Parashat Hayei Sarah - A Thousand Pieces of Silver and the Origin of Prayer

BS"D

It is the nature of spiritual experience that we arrive at a moment where we are swept up in a cosmic surf, startled and exhilarated and terrified and thrilled and energized by a powerful epiphany, we feel the thrill of weightlessness as we ascend through doors suddenly open where we did not even sense there was a wall.

Next comes the risk of profound disappointment when, in coming for a second time to the same set of circumstances, we do not experience the same exhilaration. The Buddhists are aware of this self-confusing nature of Mind – so much so that the Buddhist psychology recognizes six senses: the five known to Western science, plus Mind, an organ of perception no less than eye or tongue or skin. And as with the other senses, the proclivity of Mind is to be immediately convinced that what it is experiencing is objectively real. Do not believe everything you think.

Abraham, however briefly, had a direct relationship with G-d. He did not waver from his side of the relationship and, unless you follow the revisionist line we discussed last week, Abraham never did not understand G-d’s message to him.

Unlike the rest of his family.

When Sarah has an inkling that Abraham must have a son, she offers her maidservant, Hagar, not realizing that it is her own destiny to give birth to Yitzhak. When Hagar and Ishmael recognize that the next level in Abraham’s journey entails him sending his own son to die, mother and son walk off into the desert and Ishmael – now sixteen or seventeen years of age, a grown man, by the current standard – voluntarily lies down beneath a bush and waits to die of thirst. Finally, an angel comes and explains to Hagar that, no, this is not the Destiny of Abraham. And so Ishmael goes on to father twelve tribes – as does Abraham’s remaining brother, Nahor, by the way. As, obviously, does Yaakov. The themes of the Destiny and Promise of Abraham proliferate throughout Sefer Bereshit as those around Abraham are swept up in the cosmic surf.

But they keep coming out in unrecognizable patterns.

This week we see the first example of a person praying for success. It is a spiritual come-down, after Abraham’s intense yet familiar relationship with G-d, this mere asking for favors so one doesn’t have to work hard. Or is it?

Yet see, too, how the structure of the Parasha underscores the one-sidedness of Abraham. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explained that Sarah dies before Abraham because she represents the Body, whereas Abraham represents the Soul. And in Chassiddus, the body occupies a more exalted level than the Soul. For it is only through the body that the soul can participate in doing Mitzvot. It is only through the Body that the human Soul can perform ‘Avodat HaShem – divine service. Indeed, without Sarah, Abraham’s life peters out as ingloriously as water dripping from a cracked jug, as air seeping from a tiny puncture. He marries the mysterious Keturah – the ancestor of Moshe’s sons – the sons who become Priests of Belial at Shilo – Abraham has more children, but does not engage with them. As we saw last week, G-d ceases all contact with Abraham after commanding him to depart on the three-day journey that will lead to the Akeidah. In this week’s Parasha, everyone is killed off – clearly, the stage is being cleared for the next Act in the drama. The opening phrase – “And the life of Sarah…” with its immediate reversal – “And Sarah died…” is as startling as the opening line of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where the actors come on stage and shout at the audience to leave the theater. As disorienting as the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, where the conductor gives a mighty downbeat, and there is silence.

The Parasha goes on to kill off Abraham and, for good measure, Ishmael. A simple arithmetical calculation will show that Abraham was still very much alive when Yaakov and Esav were born. Why do we never see them with their grandfather? Or with their uncle Ishmael, for that matter? The continuity of the themes, the Destiny and Promise, is not fixed. It must be regenerated, for it lies somewhat dormant. And Yitzhak must begin again. Alone.

This is why, in next week’s Parasha, Yitzhak will have to dig once again the wells his father had established. It is why, next week, G-d will have to reaffirm the Covenant and Promise of Abraham, this time to his son Yitzhak, using the same word of the Akeidah – a forceful reminder, even as it transfers the Blessing from generation to generation. Bereshit 26:5 – ‘Eikev – Because Abraham listened to my voice…

This Parasha, entitled “Life”, is bracketed by death. By the deaths of three of the most important figures in human history: Sarah, Abraham and Ishmael. In a literary mirroring, such as we have already come to see as a commonplace of Biblical narrative structure, The Torah clears the scene so that Yitzhak can start over from the very beginning. Next week’s Parasha opens ve-eleh. As Rashi, Ramban, and many other commentators point out, when a section begins eleh – “these are” – it replaces what has come before it. When a section begins ve-eleh – “and these are” – it builds upon what has gone before. The comparison to G-d’s first, second and third Creations is replayed now on a human level. But note: even G-d did not scrap the project completely. When G-d dismantled the Garden, the existing humans were not destroyed, but their roles and destinies changed. When G-d destroyed the whole world, the world itself remained, as did a man and his family. Even G-d, it seems, is bound by the consequences of having created this world of Space, Time, and Motion. Or: G-d has checked into the game. Like observant Jews who follow Halacha because we choose, G-d chooses to observe the Halacha of the system G-d has set in motion. On the level of pure human psychology and sociology, Shabbat is what novelist William Gibson calls a Consensual Hallucination. In order to make Torah work, G-d has chosen to participate in the hallucination as well.

Before we come to the origin of prayer, I have a conundrum that will not let me rest. In last week’s Parasha, Vayeira, Abraham took Sarah down to Gerar. Unlike the sojourn in Egypt, this side-trip has no clear impetus, no motivation. There is no famine, no military threat. Why does Abraham go there? And, once there, he immediately reverts to telling Sarah to pretend they are brother and sister.

In the first episode, in Mizraim, Abraham makes a startling admission – so unusual coming from a man who lives his entire life estranged from his own family, even as he dwells in their midst. In Lech Lecha, at 12:11, Abraham tells his wife: “I just realized that you are an attractive woman!” This is the sudden awareness of a man who, having won the bride, now dismisses her. This is a man who takes his wife for granted, at best. At worst, he believes she is inferior. Lucky for her that I married her, he thinks, otherwise she would have spent the rest of her life alone. It is more common than you may think. But now, out in the world, Abraham sees men stealing glimpses at Sarah. His passion is perhaps rekindled – though not, it would seem, his love.

Their brief stay in Gerar is different. When Abimelech realizes what has happened, he lets Abraham have it. He then turns to Sarah and speaks a sentence that has me bewildered. Bereshit 20:16. “And to Sarah he said: Look, I gave a thousand pieces of silver to your brother. Here, it is yours. A covering of the eye for all that is with you, and you are set right with everything.” This is usually translated as: “I gave the silver to Abraham, now let it be viewed as a rebuke to people who think I mistreated you.” This makes no sense. Clearly – the language in the Pasuk is plain – Abimelech is saying to Sarah: I give your brother a thousand pieces of silver, thinking I would buy you from him. Now that I recognize you are a married woman, I am ashamed at the very thought of this. Of course, your “brother” – and in the Pasuk, Abimelech uses the word “brother”, a rebuke at a man who still does not recognize how fortunate he is to have married Sarah – your brother can not keep the money, for it is not our way to permit husbands to sell their wives. But, Abimelech continues, I will not take back the money, for it would add shame to my shame, and it would shame you unnecessarily. Rather, you take the thousand pieces of silver. Let it ease your memory of all that you have undergone here, let it set everything right for you.

Sarah is now an independently wealthy woman. Compare: the four hundred pieces (shekel) of silver that Abraham ends up spending to buy the Cave of Machpelah is approximately equivalent to a quarter million dollars in today’s terms. Thus, Sara’s thousand pieces from Abimelech may be something on the order of six or seven hundred thousand dollars. A tidy sum for a woman to tuck away for a rainy day. And my question is: what happens to the money? A thousand pieces of silver do not just disappear.

If this Parasha is “about” anything, it is about the institution of prayer. Abraham’s Servant is the first person to pray for an outcome. Fortunately for him, his prayer is answered, and answered so immediately that ChaZaL refer to it as the single greatest prayer in all TaNaCh.

First, let us clarify a bit of Rabbinic revisionism.
Why are the Rabbis so bent on identifying Abraham’s servant with the figure of Eliezer? Eliezer is introduced in Abraham’s response (Resigned? Pathetic? Sarcastic?) at the beginning of the Covenant Between the Pieces, in Parashat Lech Lecha. At 15:2 Abram (his name will be changed in the course of this very scene) asks G-d” “what will you give me? And I continue childless. And the administrator of my household is Demeseq Eliezer.” The appelation is generally understood to mean Damascus, and translations call his Eliezer of Damascus. But the root of the word – Mem, Sin, Quf – is the same as the word translated in most versions (wrongly, it would seem) as “possessor” – ben-mesheq. Rashi says it means “administrator,” but it also carries meanings of Caretaker, Steward, and can generally mean a servant or slave. In the historical setting of the Abraham narrative, it was common for slaves to be legally taken into their families. Slaves could be made inheritors – could, in fact, be designated to receive the lot of the firstborn. Slaves were also married to their owners, or in other ways given legal status as family members. Thus, it is a normal response on Abram’s part to wonder aloud whether G-d merely intends for him to adopt Eliezer. Biologically, this would make sense – at Sarai’s and Abram’s advanced age – and we have already seen that the surrogacy of Lot was not a satisfactory father-soon relationship.

And so, not Eliezer. Throughout our Parasha, the Slave is not named. Rather, he is referred to repeatedly as Abraham’s Servant. Servant, Slave, take your pick, for the word carries both meanings equally.

And, as he is sub-servient to Abraham, so his relationship with G-d is on a lower level than his master’s. The Servant prays for an outcome. This is the first instance of prayer in the sense of bakashat tzrachim- asking to have one’s needs fulfilled. And it is answered immediately.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe says the Servant’s prayer was answered before he even finished it, to show that Rivka’s approach was actually not as an answer to the prayer – for G-d does not work in those ways. But the Rabbis in general accord to this prayer the single highest place in human history – the prayer that was answered while still on the lips of its speaker.

Which gives us a new insight into why the Servant repeats the entire story. Because our prayer – Tefillah – is made up of three parts: Praise, Requests, and Praises and Thanksgiving. The central blessings of the Amidah, the standard weekday prayer, are known as bakashat tzrachim – asking to have one’s needs fulfilled. They are also known as rachamei – the Mercies that G-d shows us.
Why do we ask for the same codified list of gifts? And why do we repeat this liturgy three times a day? Why not change, as our needs change? As our moods change?

One principal reason is that we are not asking for blessings. Though they do retain their character of Request, these central blessings are more Acknowledgements of G-d’s gifts. Gifts, if not to us, then to someone. If not to us now, then at some point in our lives. The Requests are all phrased in the plural. Clearly, we are not merely asking for our personal needs to be met. It is, rather, one of the principal attitudes of Judaism that, if the needs of Klal Israel are met, then our personal needs are satisfied.

And so we repeat the same blessings every day by way of acknowledging G-d’s beneficence. In another sense, each of the blessings is not even a request, not even an acknowledgement. It is, quite simply, another name of G-d. G-d is The One Who Is Gracious In Forgiveness. G-d is The One Who Heals The Sick. G-d is The One Who Rebuilds Jerusalem, The One Who Causes Salvation To Flourish. The One Who Hears Prayer.

And so the Servant’s retelling of his episode of prayer is, in a sense, the first real prayer, in the Jewish sense. Not his actual prayer, not his prayer spoken in the moments before Rivka approached. But, like Israel standing before the splitting of Yam Suf, he has witnessed the greatness of G-d’s mercy and bounty. And now, like us standing here so many thousands of years later, he recounts his experience, and that is the true origin of prayer. It takes a frightened person, a desperate person, a lazy person to ask G-d to intervene in the world. It takes a person of faith to retell the graciousness and generosity and mercifulness of G-d and make it as real in the retelling as it was in the moment. This, then, is the greatness of the Servant of Abraham. Less than Abraham – because, rather than accept G-d’s promises with silent faith, he asks G-d to intercede and make his task successful. But perhaps more than Abraham, too, because he took a principle from his experience and built a liturgy around it.

Abraham is revered as the great believer. As Kierkegaard calls him, “The Knight of Faith.” But how much faith does one require when one speaks daily and directly with G-d? Indeed, it was G-d who initiated the dialogue. The Servant, though, has learned well from his master. Faith is not “I believe something because G-d has told me.” Faith is, rather, “I know that G-d has always come through, and even though I have never seen G-d, G-d has never spoken to me, I have never experienced a miracle, still I know that G-d will see me through this moment. That whatever happens, it is what G-d wants.”

O Slave of Abraham! O true Knight of Faith!

In the Gemara in Shabbat – 30a – G-d tells David HaMelech that he will die on Shabbat. In the scene that ensues, David first asks to die on Sunday, and then on Friday. In responding to David’s request that he die one day later, G-d replies that it has already been ordained that the kingship of Shlomo is to begin that Motzaei Shabbat – at the end of Shabbat – and there can be no transfer of kingship while David remains alive. In response to David’s second request, to die a day earlier, G-d quotes David’s own words back to him. Taking the line from Tehillim 84:11, G-d says to David, “’For a day in your courts is better than a thousand.’ Better for me a single day where you sit and engage in Torah than the thousand offerings your son Shlomo is destined to offer before me upon the altar.”

G-d is telling David – “Was it not you who said ‘for a day in your courts is better than a thousand’? Was it not you who so adored, so clung to every moment of this relationship?” The Gemara is explained, in that David wanted Israel to be able to have the national experience of a full royal burial, which would not have been permitted had he died on Shabbat, for it was prohibited to keep the dead overnight in Jerusalem. Indeed, when, a few lines further, the Gemara recounts the scene of David’s death, Shlomo goes to Beit Din and asks to be permitted to move his father’s corpse, which is lying in the hot sun. He must place a loaf of bread upon the corpse, thereby making it into a bosis – a Halachic carrier for something permitted. Only then may he move it into the shade. But Shlomo must not take care of his father’s body, for it is Shabbat. In the same breath, the Beit Din commands Shlomo to feed the palace dogs.

Better is one day in the presence of G-d than ‘elef´- than a Thousand.

The first occurrence of the word ‘elef in all TaNaCh comes at the moment Abimelech talls Sarah “I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver.”

David lives before G-d. Like Abraham, he enjoys a close personal relationship with G-d. Unlike Abraham, G-d stays by David’s side almost to his final breath. Sarah’s Thousand Pieces of Silver represent several things: they are worldly wealth, and therefore they are comfort and independence. They cover up her shame, foremost before her husband – so dismissive is Abimelech of Abraham, so disdainful of his treatment of Sarah, that he does not even call him her Husband, even after it has been revealed. “I gave your brother a thousand pieces of silver,” he tells her – and the joke, and the disgrace, is upon Abraham. “Here,” Abimelech tells her. “They are yours.” It is a grand gesture of apology.

And what do they mean now, Sarah’s thousand pieces of silver? We never hear of them again. Perhaps Sarah merely keeps them, locked away in some private casket in her tent. From time to time, she takes out the box and opens it, and she sits and stares at this great material wealth that was given her in a moment of extreme need. That, when she needed her own personal salvation, the Hand of G-d worked a private, personal miracle for Sarah through the generous hand of Avimelech.

David knows the secret of Sarah’s silver. The thousand pieces of silver are her own prayer, her own ongoing acknowledgement that G-d cares deeply for each of us. That, at certain rare moments, we experience this care and love in the profoundest and most powerful way. And the rest of the time – we must remember. We must recount. We must rely.

Remember G-d’s mercies. Recount G-d’s mercies. Thank G-d for every miracle, even if today they are not visibly granted to us.

Yours for a better world.