Hayyei Sarah (Midrash)

“And God blessed Abraham with ‘all’”

The opening verse of Genesis 24—the somewhat long-winded narrative describing how Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac—is the occasion for a midrash which is a prime example of how the Rabbis derived a multitude of meanings from a single word. Genesis Rabbah 59.7:

“And the Lord blessed Abraham with all” [Gen 24:1]. Rabbi Yehudah and R. Nehemiah [discussed this verse]. Rabbi Yehudah said: that he gave him a female [i.e., a daughter]. R. Nehemiah said to him: [Even] regarding the main thing of the king’s household [i.e., his wife] blessing is not written! Rather: “And the Lord blessed Abraham with all” —that he did not give him a daughter at all.

This midrash was prompted by the seemingly innocuous word bakol, “with all.” Precisely because this term is so comprehensive and all inclusive, there is the feeling that it says at once everything and nothing. The medieval Bible commentator Moses Nahmanides (Ramban) indeed interprets this phrase as meaning “wealth, property, honor, long life, children—all of a person’s desire,” so that the only thing found lacking in his life was a suitable match for his son Yitzhak. This he then set out to find, making this verse a suitable introduction to this chapter. The Rabbis were not satisfied with such an answer (nor, as we shall see later, was Ramban), and sought a more specific, focused meaning for “all.”

Since there are those who perceive a family with only sons or only daughters as somehow incomplete (just as a man or a woman are incomplete without a mate), it was only natural that R. Judah should seek the specific significance of “All” in a veiled allusion to an otherwise unmentioned daughter of Abraham. R. Nehemiah’s contrary answer may be read as a cynical, misogynist remark. There were certainly those among the Sages who saw the existence of woman, and by extension the whole business of sexuality that their presence in the world implies, as a kind of necessary evil. But Mirkin makes the interesting comment that this is not necessarily the case here; reading the midrashic corpus as a whole, one finds that R. Nehemiah simply liked arguing with R. Judah, and disagreed with almost everything he said “on principle.” Alternatively, this may be a worldly-wise remark on the difficulties of raising daughters and marrying them off (come back in another ten years for my opinion on this)—especially for Abraham, living in the pagan milieu of Canaan with a paucity of suitable hatanim (bridegrooms).

Ramban cites the parallel to this midrash from Baba Batra 16b (where the discussants are R. Meir and R. Judah), which includes the view of “others” that he had a daughter whose name was Bakol, that he had preternatural powers of divination, or that he had a magical healing stone he wore around his neck. He then adds a mystical answer, borrowed from Sefer ha-Bahir, that Abraham had a special connection to the Divine attribute known as bat—a symbol for Malkhut, or Shekhinah, that represents the ingathering of all blessings. We continue:

R. Levi said three things: “With all”—that He gave him control over his Urge. “With all”—that Ishmael repented during his lifetime. “With all”—that his treasury (kilarin) lacked for naught. R. Levi in the name of R. Hama said: “With all”—that He did not test him any more.

R. Levi adds several more areas in which Abraham was especially blessed—these represent problematic areas with which he was preoccupied. First—and this seems a perennial concern of Hazal generally—the battle to control his own instinctive impulses, i.e., his sexuality. The implication is that, as successful as a person’s life may be in terms of external circumstances, if he does not succeed in exercising control over his own chaotic impulses, if he is inwardly divided, his life is bound to unhappy. Second, he was concerned with his wayward son Ishmael; elsewhere in the Midrash (Gen. Rab. 30.4; 38.12) we are told that both Terah, Abraham’s father, and Ishmael his son ultimately returned to the righteous path. Thus, Abraham would not remain a kind of righteous “sandwich” between two generations of pagan, but his family would join him in his religious journey. Third, that his bank account was not diminished by the expense of Sarah’s burial, the subject that immediately precedes this verse. Finally, he was assured [somehow] that the Akedah would be his final test, and that he would not have to endure an endless sequence of ongoing trials.

A Tale of a Pious Donkey

Further along in this chapter, the text makes a passing reference to the unhitching and feeding of the animals in Eliezer’s caravan. This provides the Midrash with the pretext to relate a marvelous story about a certain donkey (like the above midrash, also parallel to a story in the Talmud). Genesis Rabbah 60. 8:

“And the man went to the house and he ungirded the camels” [Gen 24:32]. He unhitched their muzzles. R. Hunna said: R. Jeremiah asked Rabi Hiyya bar Rabba: were not the camels of Father Abraham similar to the donkey of R. Pinhas ben Yair?

The tradition reads the word hitir (here translated “ungirded”), that probably relates to removing the burden, saddles, and other travelling gear of the camels, as referring to the muzzles they had worn during the long journey to prevent them from grazing in the fields of others on the way, which would constitute a kind of theft. The midrash asks a rather strange question: why did they wear muzzles in the first place? Why don’t we assume that animals belonging to a righteous person such as Abraham would automatically behave in a modest and righteous way, similar to the legendary donkey of the tanna R. Pinhas b. Yair (who was particularly known for his piety and scrupulous conduct in all matters)? It then proceeds to relate the story:

R. Pinhas ben Yair’s donkey was once taken by thieves. He spent three days with them and did not taste anything. They said to one another: “In the end he will die and stink up the cave; let us return him to his owner.” So they sent him and he ascended to his master’s house. Once he drew near he brayed and they identified his voice. They said: “Open [the gate] for that poor [animal] and give him something to eat, for three days have passed and he has not tasted anything.” They give him barley, and he did not touch it. They said to him [to R. Pinhas b. Yair]: ”Rabbi, we gave him barley and he did not touch it.” He said to them: “Did you fix it” [i.e., separate terumot ve-ma’asrot, heave offerings and tithes]? They said to him: “Yes.” “Did you separate demai” [i.e., doubtful things]? They said: “But has not our rabbi taught us: ‘One who takes feed for an animal, or flour [to cure] skins, or oil for the lamp or oil with which to cure vessels, are exempt from demai’ [m. Demai 1.3]”? He said to them: “What can we do, and he is strict with himself?!”

Not only did this donkey have ethical scruples about not eating stolen goods, but he was also meticulous about laws of terumot and ma’asrot—the numerous regulations pertaining to the separation of certain portions of all produce grown on the Land of Israel to the priests and Levites—and was even a mahmir?, refusing to use the dispensation given to animals vis-a-vis the rule of demai (the rule requiring that foodstuffs originating from the amei ha-aretz, the ignorant class of people, about whose status we are uncertain, need to be “fixed” a second time).

R. Jeremiah sent R. Zeira a basket (kartalos) of figs. R. Jeremiah said to himself: Is it conceivable that R. Zeira would eat them without fixing them? R. Zeira said to himself: Is it conceivable that R. Jeremiah would send something without fixing them? Between one thing and another, the figs were eaten in an un-fixed state. The next day R. Jeremiah saw R. Zeira and asked him: Did you fix those figs? He replied: No.

R. Abba b. Zamina said in the name of R. Zeira: If the former ones were like angels, we are human beings; and if they were like human beings, we are like donkeys—and not like the donkey of R. Pinhas ben Yair. R Pinhas ben Yair’s donkey was given un-tithed barley and he did not eat it, and we ate un-tithed figs.

Our story continues with an amusing, somewhat embarrassing story in which a gift sent from one prominent sage to another became a stumbling block, each one relying on the other to perform the action needed to render it kosher. R. Zeira himself, with considerable chagrin, tells the story on himself, including the invidious comparison between himself and R. Pinhas’s donkey.

What are we to make of this curious story? How did the donkey know that the food placed in front of him had not had its tithes separated? The assumption seems to be that the animal knew what was kosher or not through some sixth sense, making the story rather reminiscent of that of Bilaam’s ass, who perceived the spiritual entity of the angel more clearly than did his master.

On another level, this little story throws into question some of our basic assumptions about the nature of halakha. Rav Soloveitchik, in his famous essay Halakhic Man and elsewhere, describes Halakha as a kind of conceptual order, a set of concepts superimposed upon physical reality, like mathematics or theoretical physics. But other schools of Jewish thought, especially those influenced by Kabbalah, see halakhic categories, especially those relating to forbidden things, as reflecting innate qualities of the objects in question, a kind of metaphysical reality felt even by an animal. (But Maharsh”a, in his comments on the Talmudic parallel to this story in Hullin 7a-b, gives a more rationalistic explanation: to wit, that God miraculously prevented the donkey from eating that which his master would ordinarily be prohibited to give him, not that the donkey himself understood what was going on.)

On yet another plane, A. J. Heschel speaks of aggadah as concerning itself with the meta-values implicit in halakha. A story such as this, ascribing meticulous piety to the animal of a pious man, may be read as a celebration of Jewish piety as a kind of universal value, applicable even to the animal kingdom, communicated even by proximity to a holy man.

Our midrash continues, confronting the question as to why the Torah troubles to discuss such seemingly trivial and mundane matters as the feeding of livestock:

“And he gave straw and provender to the camels” [ibid.]. Said R. Aha: The conversation of the servants of the patriarchs are more beloved than the Torah of the sons. The chapter of Eliezer takes two or three pages, and even repeats itself over and over; while the sheretz (the law concerning creeping things) is a basic rule of the Torah, yet [the law] that its blood renders things impure in the same way as does its flesh is only inferred from an added nuance (ribui) in the Scripture. R. Simeon bar Yohai said: [it is derived from the use of the definite article]—“impure,” “the impure” [hatamei; Lev 11:29]. R. Eliezer b. Yossi said: [it is derived from the conjunction]—“this,” “and this” [vezeh; ibid.).

The prolixity of the Torah in describing these mundane matters contrasts dramatically with the spare, even minimalistic language used to convey some basic halakhic rules, even though the latter are required for everyday religious observance. In this case, a certain rule concerning ritual impurity is derived by the Rabbis from a subtle turn of language: a ribui, an added definite article or conjunction which does not serve an absolutely necessary syntactic function in the sacred text. The basis for using such inference is the axiom that every word, nay, every letter of the Torah is holy, and is placed there for some purpose—e.g., to infer those laws which are not explicitly stated.

Beyond that, what is meant by the saying, “The conversation of the servants of the patriarchs are more beloved than the Torah of the sons”? The Rabbis were struck by the contrast between the economy with which the Torah expresses itself in many of its legal chapters, and the expansive nature of this chapter, which goes into great detail about seeming trivia. Perhaps the underlying idea is that the area of mundane, everyday life is of great importance, and of equal or even greater importance than that realm which is regulated by specific, well-defined laws. The Torah wants to teach us something here about proper behavior in everyday situations—feeding animals, ordinary conversation, respect and deference in conversation, doing business—through the lives of the patriarchs. These values are illustrated, not by dictating laws, but by example. The chapter represents a kind of gestalt, describing how a Jew ought to behave in those areas that cannot be codified into “do”s and “don’t”s.

More on “The Discourse of the Servants of the Patriarchs”

Last week we commented on the midrashic saying that, “The discourse of the servants of the patriarchs is more beloved than the Torah of the sons.” During the course of that Shabbat, I happened upon a discussion of the same topic in Or Gedalyahu, a collection of talks by Rabbi Gedalyah Schorr, ztz”l, late rosh yeshiva at Torah ve-Da’at in New York City. In general, Rav Schorr’s book is an interesting amalgam of Lithuanian Yeshiva-type Musar and Hasidism, by which he was deeply affected. In this discussion, he clearly articulates the issues involved in this saying, albeit I do not agree with his conclusions.

The central idea is that the patriarchs, when engaged in ordinary, mundane activities, performed yihudim, mystical acts of unification that affected heavenly realms—if you wish, religious work within the world itself. During the age prior to the revelation at Sinai, there was a different type of religious milieu than prevailed later. A Kabbalistic motif has it that Isaac and Jacob, by digging wells or arranging the sticks in front of the watering troughs, accomplished the same spiritual end as we, in a later age, accomplish through, e.g., donning tzitzit or tefillin. Rav Schorr even provides a cautious, theoretical justification for a kind of religious pluralism, acknowledging that, “There are many different paths to God, but those outside of Torah are dangerous.” After Sinai, the only valid path is one of involvement in Torah, and especially Torah study.

The path of the ancients spoken of here is analogous to the avodah begashmiyut (“service through corporeality”) of Hasidim, which sought to sanctify the everyday. Arthur Green has devoted an entire book, Devotion and Commandment, to exploring this motif. Martin Buber, whose approach has more than once been described as “Abrahamic,“ adamantly rejected established religious forms and structures in favor of direct encounter and dialogue with the Divine command in the world—a pre-Sinaitic Judaism. It seems to me that much of the current appeal of Mei Shiloah, the Izhbitzer’s book so beloved by Shlomo Carlebach, lies in its emphasis on seeking to know and perform “the Divine will”—imperatives of an existential, personal, situational nature, derived from a trans-halakhic realm. Of course, this also involves a certain element of risk, in that one never knows for sure what the “Divine will” really is; there is a feeling among many that that way lies anarchy.

I see this issue as lying at the crux of many of the problems facing us today. We see today a resurgent, strict Orthodoxy that bastions itself more and more behind social fences and halakhic stringencies separating it from the world. On the other hand, there those that advocate a pluralistic, syncretistic Judaism radically open to the world—but often only tenuously related to the discipline of halakhah. The great challenge for our generation is to create a vibrant, authentic synthesis of both—of the mundane, world sanctifying conversation of the patriarchs, and the tradition-rooted Torah of the children.