”CHAYYE SARAH”: Genesis 23:1 to 25:18.

The Torah is a book of mysteries. Characters come, characters go, we learn a great deal about a few days in someone’s life and almost nothing about the rest; plot lines are left unfinished, subplots unravel. There are repetitions that don’t quite repeat and motifs that are worked to death. One is tempted to say it is like a first draft which needs a good Editor, if not indeed an entire editorial team, in order to hammer it into a coherent narrative. I am not the first to notice this, and the entire corpus of Midrash is a collective rabbinic attempt over centuries to fill some of the gaps and find partial answers to some of the questions.

So: In Genesis 22:19, after the dramatic incident known as the ”Akedat Yitzhak”, the binding and near-sacrifice of his surviving son, Abraham descends once more from the mountain he had ascended together with Yitzhak, seemingly alone, he rejoins his two servant boys who had been left holding the donkey, and he returns to Beersheva, a place which had been named in 21:31 as a symbol of a peace treaty between this wandering Beduin and the Pelishtim. In 21:33 he even plants a tree here and calls upon God, then continues to live in what is........

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