This is the Parshah that was a source for my earliest perfidies ... Avraham “comes to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her” … ויבא אברהם לספוד לשרה ולבכתה. As a young Yeshiva boy, I noted the superscripted Kof in the word “and to cry for her” and commented on what I took to be a reference to Avraham’s inability to feel sadness and suggested to my Rabbis that this absence could be implicated in the troubles that fell upon his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I was sent home for my irreverent comments to spend two weeks thinking and eating “mama-kuchen,” as the head of the Yeshivah opined. What to say? I was a young putz. But, now, I’m an old putz and can think back on those days with a smile that only the old can have for the young and their loose tongues.
I had a Rabbi, once upon a time, who told us his students that if we wanted to know what was important in Yiddishkeit, look at what the people don’t emphasize. Wanna know what’s important? Look at what they pay less attention to. (Sad to learn years later that he spent his declining years in Israel avoiding extradition on pedophile charges.)
So, now, I look at the same Parsha and see what I ignored for so long … conversations … people talking with each other.
One of the differences between Breishis ... the Creation and Origins Saga of our People ... and the rest of Torah is the presence of dialogue in Breishis. The writers of the Mishnah were careful to separate הרהור ומעשה ... thoughts and deeds … הרהור לאו כמעשה … the Rabbis insisted, “a thought is not like a deed.” Still, speech is central in our view of the Good Life … Right Speech, as the Buddhists might say. So, for instance, in the Shachris prayers in our Siddur we mention the prohibitions against gossip from va'Yikrah … לא תלך רכיל בעמיך … “don’t go looselipped among your people.” We go on to ask God to protect us from עזי פנים ועזות פנים … … from arrogant speech and from the arrogant and in the לדוד בשנתו את טעמו לפני אבימלך psalm (34), the writer tells us how to live the Good Life … "stop your tongue from trashtalking and your lips from lying rumor." One might conclude that Jews believe in Freedom of Thought and Feeling but not Freedom for Unbridled Speech. Indeed, we end the Amidah with a prayer that many mumble thru … ~ "God, guard my tongue from speaking evil and my lips from speaking falsely … and, by the way, protect me from those who curse me with their words." On Yom Kippur, we beg forgiveness for sins committed in utterances from our lips, with harsh speech, through insincere confessions and through impure lips, in foolish speech, through verbal scorning and through evil talk, with idle chatter and through light-headedness and by gossip-mongering.
Indeed the Talmud in at least three places (Sotah 10, Brachos 43 and ?elsewhere?) offers: “It should be (more) pleasing for a person to toss themselves into the fiery furnace than to blanche the face of his friend publicly” … נוח לו לאדם שיפיל עצמו לתוך כבשן האש משילבין פני חבירו ברבים.
So what does Right-Speech look like?
This Parsha has three pretty lengthy conversations and I thought it appropriate to look at them … I won’t copy them, here … leave it for discussion, if any …
Gutte Shabbos, Amerika! …
We know what Bad Speech looks like, here in Herr Drumpf’s Amerika, but do Avraham, Ephron, Eliezer, Rivkah and Lavan represent Right Speech? We’ll see.
So, join me, if you like …
23.3-23.16 … a conversation between Avraham and the Chitites and Ephron the Chitite.
24.2-24.9 … a conversation between Abraham and Eliezer, the hireling matchmaker.
the third begins with the soto voce prayer of Eliezer 24.12-14 and
is followed by the conversations between Eliezer and Rivka, her Mother and Brother, Lavan.
24.17-24.60.
