haChayim, a house of the living, and not a place of graves. There — I will stop here, if you have any questions.
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