The hour of the drawers of water

There is something profound about those who are able to dig below, beneath the surface, beneath the expected.

By BETH KISSILEFF
Art by Pepe Fainberg (photo credit: PEPE FAINBERG)
Art by Pepe Fainberg
(photo credit: PEPE FAINBERG)
PARASHAT CHAYEI Sarah instructs us how to retain valuable things in our lives even after loss, how to grieve and how to adapt to change.
Isaac is the first person in the Bible who accepts comfort after the death of another (Gen. 24:67). By contrast, Jacob will later refuse all comfort for the son he is led to believe is no longer alive.
What enables us to receive comfort after loss? Our portion mentions the life of Sarah, not once but twice in the same verse. “And it was that the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, these are the years of the life of Sarah.” Our sages emphasize that we learn from here about how to properly eulogize a person, by emphasizing what makes him or her unique and by highlighting in the details of “one hundred years and twenty years and seven years,” that each feature of this life had something special.
By contrast, when Abraham dies at the end of this parasha, he is buried by his sons Isaac and Ishmael at the cave of Machpelah along with Sarah, but no mention is made of a eulogy. Perhaps Isaac is still hurting from the sting of his father’s almost sacrifice? Interestingly, immediately after his father’s death Isaac goes to a well, Be’er Lehai Roi, where he first met Rebecca, the well which an angel had revealed to Abraham’s first wife Hagar, banished on Sarah’s initiative. (Gen. 24:62) Isaac is deliberately choosing, after the death of his father, to identify and connect with Hagar I believe that speaking of who Sarah was and how she behaved, what qualities made her unique and a leader, alongside her husband, created a guidepost for the future. By reciting her virtues and committing themselves to them, her family memorialized her and established what initiatives and ideals she would want them to continue. By having such a strong sense of who Sarah was as an individual, Abraham and all his household knew what qualities would be needed in Isaac’s future wife. In sending his servant to find her, Abraham doesn’t instruct him as to his preferred criteria for a daughter-in-law. As we will see, he did not have to.
The servant has his camels outside the city kneeling down “at the time of evening, the time of the going out of the female drawers of water.” (Gen. 24:11) Rabbi Saadia Gaon comments on this, “at the time women go out to draw up.” Though I’ve read this verse many times I had never noticed this before. In Hebrew “sho’avot” “women who draw up water” is one word. There is something profound about those who are able to dig below, beneath the surface, beneath the expected, and find water. The servant, as a long time resident of Abraham’s household, knew Sarah well and had heard the eulogy. He therefore knew what kind of test to apply in looking for her to allow Sarah’s values to continue. A woman who could go deep below the surface, both in kindness above and beyond the expected as well as in drawing water, would be an appropriate match. Rebecca fitted the bill.
Isaac, too, is a person willing to go beneath the surface to draw things up. The wells he unearths later are those of his father that have become stopped up with dirt. In the next section of Genesis, though, there is a famine in the land. God appears to Isaac in a dream and reminds him to remain where he is, in the land, unlike both Abraham and Jacob. When the wells are blocked, Isaac not only uncovers them but “he called them names like the names that his father had called them.” (Gen. 26: 18) Though Isaac’s mother is no longer physically present, he is able to find comfort after her death because he is aware of the power of the unseen, that what is on the surface is not all there is to reality.
Rebecca is not identical to Sarah: she grew up in the house of Laban, which embodied values different from those of Abraham and Sarah’s household. Yet she and Isaac are both drawers up, those who bring things to light that were not present earlier, in order to nourish others. Rebecca is able to comfort Isaac because in her, Isaac can see the line of his mother and her values, present beneath the surface.
The life of Sarah is thus the theme for this portion, her values and deeds run through it. She sustains others even after her death, like wells and those who draw water out of them.
Beth Kissileff is the author of the novel ‘Questioning Return’ and the editor of the anthology ‘Reading Genesis,’ which contains her longer essay on this portion. Visit her online at www.bethkissileff.com