STAM
TORAH
PARSHAS
CHAYEI SARAH 5779
“THRIVING
WITH DIFFERENCES”[1]
Rav Chaim
Brisker[2] once
quipped to his students, “I don’t want you to learn and to think the way I
learn and think. I want you to develop your own way of thinking and learning.”
The
disciples of Rav Chaim include some of the most prominent scholars whose Talmudic
exegesis are reverentially studied and taught in the hallowed halls of yeshivas
the world over. That list includes Rav Shimon Shkop zt’l[3], Rav
Baruch Ber Lebowitz zt’l[4], Rav
Naftali Trop zt’l[5],
Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer zt’l[6], and
Rav Elchonon Wasserman zt’l hy’d[7], to
name a few.
They all learned
Torah from Rav Chaim. Yet each forged his own unique pathway and methodology of
Talmudic learning and Torah outlook.[8]
Rav Avrohom Pam
zt’l would relate a schmooze[9]
based on the week’s parsha each week in Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. It was known that
the schmooze before Parshas Chayei Sarah was always about shidduchim[10].
The parsha which contains Eliezer’s search to find a worthy wife for Yitzchok, and
his finding Rivka who subsequently married Yitzchak[11],
is a most worthy time to speak about marriage and promoting marital harmony.
My rebbe, Rabbi
Mordechai Finkleman, notes that when he first moved to Boro Park many decades
ago, each Shabbos morning as he walked to shul with his children, they would
hear the church bells ringing. On Saturday the non-Jews would celebrate
weddings.
These days however,
the church bells are quiet. It’s not because there are less non-Jews living in
the surrounding areas. Rather sadly, people are choosing not to get married.
They don’t feel the need to overburden themselves with the commitment and
responsibilities that marriage imposes, and they would rather live together
like cats and mice.
The challenge of
marriage is that it is literally the merging of two different worlds. The very
title of the New York Times bestseller speaks volumes: “Men are from Mars;
women are from Venus.”[12]
The pasuk says, “Yitzchok then brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother,
and she was for him for a wife, and he loved her, and Yitzchok was consoled
after his mother.”[13]
Yitzchok was the
paragon of the attribute of justice. He lived with the sense of intense awe of
G-d that he felt when he was laid upon the altar at the akeidah throughout his
life. Rivkah, on the other hand, was the paragon of chesed. The kindness she
displayed for Eliezer and his camels was incredible, demonstrating her
incredible selflessness.
Their marriage was
the fusion of two opposite attributes. It reflects the ultimate ideal of
marriage – the synergy of two different personalities with the common goal of
building a home that promotes kiddush shem shomayim.
When Avrohom Avinu
begged Hashem for children he said, “Hashem, my G-d, what will you give me when
I am childless and the one in charge of my household is Damesek Eliezer?
Behold, to me you have not granted offspring, and behold the steward of my home
will inherit me.”[14]
The gemara[15]
explains that he was called Damesek Eliezer because he was ‘doleh
umashkeh – drew and irrigated’ from the Torah of his master Avrohom. In
other words, Eliezer transmitted the lessons of Avrohom to the masses.
The commentators
ask that here Avrohom was pleading his case before G-d that all he has in life
is Eliezer. If he wanted to demonstrate how unfulfilled his life was, it
wouldn’t seem to be a good time to relate the praise of Eliezer. Why would
Avrohom refer to Eliezer as Damesek which alludes to his scholarship and
teachings at this time?
The Me’or Vashemesh
explains that Avrohom’s complaint was that Eliezer taught exactly what Avrohom
taught. There was no novelty or added insight or perspective. Avrohom wanted a
child who would forge his own path in serving Hashem, who would seek his own
unique connection with Torah, and wouldn’t just repeat whatever he was taught.
Yitzchak indeed
fulfilled that dream. His approach to serving Hashem was starkly different from
that of Avrohom. Each are called Avinu – our patriarch, for each invested in
their progeny a different vital modality in the service of G-d. The same was
true with Yaakov Avinu.
This also explains
why the masses who learned from Avrohom seemed to fade into oblivion. After
Avrohom’s death they are never mentioned again. They may have learned
faithfully from Avrohom, but they never sought to internalize his teachings and
develop them within themselves. Sadly, as soon as Avrohom was no longer there,
they lost their spiritual standing.
Our goal in raising
children is not to produce machine-like people who do as we did, and faithfully
go through the motions. We seek to cultivate and develop within our children a
deep connection with Hashem based on the unique capabilities and personalities
that Hashem invested in them.
As the end of their
forty-year sojourns in the desert approached, Moshe Rabbineu, knowing that he
would not lead the nation into Eretz Yisroel, requested that Hashem help him
appoint a worthy successor. “Moshe spoke to Hashem saying: Let Hashem, the G-d
of spirit for all flesh, appoint a man over the assembly. Who will go out
before them and come before them… and the assembly of Hashem should not be like
sheep without a shepherd.”[16]
Commenting on this
verse, the Medrash discusses a law connected to it: “A halacha – if one saw a
multitude of Jewish people he says – Blessed are you Hashem… sage of the
secrets. For just as their faces are not similar to one another, so are their
thoughts not identical to one another. Rather, each one has his own thoughts…
for the individual spirit of each and every person. You know that this is so,
because Moshe asked of the Holy One, blessed is He, before his death saying
before him, “Master of the Universe! The thoughts of each and every individual
are revealed and known before You. You know that the thoughts of children are
not similar to one another. Thus, when I depart from them, I beg of You,
appoint over them a leader who will bear each and every individual according to
that individuals’ way of thinking…”
Hashem created
every person with a unique DNA. No two people have the same faces or
fingerprints. Rav Dovid Povarsky zt’l explained that the fact that each person
is physically different is to symbolize that each person’s soul is unique, and
therefore the way every person thinks and views the world is different as well.
Moshe implored
Hashem to seek out a leader who could relate to the individual personalities
and needs of each person, and yet to fuse them together and relate to them as a
nation as well.
Our society is
facing an insidious danger. It is the result of the proliferation of reliance
on the web and social media that is rapidly deepening the divide in western
society.
In the words of
Rabbi Jonathon Sacks: “When we rely exclusively on smartphones, algorithms and
filters, we find ourselves fed with the news we want to hear, interpreted in a
way that confirms our prejudices. This fragments society into a series of sects
of the like-minded, and as Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has shown, when
we associate exclusively with people who share our views, we become ever more
extreme…
“The “selfie”
culture is harming us… Hyper-individualism has had its day. We need a new code
of shared responsibility for the common good.”[17]
America was founded
on the principles of democracy. For a democracy to flourish, dialogue is one of
its most important components. That is the only way for every opinion to be
heard and counted. When dialogue is stifled because of inability to understand
or even listen to another perspective, the whole basis of democracy is in
jeopardy.
The Jewish people’s
strength lies in our ability to unite. It is incumbent upon us to forge and promote
national unity. We need not agree[18],
but we need to love! We are a nation composed of many views and strong
opinions. Moshe Rabbeinu prayed for a leader who could unite all of those
differences for the greater good.
The strength of a
good marriage, of a kehillah, and ultimately of Klal Yisroel, lies in our
ability to synergize our greatness, and respect the contribution of every one
of our fellow Jews.
“The one in charge
of my household is Damesek Eliezer”
“Yitzchok brought
her into the tent and he loved her”
Rabbi Dani Staum,
LMSW
Rebbe/Guidance
Counselor – Heichal HaTorah
Principal – Ohr
Naftoli- New Windsor
[1] The following
is the lecture I delivered in Kehillas Zichron Yaakov, Shabbos Kodesh Chayei
Sarah 5778
[2] 1853-1918, Rav
of Brisk, author Chiddushei Rabbeinu Chaim
[3] 1860-1939,
Rosh Yeshiva in Grodno, author of Sha’arei Yoshor and Chiddushei Reb Shimon
[4] 1862-1939,
Rosh Yeshiva of Kaminetz, author of Birchas Shmuel and Chiddushei Reb Baruch
Ber
[5] 1871-1928,
Rosh Yeshiva of Radin, author of Chiddushei HaGarnat
[6] 1870-1953,
Rosh Yeshiva of Etz Chaim, author of Even Haezel
[7] 1874-1941,
Rosh Yeshiva of Baranovitch, author of Kovetz Shiurim
[8] She’ifos p.
284
[9] Inspirational
discourse
[10] Lit. matches,
a reference to marriage
[11] The end of the
parsha also relates Avrohom’s second marriage to Keturah
[12] Or as I once
heard someone quip, in our circles the title should be, “Men are from Lakewood;
women are from Flatbush”
[13] Bereishis
24:67
[14] Bereishis
15:2-3
[15] Yoma 28b
[17] Rabbi J.
Sacks, The Sunday Telegraph, November
5, 2017
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