chayei sarah
parashat chayei sarah, Genesis chapters 23—25
menu
and thoughts…
and thoughts…
I‘m a woman you think you know.
You reach back with your arm through the viscous matter of time
And pluck me out, pull me through, raise me up,
Exalt me, call me Mother, stand on my merit.
You should know, I made mistakes.
The yearning of my soul blinded my reason,
Caused me to forget that a man will be a man.
And so when I offered my husband another
Woman—my maid—to act in my stead and
Give us a son (as is custom among my people),
I did not mean for her to please him, yet she did.
I saw it in his face and in her face,
Her youthful and exotic face.
I saw it in the face of the child
That clung to her breast and to his leg.
She bore him for me, but he was not my son;
He was theirs.
And my heart broke a little every day
While my mouth kept silent.
Then strangers came.
I brought them food and while they ate
They spoke their prophesy and
I laughed.
I laughed for joy.
I laughed to think I would be exalted over
This slave who defied me.
I laughed because it was impossible,
Because just maybe it was possible.
And he returned to my bed, my husband did,
And my son, my good son, was born.
The years passed but there was no peace, it was
Unlivable, untenable.
I forced him to choose.
His God told him to
Do as I say and so he chose me;
He chose my son because
He chose his God.
But did he choose me because he wanted me?
I’d endured much through the years;
Her mockery and the mockery of her son,
His eye for her and her child, the name Sister
That he bestowed upon me.
And when she was gone
I knew he grieved,
But he was comforted by his invisible God, and
By my bed. He was a man.
We struggled as you struggle.
But we’d had good years.
I remember when we first met
Under the terebinth, each consumed by
The fire of the other’s power.
Many good years.
So I endured.
But this thing, This I could not endure.
Not from him. Not from his invisible God.
He chose, and he chose his God.
Hagar/Keturah
So, what shall we eat?
It wasn’t me he chose; he didn’t choose our son.
I’d listened to him argue - For fifty, for forty-five, for forty, for thirty, he argued for twenty, for ten,
Ten righteous souls to save a city.
And now he did not argue for one.
He didn’t argue for his own righteous one.
There’s a rumor going around.
Do you really think I died from shock?
Do you think I didn’t know my son lived?
I was called High Priestess before
He called me “wife.”
I knew.
And even though his God spared my son
I could not spare him.
I couldn’t look at his face.
And so I Ieft.
And his God left him, too, I am told
Ever after speaking to him only through
The Messengers.
I died among my own.
It was under the terebinth
While I was resting for a moment and
I flew away among the birds
Who had been resting for a moment
On it’s branches, and then rose suddenly
As one.
And when I died, he came to weep for me,
To bury me and to mourn.
He grieved.
He went on.
He married again. More sons.
So I’m told—I’d stopped watching.
But when his time came at last to sleep in the dust,
To become dust
My son returned him to me;
Her son and mine laid him beside me.
My good son, whom you exalt with him
And with me.
Now, you struggle as we struggled.
You stand on our merit as we rest upon yours.
We are your parents, yes, but we are also
Your children.
We are one.
Our sinews are braided to yours across eons.
And together, from generation
To generation, we recreate ourselves
Again and again,
Uncountable
As the stars of the heavens,
As the seeds of the terebinth
As the dust of the earth, shimmering
Blue in the coldness of space.
Life is complicated. Human beings are complicated. The human heart is complicated.
Each of us is unique; we each have our own path for every aspect of living, and that includes love.
I once read that it’s rare that one will meet one’s soul mate in any given lifetime, and if one does, the energy between them is likely to be so intense that they can’t manage to stay together. I think that may be true, sometimes.
Some people have it easy in love. They meet someone, fall in love, marry, and they’re still in love with each other fifty years later. Some endure an unhappy marriage for a lifetime. Others have to suffer multiple heartbreaks before finding their perfect mate. Some never do.
But is there one perfect mate for each of us, or are there multiple people that we could potentially have a good and happy life with? Maybe the answer is yes, and yes. Maybe the answer isn’t the same for everyone. Again, we each have our own path and the needs and lessons our souls need in order to grow are individual.
It’s possible to love truly more than once. Hearts expand—there’s always room for another to enter without pushing out someone who’s already taken up residence there. That’s the beautiful thing about love.
Sometimes, in one lifetime there are several people that you’re meant to be with, each of them another step on your journey, meant to bring certain things to your life in a particular time and to be released when that life chapter concludes.
Like I said, it’s not a formula set in stone. It’s different for each of us.
Sarah was the love of Abraham’s youth and he truly loved her with all of his heart.
As Sarah’s maid, he never really paid attention to Hagar or gave her any thought, but once Sarah gave Hagar to him and they got to know each other, Abraham fell in love with her.
Life is challenging enough with one partner, and that, I imagine, was true even before polygamy was forbidden. It couldn’t possibly work with Sarah and Hagar as sister-wives. One of them had to go, and Sarah was his destiny…for a time. When Sarah died, Abraham grieved deeply. But, as my grandma used to say, life is for the living. After the time of mourning had passed, his heart was free to seek out Hagar, who he’d never stopped loving.
Hagar also had her own path. She was an Egyptian princess. She was a slave. Her life had never been her own. And, she was a pagan. For the sake of her journey, she had to be cast out by Sarah.
Once she was sent away, she was free to discover her own identity, to grow in ways she couldn’t possibly have done under the control of others. By the next time we encounter her in the reading, she has found her strength and become her own person. No longer Hagar, she is now called Keturah. By the next time we meet her, she’d embraced the One God. She truly was not the same person she’d been, hence she needed to have a new name. She’d grown, become less selfish, less haughty. Through hardship, she discovered humility. She’d become a righteous person.
When she was given to Abraham, she didn’t have a choice. She she didn’t have the agency to refuse. She was property and meant to be used as such. This may well be why she hung on to her pagan ways—her religion was the last vestige of her old life as a princess in Egypt. But once on her own, she was free to explore, to learn, and to choose.
When Abraham returned to her after the death of Sarah, Keturah could have turned him down, but she didn’t. She’d truly come to love him in the time they’d spent together and through the passage of years, that hadn’t changed. This time, Keturah chose to marry Abraham. For her, it was a dream come true.
And for him, the opportunity to return to her was also a dream come true. She was the love of his old age. How wonderful to have been given the gift of a great love, twice!
menu for chayei Sarah
shabbat shalom!
All thoughts expressed here are strictly my own unless otherwise stated, and are subject to flights of fancy.
There will only be two of us for Shabbat dinner this week, so I’m keeping it very simple…a nice challah and a one dish meal that is both soup and entrée. The color of love is pink. Sounds like salmon. Two pieces each, one for each of Abraham’s loves. We’re going to borrow some ingredients from Thai cooking this week, to make a warm and comforting coconut milk curry—is it a sauce or a soup?—with braised vegetables and rice. I could have made it really easy and added the salmon right into the same pot and let it cook with the vegetables, but I love crispy skin salmon, so I’m making it separately in a pan and will add it on top before serving.
Chayei sarah
THE LIFE OF SARAH ?
Strangely, the parasha entitled “The Life of Sarah” begins with her death. It then tells the story of Abraham’s life from that moment until his own death. It recounts the love story of Isaac and Rebecca, and then finishes with the progeny of Ishmael.
So where is Sarah in the only parasha in the Torah that is named for a woman?
Perhaps she’s hiding.
Maybe we should look beneath the terebinth tree. Or behind the tapestries on the walls of her tent, the magic of which comes alive once more, only when Rebecca enters.
Maybe we should look in the mirror, look deeply into our own eyes. I bet we’ll find her there.