Dvar Torah on Parshat Chayei Sarah

Over the past week or so, my wife Iris and I have had a difficult decision to make. Our 15-year-old son, Sruli, has a class trip scheduled for this Shabbat, on which we read the portion of Chayeh Sarah. In Israel, this Shabbat is fraught with political implications; it is in this parsha that Abraham buys a plot of land in Hevron (often spelled 'Hebron'), on which stands the cave called 'ma'arat hamachpela'. It is there that he buries his wife, Sarah. Ever since the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel took possession of Hevron along with the rest of Judea and Samaria, this Shabbat has been celebrated as 'Shabbat Hevron' by the Jewish settlers in Hevron and nearby Kiryat Arba and their supporters, to commemorate and underscore the historical Jewish presence in the city. Many schools and individuals visit the area for Shabbat, praying in the building - parts of which were built by King Herod over 2000 years ago - which stands above the cave in which, according to tradition, Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah are all buried. Sruli's school, which, like almost all Orthodox schools in Israel, is fairly right-wing politically, wants to take his class to Hevron this Shabbat. Our main concern, of course, is for Sruli's safety; there has been a lot of shooting in and around Hevron during this past year of Palestinian terror. People have been killed there, including, tragically, the infant Shalhevet Pass, shot by an Arab sniper while in her father's arms. Hevron, in fact, has always been a tough town for Arab-Jewish interaction. A Jewish community has been there, subject to Christian and Muslim oppression and, at times, expulsion, since biblical times. It was decimated by a massacre in 1929, perpetrated by Arabs. Jews finally evacuated the town during the Arab riots of 1936, and only returned in the aftermath of the Six Day War. I, myself, never comfortable there, have been in Hevron only some five or six times. Our other concern is a political one; how do we feel about our son showing his support for a Jewish presence in the area, especially at this difficult time? Do Jews belong in Hevron? Does it make any sense to insist on our rights to live there, as ancient, hallowed, and iron-clad as they may be, in the face of a large, hostile, Arab majority, which has also been living there for centuries? Do we want our son to identify with the settlers of Hevron, who are among the most radical and intransigent of all Israelis when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict? On the other hand, dare we, in all good conscience, simply forgo those rights, and bring to an end over 3000 years of Jewish history in Hevron? And then, of course, there is the basic parenting question - whose decision is it anyway? In the parsha, when Abraham comes to the local Hittite dignitaries, seeking a plot of land on which to bury his just-deceased wife, he introduces himself in the following way: "I am a stranger and a sojourner among you; give me possession of a burial-place among you and I will bury my dead from before me" (Genesis, 27,4). Many of the traditional commentaries note the double language - "a stranger and a sojourner" - which Abraham uses to introduce and explain himself. Most of them (Rashi, Rashbam, Radak, and others) say that, on a basic 'pshat' level, what he means is "I have come from a far-away land ('stranger') and have chosen to live among you here ('sojourner')." Rashi adds an interpretation from the Midrash Rabbah, a collection of Talmudic-period commentary on the Bible. According to this interpretation, Abraham means the following: "If you like, I can be a stranger ('ger' in the original Hebrew), and seek your permission to purchase some of your land for the purpose of burying my wife. However, if you refuse me this request, I can be a sojourner ('toshav'), a local, a full-fledged resident, and take the plot by right, based on God's promise to me that 'to your descendants I will give this land'" (Genesis, 12,7). It would seem that Abraham was grappling with questions not unlike the ones that Sruli and his poor parents are faced with. Who does this land belong to? How do I behave towards the other people here, who are clearly in possession of the land? How and when do I exercise what I believe to be my rights to the land? Abraham's strategy for dealing with these questions, according to the Midrash, is a complex, nuanced one. First, he turns the tables, and gives the local Hittites the opportunity to determine his answer. "If", he says, "you agree to treat me REASONABLY as a stranger, by selling me land when I need it, then I am willing to be a stranger, recognizing your basic right to the land, and my dependence on your good will. But, if you show no good will, and will not extend to me this basic human courtesy, then I have no choice but to exercise my own rights to the land, whether you like it or not". It is clear that Abraham prefers the first option - he offers it first, and, ultimately, even though he is charged an apparently exorbitant price for the plot, this is the path which he ends up following, and purchases the land for 400 shekels from Ephron the Hittite. Secondly, this approach recognizes the possibility of different outcomes, different realities, rather than only one, simple truth. Abraham refuses to lock into one or another understanding of how these competing rights should be resolved. Rather, he adopts a situational approach. Although God has promised him the land, there are other people living there, and he does not allow God's promise to blind him to that fact and its moral and practical implications. Nor, on the other hand, does he forget God's promise. It is there, in the background as it were, giving him the support he needs in dealing with the local inhabitants, and a kind of fall-back position if his negotiations with them go sour. This duality, this balance, this willingness to recognize the other's rights to the land, as well as my own rights, and to unilaterally exercise my rights only when forced to, when negotiation has failed, is at work in a number of interactions between Abraham and his children and the local Canaanite tribes. Although I think it is wrong to draw exact parallels between Abraham and the Hittites (or any other biblical story) on the one hand, and Israeli-Palestinian relations on the other, I feel that we, here in Israel, must learn from Abraham's approach, as understood here by the Rabbis in the Midrash. I think that an honest assessment of what has happened in the Middle East during the past 100 years or so indicates that the Zionist movement has, by and large, been faithful to Abraham's legacy, and has tried to compromise, again and again, with the Arabs who live in this area. I know that there are those who disagree, and I readily admit that Israel has perhaps not always fully lived up to Abraham's example. I would like to hope that the horrible violence that we are now in the middle of will not make it impossible, some time in the future, to again adopt, perhaps more successfully than in the past, Abraham's model as our own. It looks like Sruli will be going to Hevron this Shabbat. It's what he wants to do, and we are guaranteed by the school that they will only take the kids to 'safe places' (where in the world might those be?). But, most importantly, I have the sense that, unlike some of the settlers in Hevron, and others, Sruli is a student of Abraham. He knows that, although we have rights in Hevron, others do as well, and he is trying to figure out what that means. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Shimon Felix