Chayei Sarah: What to Look for in a Spouse

by Rav Moshe Leib HaCohen Halbershtadt, Founder and Director of YORU Jewish Leadership, yeshiva.org.il, translated by Hillel Fendel.

In this week's Torah portion of Chayei Sarah (B'reshit 23,1 - 25,18), we read that Avraham sent his trusted servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Yitzchak. Avraham asked Eliezer to vow "by the Lord G-d of the heavens and the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose midst I dwell, but rather go to my land and my birthplace, and take a wife for my son, for Yitzchak." (24,3-4)

Avraham also insisted that the designated wife not remain in her father's house in Padan Aram, but rather that Yitzchak should marry her in Canaan, the land that G-d promised to give Avraham and his descendants.

Was it too hard for Avraham to find a wife of good character from the land of Canaan? True, the Canaanites were not of the highest moral caliber, but could not Avraham have found one girl with the traits of goodness and kindness that he sought? And what about the daughter of Eliezer himself? He was Avraham's loyal student who lived a life of faith in G-d, who knew the importance of kindness and dedication to others, both spiritually and materially, and whose daughter grew up in Avraham and Sarah's own house – would she not have been a fine match for Yitzchak?

Instead, what does Avraham do? He sends Eliezer to find a wife for his son to Aram Naharayim, of all places - a place filled with idol-worship! And he sends him to Avraham's family, which had quite its share of moral defects: The father was an evil and lecherous idol-worshiper who even tried to kill Eliezer! (See Yalkut Shimoni 24,109 and Medrash Lekach Tov 24,33) And Lavan, Rivka's brother, was a known con-artist, with no respect for his elders (Rashi to verse 50), and a glutton who even tried to steal from Eliezer (Rashi to verse 29)! From that type of family Avraham wished to find a wife for his son, just because they were his relatives!?

To answer this, let us take a look at the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Father 2,2), which teaches in the name of R. Yehuda ben Teima: "You should be bold as a leopard, swift as an eagle, fleet as a gazelle, and brave as a lion, to do the will of your Father in Heaven." The great late saintly tzaddik and Mussar master Rav Dov Yaffe (d. 2017) explained that the Mishna could have simply said, 'Be bold, be swift, be brave,' etc. – but instead added that we should have these traits just as the respective animals have them. That is, we must strive that these traits should be so totally deep-rooted within us, just like a leopard's boldness and the lion's courage. If these traits do not become a genuine part of our nature, we can never know when we might fail to activate them when needed; it will be a "sometimes yes, sometimes no" proposition.

Rav Yaffe even added that when the great Rabbi Eliyahu Lapian sought a match for his own daughter, he asked the venerable Rav Yerucham of Mir to find a boy whose good character traits were less "acquired" and more based on his very nature.

The holy Torah wants to teach us that we should follow in Avraham's footsteps when we seek a shidduch for our children. He refused to find a girl for his son from among the Canaanites: "Cursed is Canaan" (9,25). Avraham understood that the traits of Canaan and his descendants were problematic from their very nature. Even if an individual Canaanite had good traits, or lived among people with positive attributes and consequently worked on himself to improve his character, this is great – but a person like that is not yet on the level of one whose good traits are totally imbued within him or her, and is therefore not suitable for the olah temimah, "unblemished offering," his son Yitzchak.

Avraham Avinu understood that a family like his that was able to produce someone like himself – we know him as the "pillar of chessed (kindness)" – as well as someone like his wife Sarah, whose 127 years were all equal in their goodness (Rashi, 23,1) – that is a family with the DNA of a moral, kind nature. And in fact, Rivka had this nature as well, as evidenced when she brought as much water as was needed for Eliezer's camels. And the ultimate proof was the fact that she reached such a high level of kindness and modesty despite having grown up in the family of Betuel and Lavan. The Torah even emphasizes precisely this point by repeating more than once that she was "the daughter of Betuel from Padan Aram, the sister of Lavan." As Rashi says to verse 20: "This was her praise, that she was the daughter of a wicked man, and the sister of a wicked man, and she lived among wickedness, but did not learn from their actions."

Rivka was not an "occasional" righteous person, but rather a naturally good person. Only someone like her was worthy of becoming Yitzchak's wife, our Matriarch Rivka.