Last Shabbat, I watched from a classroom window as a police car drove through the synagogue parking lot. I walked to the other side of the room, to see if it would stop or continue around the building, and felt relieved when it continued driving, deciding that it must be a friendly occasional drive-through visit. A few minutes later, I understood why it was there. As the children built the welcoming tents of Abraham and Sarah out of graham crackers, parents started whispering about Pittsburgh. I was shaken by the news, or the bits of it that we had heard. I suspect that it will be a morning that is burned into my long-term memory in detail. Yet, with children present, and a celebration in the community, very little was said. The morning went on largely as it would have otherwise. I gently moved the children out of the front lobby, and kept closer watch over them than I typically do in a place that normally feels like safest of spaces, and saved the rest for after Shabbat.
This has been a painful and unsettling week for most of us, as it has for Jewish communities around the world, as we are reminded that even in this country, built on the values of freedom and brotherhood, a country that has been a golden land of safety and opportunity for Jews, anti-Semitism continues to be a part of our society, and that we may be targeted for our simple existence. That the shooting in Pittsburgh occurred within the walls of a synagogue, a Jewish building that should be open, welcoming, and safe, makes it all the more difficult to comprehend. The Hebrew term, hilul hashem, means a desecration of God’s name, an act that diminishes God’s being in this world. Last Shabbat, when a gunman walked into a place of worship and started shooting, he diminished God’s being in this world, and ended eleven lives before their time. Many of the victims were grandparents and great-grandparents. There had been fullness in their lives, but they had more living to do, more lives to impact, more wisdom and kindness to pass on. Each represented a perfect image of the divine. Their deaths are a hilul hashem, and the survivors are left with a hole in the fabric of their lives, and the responsibility to bury their dead.
As our parsha begins this week, we are faced with the death of our first Matriarch, Sarah. Like the list of names in the news this week, we’re given Sarah’s age at her death, one hundred years and twenty years and seven years. Sarah, too, lived a long life, accomplished great things, and left a legacy to be continued. Yet the opening verse of parshat chayei sarah is somehow abrupt. This verse is the first mention of Sarah’s death, and there is no sign in the previous verses that it is coming. We are not given a summary of her accomplishments, of her lineage as we sometimes find leading up to the death of a biblical figure. All we get is this accounting of the years, in an unusual form, emphasizing each magnitude of years. It almost seems the Torah is in shock at her death.
A well known midrash attributes Sarah’s death to shock. At the end of the last parsha, Abraham brings Isaac to a mountain, at God’s behest, prepared to offer him as a sacrifice, and God steps in at the last moment to stop him, accepting a ram in Isaac’s stead. Though the story teaches us that God values human life and does not desire our death, in the midrash, Sarah hears only part of the story. The midrash teaches that the Satan, the heavenly accuser, tells Sarah that Abraham took Isaac up a mountain to offer him as a sacrifice. Sarah, hearing this, lets out a cry like the shofar, and with this cry, her soul leaves her. Sarah, who has devoted her life to a mission, together with her husband, of bringing God’s vision to the world, and passing that legacy to their child and his children, can not endure hearing this news. What would the sacrifice of Isaac mean for the mission, for Abraham as a leader, for God as the ultimate source of justice and kindness? The part of the story that Sarah receives diminishes God’s presence in the world. It is a hilul hashem, and it kills her.
Abraham, returning home, is faced with Sarah’s death, and is left to figure out what to do next. I imagine Abraham, having survived a traumatic experience, coming home to find that his partner in life, and in the project that will become the Jewish people, is no longer with him. His immediate need is to bury his dead and to mourn, but at the same time, he must be grappling with his place in the world now, without Sarah. Without the sense of home that comes from sharing a dwelling place with family, Abraham must also be wondering how he knows that he belongs in the place he has lived for many years.
In the next verses, Abraham sets out to acquire a burial plot, seemingly dealing with his most immediate need. But the bargaining session that follows is a puzzling one. Abraham goes to the people of the land and, identifying himself as a stranger among them, asks to buy a burial plot. The people answer him kindly, telling him he may bury his dead in any of their burial sites. Abraham continues to ask to buy a site for himself, the cave of Machpelah, at full price. The owner of the cave offers it to Abraham at no cost, but Abraham continues to insist on full payment. When the owner persists, asking, “what’s a matter of four hundred shekels between us?” Abraham pays, and finally buries Sarah.
The classical commentators understand this exchange as a critical moment in the history of the Jewish people. Though God has promised this land to Abraham, he still feels like a stranger, and the people of the land see him that way as well. I would argue that his sense of mission and belonging are shaken by Sarah’s sudden, perhaps untimely, death. He needs an indisputable claim on this place to feel secure, and to continue on in this moment. After all, he and Sarah were going to pass this on to their children and their children’s children together, and now it is just him and Isaac. And so, before Abraham can attend to his private mourning, he needs to secure his legitimate sense of belonging in his home.
I think of our fellow Jews in Pittsburgh this week, struggling with their personal loss, fear, shock and sorrow, needing most of all to bury their dead. Yet at the same time, the Jewish community of the world, and Americans of all faiths who value life and liberty are most acutely aware of the direct attack that this massacre represents on the sense of belonging of Jews, along with other minorities, in the United States, and are flocking to Pittsburgh, physically and through social media, to stand up for that sense of belonging. The Jewish Federation has asked people to stop coming, to let people mourn, to wait to hear what they can do that will be genuinely helpful.
The victims of the Pittsburgh shooting were part of the backbone of the community. They were the ones who show up, who welcome, who care for others. Their loss, like Sarah’s, leaves a hole in the fabric of the community and its mission. The community of Pittsburgh will need many things, including to stand up and assert that they belong here, but right now they need to bury their dead. Unlike in Abraham’s time, there are Jews around the country and around the world, Jews who can begin to repair the tear in the integrity of our Jewish and American society.
In parshat chayei sarah, Abraham turns from burying Sarah to seeking out a wife for Isaac, so that Isaac can continue the mission of his parents’ partnership with God. He sends his servant to seek out a woman in Charan, the place Abraham and Sarah left to come to Canaan. The servant finds Rebecca, a woman who embodies kindness, courage, and strength, a woman who values the mission of Abraham and Sarah. When Isaac and Rebecca are married, they enter Sarah’s tent, and there is comfort. Healing begins.
As a people, shaken, threatened, challenged in our belonging, we heal by recommitting to our values, and to our community. Many of us gathered this week in vigils, including the intimate vigil of our parents, teachers, and a few students one morning at school, to assert the power of community, and our commitment to support one another. Jews and people of many faiths joined together around the country, and continue to do so. The Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee are encouraging people to come together this Shabbat for “Solidarity Shabbat”, inviting those who might not be in synagogue every Shabbat to go this week, to stand in community.
Before sending the students who joined our school vigil to their homerooms, I told them this. The most powerful response we can have to those who would try to harm us may be to continue to come together in community, to refuse to give in to fear, to sit, stand and live as brothers and sisters. We concluded with the words of psalm 133, words I will leave you with as we move into this solidarity shabbat. Hiney mah tov umah na’im, shevet achim gam yachad. How good and how pleasant it is to live together in brotherhood and sisterhood.
May we all be blessed to draw on the wellsprings of community and to feel the good that comes of our living, sitting, and standing together as brothers and sisters, as Jews and as Americans, as people who stand in awe and love of the divine image that suffuses all of humanity.
Shabbat Shalom.