Amber Langman – Year 10

Lachlan Corne – Year 10

Chayei Sarah

In an ironic twist, this week’s parashah, called Chayei Sarah, The Life of Sarah, begins with Avraham looking for a place to bury his beloved wife Sarah, who has just died. He finds a cave in Machpelah, an area we know as Hevron, and while initially offered it for free he purchases it from a man named Ephron.

He then sends his servant, Eliezer, to find a wife for his son Yitschak. Eliezer returns with Rivkah and she and Yitschak marry and fall in love.  Avraham dies at age 175 and his two sons, Yitschak and Yishmael bury him beside Sarah.

One might think that Sarah had a full life – after all she was married to Avraham and died at 127 years old. However, Sarah had some challenges in those years. She had to travel far away, faced a famine, was kidnapped twice, had difficulty conceiving and when she finally bore Yitschak, she saw Yishmael, the son of the Avraham’s mistress Hagar, as a bad influence on her son. Yet, the Torah suggests Sarah had a good life. Why is this so? It’s not because her life was problem-free and that she was happy all of the time – no one has a life like this. We think it is because of the way she looked at her life.

We all face challenges; how we perceive these challenges determines what our lives are going to be like. We are being told the way Sarah saw her troubles, how she reacted to the hardships. She looked at the glass as being half-full instead of half-empty and it’s because of this that she experienced a good life.

But wait there’s more – here are some other wise nuggets from this week’s parashah?

Lesson 1 – it’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts
When Avraham is searching for an appropriate burial place, he finds a seller, Ephron, who says he’ll give him the Cave of Machpelah free of charge! Ephron wants to be seen as generous and a man of kindness but then he charges Abraham 400 silver coins.

Ephron is portrayed as a man who likes to talk the talk but doesn’t like to walk the walk. In contrast, Avraham is portrayed as someone who says little but does much. He offers some men to join him for a ‘little drink and a morsel of bread” but instead cooks a meal fit for a king. Avraham shows us that we are to live our lives by talking a little and doing a lot. This is the Rabbinic maxim, “emor me-at ve-aseh harbeh”, “say little, do much,” or like Nike says, “Just do it”!

Lesson 2: Boundless loving-kindness

Avraham sends Eliezer, to find a suitable wife for his son Yitschak. How is Eliezer to know who would be a ‘suitable’ wife? He devises the ‘camel test’. At each stop, Eliezer asks a young girl for a sip of water, and if she offers to provide water for his camels too this would be the sign that she is the one!

Rivkah passes the ‘camel test’ with flying colours. She immediately gives Eliezer a drink, then draws water for all of his camels. She sees an opportunity to do something kind, and does it. She has one motivation – to give to someone else with kindness. That intense desire to reach out to others matches the profile of Avraham’s family.

Rivkah teaches us to take this goal of boundless loving-kindness and challenge ourselves with real, selfless commitment.

So next time your day is going badly, see if you can look at the glass as half-full rather than half-empty and, even better, go and do a random act of kindness just for the sake of it!