I’ve told a
number of you in this room tonight about how Clara and I met and came to be
married. We were both working at a youth
camp in Texas, and the director sent me with the car to pick her up at the
Austin Airport. Although the sidewalk in
front of the arrivals terminal was crowded with weary travelers, I somehow
instinctively picked her out from the crowd.
One day soon after we were kidding
around with the camp rabbi, who told a funny story about spending Rosh Hashanah
with the Sephardim. I turned to Clara
and asked her: “Are you Sephardi?” knowing that the answer was ‘yes.’ When she confirmed it, I told her: “Okay, I’m
coming to your house for Rosh Hashanah.”
And she said: “Welcome.”
After we left camp, I was home in
Florida at my parents’ home waiting for my day to fly to Israel. Clara rang me to make sure that I was indeed
planning to come to her house. And then,
when I was staying with her, I left the apartment on an errand whilst she was
cleaning house, and she made a joke about ‘the man going out while the wife
cleans.’ It was only a joke, but when
she said it, I suddenly and inexplicably had a clear vision: This is the woman I’m supposed to
marry. And the rest, as they say, is
history.
Why do I tell you this tonight? Only because this week’s Torah portion
includes the narrative of how Isaac, the son of Abraham came to marry Rebecca, Abraham’s
grand-niece through his brother, Nahor. There
are some common elements that weave through his narrative and mine.
Abraham does not want Isaac to marry one of the local Canaanite
girls. So he sends his trusted servant Eliezer,
back to Haran, the place where Abraham’s family had been living when he
received his calling from G-d. The
servant, when entering the city prays to G-d for success in his mission. And how will he know the girl who is fated to
marry his master’s son? Eliezer’s prayer
is that he will approach the communal well, and the girl who offers him to
drink and to water his camels as well, will be the one.
The Torah describes what Eliezer seeks
as an act of chesed, extreme kindness.
It is what one would expect a kind soul to offer, if a traveler obviously
arriving from a long journey would approach a communal well for water. It is therefore easy to put Eliezer’s
decision in context. He is not trying to
second-guess G-d. He is only interested
in identifying a girl given to kindness, as he sees his master, Abraham as
being a kind man.
So Rebecca, daughter of Bethuel, offers
kindness to Eliezer. He gives the girl a
valuable gift and asks to meet her family.
He proposes the marriage and the girl’s parents agree, subject to the
girl’s acceptance. They ask her: “Will you go with this man?” And Rebecca
responds: “I will go.”
Rebecca has clarity that this proposed
marriage is what she’s supposed to do.
That it is her fate, her destiny.
She doesn’t get to meet, much less see Isaac before making her
decision. No more than Isaac is able to
lay eyes on Rebecca. And as we learn if
we read ahead a few verses in the text, when Eliezer and Rebecca arrive back in
Canaan Isaac is pleased with his bride.
It would be easy to use this narrative
to make an argument for the benefits of leaving marriage decisions, except for
the final ‘yea’ or ‘nae,’ to one’s parents.
Of course, to do so would make one sound as if protesting against our
age, where it is accepted orthodoxy that young adults are left alone to make
their own marriage choices. I think a
strong protest against the current age would not be a bad thing. Many of you in this room (or reading this) have
been disappointed by your children’s marriage choices. Or lack thereof, by their putting off
marriage until very late or altogether. Most
of you who withheld counsel did so because it’s not done today. But that’s not this evening’s lesson.
Rather, I want to talk about how each
of us has someone who is our beshert, our fated partner. Most of us are familiar with the concept of beshert.
It’s difficult to judge whether someone
has found, and accepted his beshert. After all, so many factors internal and
external contribute to our marital happiness, or lack thereof. On the other hand, it is not our place
to judge whether someone else has married his beshert. It is our responsibility to find and accept
our own beshert. If a trusted
friend or relative consults us, then we can help them to the extent possible to
make a good choice.
It isn’t our place to judge others’
choices, but it is all too easy to do so. If a person has achieved what could objectively
be called ‘happiness’ in marriage then the odds are that they have not found
their beshert, or chosen to ignore the evidence. If that describes someone you know, it is not
your job to criticize. It is your job to
encourage them to reach for the happiness that eludes them.
The Torah, through its lacunae, tells
us that Isaac and Rebecca achieved happiness.
Later events in the narrative of their intersected lives, show us that
even when they disagreed, they accepted the outcome of each other’s actions
with equanimity. Their marriage started
with the decisions of emissaries. And
they, the principals, being open to what their emissaries had discerned. It didn’t start with their filling out a
comprehensive personality profile. Or
going to one of the places where singles meet and greet. Or trusting others who, whilst being
well-meaning, were not using the right measures to advise them.
Once they were married, Isaac
and Rebecca knew they had acted according to G-d’s will. So when the aforementioned conflicts came up,
their marriage was not held hostage to the false, but popular notion that
marriage is supposed to be conflict-free. Instead, they approached their shared lives in
a spirit of acceptance of one another. How
important is that??! How many of us know
of someone who, facing a conflict with their life partner, reacted by cutting
and running? And did that bring them
happiness? I’m guessing not.
It’s hard to bring this message
without sounding judgmental, and I’m guessing that someone is hearing (or
reading) judgment in my words. But my
purpose is not to judge at all, or to second guess you or your decisions –
whether you are single, married, or divorced. Rather it is to convey the lesson that we are
not dependent upon our own limited vision, clouded as it often is by the
desires of our eyes, for making difficult life decisions. If we but accept that G-d indeed has a partner
in store for each one of us, and if we work to open ourselves to whom that partner
might be, we will have gone a long way towards finding the best perspective for
making our life’s decisions. In our
Torah reading this week, we are given an example of success in the latter that offers
an important illustration of this principle. Shabbat shalom.
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