More than a real estate transaction, Avraham's purchase of a burial plot for Sarah was an act of true love.
Chayei Sarah 5770 / November 14, 2009
Melanie and I have a running dispute between us. It is one of those disagreements that reveals a fundamental differences in our personalities and outlooks. The disagreement is over the practice of re-gifting. Come on, I know you’ve all done it. Someone has given you a gift and you’ve looked at it and said, “that’s nice, but I don’t really want it.” So you put it in the closet and, in a pinch, you’ve turned around and given it to someone else. Johnny Carson famously joked that there is really only one fruitcake in the world that gets re-gifted over and over again. Some people have closets full of presents they plan to re-gift.
Melanie doesn’t really like re-gifting. She says it’s impersonal. I, on the other hand, rationalize it with Talmudic logic: If someone gives you a gift, it becomes you’re property. If it is your property, then it is yours to dispose of as you wish. What difference is there in an item you bought and an item you received as a gift? It’s value is no different. Therefore, there is no difference in giving someone something you bought and giving someone something you received as a gift. Besides, perhaps the person you give it to would appreciate it more than you do… after all, recycling is very popular these days.
Now, while I think that re-gifting is generally ok, I do agree with Melanie that there are moments in life when gift giving is more than a social obligation. If it were your child’s wedding, if it were your wedding anniversary, you wouldn’t go rummaging in your re-gifting closet. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be authentic and it wouldn’t be the genuine expression of love that is called for.
This week’s Torah portion opens with the death of our matriarch Sarah. At the age of 127, Sarah dies in Hevron and Avraham seeks out an appropriate burial plot for his wife. And the Torah goes into a great deal of detail in describing how Avraham went about acquiring this plot of land. Avraham approaches members of the Hittite tribe that occupied that region and asks them for some place to bury his wife. One Hittite, Ephron, steps forward and offers to give Avraham the cave of Machpelah that is at the edge of his property. But, Avraham insists on purchasing the land at full price. This is remarkable because Avraham already had a claim to the land. After all, God had promised him and his descendents the entire land of Israel. The Creator of heaven and earth, the Master of the entire universe, the ultimate owner of the everything, who can dispose of his property in any way He sees fit, already gave this land to Avraham. But, Avraham does not make that claim, nor does he accept the gift from Ephron, but instead he insists on purchasing the land.
Many of the traditional interpretations of the Torah comment that Avraham purchased the cave of Machpellah, and did not receive it as a gift, in order to establish legal residency in the land God had promised him. That may be true; but equally true, I think, is a deeper and more emotional reason. In our tradition, the burial of the dead is referred to as Hesed Shel Emet – an act of the truest kindness, it is the ultimate act of love. In fact, Hesed Shel Emet is a sacred duty – a mitzvah that is incumbent on all of us. That is why, everyone who attends a funeral participates in placing earth on the grave. I’ve always wondered what non-Jews must think when they see us line up to take our turn shoveling. To an outsider, it might seem morbid. But it is anything but morbid. It is an act of kindness and respect. It is called Hesed Shel Emet – true love – because it is an act of kindness that can never be repaid. It is an act that a person can never do for themselves, and for which we can never hope to receive any thanks.
Thus the story of the acquisition of the Machpelah is not simply a real estate transaction. On a deeper level it is a lesson in love. By purchasing the burial plot for his wife, Avraham expresses his love for Sarah. It isn’t good enough to give Sarah the land that was gifted to him. True love means giving what is intimately yours. True love can’t be re-gifted. That is, by the way, also the reason why a groom must own the ring he gives his bride. One of the lessons we learn from this parsha is that a true gift of love has to mean something to you. It has to cost you something… It has to be something that comes from your very being. It is a poignant lesson that the first Jewish acquisition of land in Israel was an act of love between two people.
It is perhaps a painful irony that the first piece of property our people owned in the Land of Israel was a burial plot, but I don’t think it is surprising at all. Wherever Jews have gone in our history we have expressed these values. If you look into the history of Jewish migration you will find an interesting pattern. One of the first things Jewish communities do when they migrate to a new place is establish a cemetery and a hevre-kadisha (a burial society). The cemetery is often the oldest Jewish institution in a town – even older than its synagogues. This fact speaks to the values that we hold. How we care for our dead, is an indicator of what we value in life.
The other lesson we learn from Avraham’s behavior is what we also learn from Shir Ha’Shirim (the Song of Songs) when it says, “love is as strong as death” (8:6). Judaism isn’t clear on what happens to us after we die, but Judaism does teach very clearly that the bonds of love don’t end with death. Avraham’s lesson is that love doesn’t die with the passing of our bodies. We all know this to be true from our own lives.
God did indeed promise us the Land of Israel and the Torah’s emphasis on the purchase of the cave of Machpellah makes a legal claim to it, but this Torah portion also teaches us that God’s truest gift to us is a soul that doesn’t die and a heart that does not cease to love.
