Chayei Sarah
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Parashat Chayei Sarah, read on Shabbat Chayei Sarah — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
After Sarah dies, Avraham sends his servant to find a wife for Yitzchak. The servant returns with Rivkah. The verse closes with a quietly beautiful line: Yitzchak brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he loved her, and he was comforted after his mother's death. The Sages, picking up on the verse's emphasis on the tent, teach: while Sarah lived, three signs of divine presence rested on the tent — a candle that burned from one Shabbat eve to the next, dough that was blessed, a cloud that hovered over the entrance. With her death, all three ceased. When Rivkah entered the tent, all three returned. Hirsch, with characteristic precision, says the teaching is unmistakable. Marriage in Israel is the renewal of the home as a place where the Divine Presence chooses to dwell. Every Jewish marriage is the lighting of a candle that, with care, burns from one Shabbat to the next.
Of the three signs the Sages name — the lit candle, the blessed dough, the cloud at the entrance — which one most clearly lives in our home? Which one is most quiet?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.