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.

Hayei Sarah: The Ever-Flowing Spring of Kindness of the Patriarch Abraham

by the late Chief Rabbi of Israel and Rosh Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, Rabbi Avraham Shapira, and edited by Rabbi Binyamin Rakover, yeshiva.org.il, translated by Hillel Fendel.

This week's Torah portion – Chaye Sarah (B'reshit 23,1-25,18) – is one replete with acts of chessed, kindness. Possibly the most famous of them occurred when Rivka gave water not only to Eliezer but to all his camels. In truth, this portion is simply the climax of all the kindnesses of Avraham Avinu. Our Sages enumerate all of Avraham's acts of chessed that are recounted in the Torah. Among them are those of the beginning of Parashat Chaye Sarah, where Avraham put in great efforts to find a burial plot for Sarah, and of course buried her, eulogized her, and wept over her.

But why are these acts considered "kindnesses?" Is it not natural and self-evident that a husband would do this for his wife? 

It must be, then, that Avraham did not do all this simply because he felt he "had to," or because that's what everyone does; he did it from the very source of chessed. 

The very basis and foundation of kindness is not the act of goodness itself; there is rather something that precedes it, and that is the love of kindness. As the Prophet Micha exhorted (6,8): "What does G-d require of you other than to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with G-d." Chessed is not merely a limited human attribute, but is rather an ever-flowing spring. After I thought of this concept, I saw that Rabbeinu Yonah had already written it. One who has a love of kindness is not happy only when he does chessed, but also when someone else does a kindness. As we read in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, 5,13[16]), one who gives and is happy when others give as well is considered "pious" – and it is also a sign that he is a descendant of Avraham Avinu. The basis of all good attributes is "love," and when one works with love, he is of the seed of Avraham. 

Accordingly, it is clear that Avraham's deeds when his wife died are considered true kindness, for they stem from the very source of chessed, and not just because she was his wife.

Lot, too – Avraham's nephew – performed kindness. The Medrash says that he saved Avraham and did not reveal to Pharaoh that Sarah was his wife. He did this even though it was under dangerous circumstances. However, Lot's chessed did not stem from the very source of kindness, but only because that was what he had learned and that was the custom in his family. It certainly was not rooted in the "love of kindness" that Avraham felt.  

We see this in the way Avraham behaved with the people of Het, from whom he wished to purchase a burial plot. As soon as they said something gracious to him and showed willingness to allow him to acquire the site, he showed them great appreciation by bowing down (B'reshit 23,7). This was not a mere formality, but rather true gratefulness and appreciation of chessed for its own sake. 

The Medrash tells us that the Torah refers to B'nei Het, the men of Het, ten times (including once in Parashat Vay'chi), and that this corresponds to the Ten Commandments. They merited this special status because they acted kindly with Avraham, and "whoever makes a solid deal with a righteous person, it is as if he fulfilled the Ten Commandments." Their leader Ephron, on the other hand, was more concerned with the money that he would receive, as we see from the exorbitant price he exacted; this is why his name was written deficiently, without a vuv, in the verse recounting the payment.

An interesting question arises here: Why did Avraham send emissaries, the people of Het, to their leader Ephron to ask him to agree to the sale? Was this not a violation of the last of the Ten Commandments, namely, "Do not covet?" According to the Medrash P'sikta, this is actually the gravest of all the Ten Commandments, because as the Maharal of Prague explains, the desire and lust for "more" and for things that are not ours is the source of all sin! If not for this lust, there would be no reason to sin! And as we just saw, the men of Het had a connection to the Ten Commandments, so how could Avraham have acted in this way? 

The answer must be that one may not covet something that the owner wants – but in this case, Ephron had no interest in the field, but only in the money that he would receive for it. Avraham wanted the field because he knew that it was the burial place of Adam and Chava, while Ephron had no interest in its special qualities, other than its monetary value. Ephron's guiding principle was money, while for Avraham, it was love of G-d leading to love of kindness.