Chayei Sarah 2020
In this week’s Torah portion, Chayeh Sarah, Avrohom’s wife has died. Avrohom buries her, and then sends his servant Eliezer to the eastern side of the Jordan River where Avrohom is from, to look for a wife for Yitzchak. Eliezer famously makes a deal with God, a sign by which he will know the right woman for Yitzchak (Genesis 24:12-):
“And he (Eliezer) said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham. Here I stand by the spring as the daughters of the townspeople come out to draw water. Let the maiden to whom I say, ‘Please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels’—let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. Thereby shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master.” He had scarcely finished speaking, when Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder. The maiden was very beautiful, a virgin whom no man had known. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up. The servant ran toward her and said, “Please, let me sip a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord,” she said, and she quickly lowered her jar upon her hand and let him drink. When she had let him drink his fill, she said, “I will also draw for your camels, until they finish drinking.””
Eliezer’s reliance on a sign from God seems like a faithful, religious act. On the other hand, Eliezer knows almost nothing about her. Though he does go to meet her family, it seems Rebecca’s offer to fetch water for him and the camels would have been enough for Eliezer to appoint her as the wife for Isaac. The Talmud, in fact, is quite disapproving of Eliezer’s sign, since there are several verses in the Torah which forbid divination, telling the future, or making decisions based on random signs, (Chulin 95b): “An omen which is not after the form pronounced by Eliezer, Abraham's servant, or by Jonathan the son of Saul, is not considered a divination.”
The Rambam codifies the preceding gemara as follows (Laws of Idolatry 11:4):
“It is forbidden to practice divination as the idolaters do, as it is said: "Nor shall ye use enchantment" (Lev. 19.26). How is divination practiced? For instance, those who say: "Seeing that the bread fell out of my mouth", or, "my cane fell out of my hand I shall not go to-day to that place, for if I do go, my desire will not be fulfilled; seeing that a fox passed by my right hand I shall not leave my door step to-day, for if I do leave a false person will encounter me"...So, too, is one who sets certain signs for himself to regulate his actions, saying: "If such a thing will come to pass I shall do that thing, but if it will not come to pass I shall not do it", even as Eliezer, Abraham's servant did. And so are all like practices of such things forbidden. And whosoever commits an act as a result of any one of such practices, is lashed.”
Some commentaries are extremely critical of the Rambam, such as the Raavad, who assumes what Eliezer did was permitted and perhaps laudable, since Eliezer is righteous and would not perform forbidden divination (not to mention that often in the Talmud we find Rabbis utilizing similar signs to Eliezer’s). Raavad concludes that Maimonides misread the Talmudic passage, and thinks that Maimonides’ conclusion is so egregious that he writes Maimonides actually deserves to be punished for it.
It is vital that our religious life not render us superstitious. We must follow the science of our times and make our life's decisions based on rationality, intuition and the Torah’s moral guidance. And yet, we must not dismiss the signs and wonders all around us, the subtle but ineluctable hints of the ineffable and the mystical which peek through in our lives. Though these may seem like an irrational basis for decisions, they are vital. If we ignore the mystical sense we have, or the subtle signs we intuit, and accept as our guide only a Spock-like rationality, we risk missing the forest for the trees. We are a nation which brings not only a message of morality and reason to the world, but one of mystical Presence and Divine guidance, -as Maimonides himself said, “one is not only obligated to believe that God created the world but that God guides it also.”
In these times of uncertainty in which we often lack control, we may find ourselves on either side of this equation- wanting to rely on superstition, or signs, rather than utilizing our reason and the guidance which science and medicine have to offer, or thinking only along the lines of science and reason, forgetting that God’s will, that the mystical, and that faith, play important roles in our lives as Jews. Hope in uncertain times such as these calls for much balance and integration of such fundamental extremes.
