Torah Study Blog

Torah Study this week was led by Rabbi Janet Roberts

This week’s Torah portion is called, in English, the Life of Sarah. Ironically, the first thing that happens in the portion is that Sarah dies. Several chapters earlier and with guidance from God, Abraham and Sarah left their ancestral home on a journey. Along the way, Abraham’s savvy dealings with kings and military successes enabled him to accumulate wealth. The Torah portion finds Abraham living in Canaan, in land controlled by the Hittite tribe. When Sarah dies, Abraham needed to find a place to bury her.

The story of Abraham is set roughly in the 18th century BCE, when polytheism was the norm. Different tribes worshipped different gods and they also controlled their own tribal lands. Abraham, as a resident alien, had no rights to bury his people in the Hittite land.

Abraham requested to be able to buy land to bury Sarah. Although Abraham is an outsider, it is obvious that he has been successful in life and the Hittites acknowledged that Abraham is the “elect” of his God. They offered that any Hittite would be willing to allow Abraham to bury his dead with theirs. But Abraham insisted that he wanted to make a purchase.

One Hittite agreeed to sell to Abraham a piece of his land in Machpelah, near Mamre. Today that location is in the West Bank, and the site is marked by a building which is considered by some Jews to be the second holiest site in the world (after the Temple). Some Jews use the biblical story of Abraham buying that land as evidence that Jews have an absolute right to be in Israel. But that is a political discussion that we did not get into.

Rabbi Roberts led us on a discussion of tribalism. We may look at the politics in the United States today and see clear instances of tribalism. But this biblical tale is all about tribalism.

There are a number of Jews today that are concerned about the assimilation of the Jewish people into the wider community. They worry that, if modern Jews lose their sense of identity to Judaism, in the long run Jews will cease to exist as a separate people.

Separation is the key in this Abraham story. Abraham worried that, if Sarah was buried among the Hittites, she would be just another body among their dead. By keeping Sarah’s body separate, Abraham was able to indicate that his tribe is different. Also, Abraham would be able to dictate what types of actions would be appropriate on his land, near the dead of his tribe.

Although the Bible verses are set in the 18th century BCE, scholars do not believe that was when they were written. They believe the Abraham stories are allegorical to show who the Israelite people are, how they came to be, and why they are different. But not just different – better!

Scholars believe that the Israelites did not come from somewhere else and conquer the land. Scholars believe that the tribes of Israelite people coalesced in place. In order to make their story compelling, and something that people would be excited to rally around, stories were created about their fictional founding. Part of this founding shows how the Israelites are separate.

The Israelite people are not like the Canaanites. The Israelites are new, and good. The Canaanite are heathens. They don’t worship the right god and their customs are abhorrent. They are other – they are not us.

Social psychology reveals that people feel the biggest threats from those people who are most similar to you. Archaeology and other historical research has shown that the Canaanites were not really very different from the Israelites. The main difference was in the name of the god that they worshipped. But those differences, however minor, are what forms the basis of tribalism. Even today, Judaism is more than a religion. It is an identity. It is tribal.

To bring it back to what we see in the news today, we see that in many cases there is more animosity today between democratic Americans and republican Americans than there is between Americans and people from a different county.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Roberts taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter