The struggle for succession: Chayei Sarah 5785

Death is not only tragic for those intimately affected: it also poses problems of succession and reorganization of the family, company or institution. In this week’s parsha Avraham and Sarah, the founders of the Jewish nation, pass from the scene. They are succeeded by Yitzchak and Rivka. Indeed, the majority of the parsha is occupied by the story of how Yitzchak marries Rivka and they establish their new home together. 

In personality, temperament and action,n Yitzchak and Rivka differ markedly from Avraham and Sarah. Whereas Avraham and Sarah devoted themselves to reaching as many outsiders as they could, being actively engaged in spreading the idea of monotheism in the society that encompassed them, Yitzchak and Rivka seem to take a more conservative approach, seeking only to consolidate what they had accomplished and to build a nation built on family rather than on strangers whom they might attract to their cause. 

As we will see in next week’s parsha, the struggle of Yitzchak and Rivka is an internal family struggle, as the world conflict that engaged Avraham and Sarah now take place within the family itself. The outcome of this struggle will turn on how to raise Eisav and Yaakov, and how to guarantee the continuity of Avraham and Sarah’s beliefs through their biological offspring. Eventually it is only through Yaakov that this is achieved and they are able to live through the blessing that the Lord promised them.

It becomes abundantly clear that the main struggle of the Jewish people will be to consolidate itself and thus influence the general world by osmosis, so to speak. The time of Avraham and Sarah has passed. New times require fresh responses to the challenges of being a blessing to all humankind. There are those in the Jewish world who are committed to “fixing the world” at the expense of Jewish traditional life and Torah law. Yet the simple truth is that for the Jewish people to be effective in influencing the world at large for good, there must be a strong, committed Jewish people. King Solomon in Shir Hashirim teaches us the cost of failure to do so: “I have watched over the vineyards of others, but I have neglected guarding my own vineyard.” 

The attempted destruction and delegitimization of the Jewish people or the State of Israel, God forbid, in order to further fuzzy, do-good, universal humanistic ideas is a self-destructive viewpoint of the purpose of Judaism. Without Jews there is no Judaism and without Judaism there is no true moral conscience left in the world. It seems evident to me that the primary imperative of Jews today is to strengthen and support Jewish family life, Jewish Torah education and the state of Israel. 

We are among the generations of Yitzchak and Rivka and therefore have to husband our resources and build ourselves first. We have as yet not made good the population losses of the Holocaust seventy years ago! If there will be a strong and numerous Jewish people, the age of Avraham and Sarah will then re-emerge. The tasks of consolidation of Jewish life as represented by the lives of Yitzchak and Rivka should be the hallmark of our generation as well. 

Shabat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein