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Parshas Chayei Sarah - Disconnect!

By Rabbi Moshe Meiselman

Posted on 11/25/16

Parshas HaShavua Divrei Torah sponsored by
Dr. Shapsy Tajerstein, DPM - Podiatry Care.
(410) 788-6633

The story of Hagar stretches over three parshiyos. Hogor is one oth e many interesting personalities in Sefer Bereishis. Some aspects of her personality are in the Chumash, the rest of her story is filled out by midrashim. Hogor was the daughter of Pharaoh. When Avrohom and Soroh came down to Mitzrayim Pharaoh was so impressed with Soroh during her stay in the palace that he gave Soroh his own daughter to be her servant.


Avrohom Ovinu marries her once, and she runs away. She has Yishmael, and then she is thrown out of the house along with Yishmael due to Soroh’s concerns of their negative influence on Yitzchok. After Soroh dies in next week’s parsha, Avrohom remarries a woman called Keturoh, who is none other than Hogor! She is called Keturoh because here deeds were as pleasing as ketores and that she remained chaste ever since leaving Avrohom. She did not want to live with anyone else, knowing that they would not come to the level of Avrohom Ovinu.


After Soroh Imeinu died and Yitzchok married, Avrohom sought out Hogor to be reunited. They then had six more children together. But interestingly enough, none of those children were cabaple of carrying on the spiritual legacy of Avrohom Ovinu. Only Yitzchok achieved that level.This is puzzling because we see that Hogor was a great tzadekes and merited to be Avrohom’s wife not only out of necessity but also by choice.


What went wrong?


Another thing that we should notice is the fact that the Chumash consistently refers to Hogor as “ shifchoh Mitzris” or “Hogor Hamitzris”—Hogor the Egyptian slavewoman. She never loses that title. When Avrohom Ovinu sends her and Yishmael away, and they go off to live in the wilderness, Rash gives us a critical insight into Hogor’s mentality. When she is forced to sever her ties with the family of Avrohom Ovinu, she finds a wife for her son in Egypt. Rashi explains that Hogor went back to roots. This is the key to Hogor’s personality.


The Rambam in Pirush Hamishnayos discusses the dictum of Chazal that a convert to Judaism is like a newborn child. This is not just a poetic metaphor--the halacha tells us that a convert has no familial bonds with his biological family once he converts. His biological parents are not his parents anymore, his biological siblings aren’t his siblings anymore, and his biological children aren’t his children anymore. The Rambam explains this halacha with a powerful statement: The Jewish religion creates an absolute barrier between a Jew and a non-Jew. There cannot be any genuine bond with a non=Jew. Once a person converts, his whole identity changes and everything that was before is no longer. There are halachos of derech eretz and inheritance with a convert’s biological family miderabbonon, but the real bond is no longer extant.


When we read about the story of Rus and Orpoh who wanted to follow Nomi back to Eretz Yisroel after losing everything in Moav, we find two very different reactions to the tension of making a clean break with one’s past. Eglon the king of Moav merited to have two daughters who married into Elimelech’s family. They both initially wanted to follow, but Nomi succeeded in persuading Orpoh to go back to her roots. Rus was not persuaded. She also made a powerful statement about her new identity as a Jew. She said once she converted to Jusaism, that’s it. There is no turning back. She has no parents, she has no roots in Moav anymore. If that means she has to come to a foreign country and live like a pauper, scraping for leket just to put food in her mouth to survive, so be it. The most fundamental part of my identity is my Jewishness.


By contrast, Hogor never renounced her former identity. She never managed to make a clean break with her Egyptian roots. She may have been a great tzadekes and a ba’alas madreigoh, but she always remained that shifchoh mitzris—even while living with Avrohom Ovinu. Because she felt connected to those roots, she went to find an Egyptian wife for her son and could not give over that chinuch of Avrohom the Ivri; the one who separated himself from his birthplace and his father’s house to follow the will of Hashem wherever it would take him.


Avrohom was commanded to sever his ties with his origins in a very dramatic and absolute way. Avrohom and Soroh started their own legacy from scratch. Even though Avrohom and Yitzchok sought women with the special unique qualities of their own family to be the wives of their sons, the Jewish people were a brand new entity -- starting with Avrohom with no antecedents.


The story of Chanuka in reality, is a tragic story when you understand it in the terms of midrashei Chazal. The challenge to Yiddishkeit from Greece starts with Alexander the Great and his confrontation with Shimon Hatzaddik. The prophecies of Doniel reveal a great deal about Alexander the Great and his quest for world domination. He is a wild goring ram destroying everything in his path. He conquered the civilized world until India and spread Greek culture which dominated the intellectual world for many centuries. Chazal noticed this dramatic series of events and saw it through a Torah perspective to understand how Hashem is running the world to reach its ultimate goal.


Klal Yisroel came back to Eretz Yisroel to build the second Beis Hamikdosh, but the Anshei Keneses Hagedoloh were nervous. They understood all too well that the main cause of the Destrction was avodo zoro. The Ten Shevotim were exiled and became totally assimilated due to the ravages of avodo zoro. Now that they come back after a mere seventy years, perhaps the tragic mistakes will be repeated?


The Anshei Kneses Hagedoloh davened for two things.


They davened for Hashem to destroy the yetzer horo for avodo zoro. The reason the concept of avodo zoro is so foreign and removed from our comprehension is precisely because this prayer was answered. The gemara in Chullin describes people in Tanach who kept the entire Torah and all the mitzvos except for avodo zoro. Strange phenomenon.


They also davened that they will not build the second Beis Hamikdosh until Hashem reveals to them the secrets of Torah Sheba’al peh. In the first bayis, we had the full manifestation of the Schechinoh and Hashem’s presence was intimately felt in everyday life. They connected to Hashem through the ruach hakodesh of nevuoh and avodas Hashem in the Beis Hamikdosh. They knew that this would be missing with the second Beis Hamikdosh. So they davened that Klal Yisroel be given another method through which one could connect deeply to Hashem without nevuoh and without ruach hakodesh. It was now through Torah Sheba’al Peh. Hashem answered their tefilos and a total explosion of the development of Torah Sheba’al Peh ensued.


With the combined effects of both these developments—the eradication of avodo zoro and the flourishing of Torah Sheba’al Peh, the midrash says that the time had come for a global transformation. Bayis Sheini was set to be the example to the world of belief in Hashem and the truth of the Torah. They could shine that out to the entire world and Moshiach could come. But there was one problem, the civilized world was still deeply entrenched in avodo zoro and the the world was not ripe for such a spiritual revolution. Hashem’s plan was to allow Greek philosophy to first sweep over the world through the conquest of Alexander the Great who was a disciple of Aristotle. The purpose of Greek culture to first cause the crumbling of the old word order of avodo zoro and this would set the stage for Klal Yisroel to allow the truth of the Torah to shine forth to the world and bring the final geuloh.


But like all plans of Hashem for humanity, He can arrange the conditions, but people with their free will have to implement it. Indeed, Alexander succeeded in bringing Greek culture to the civilized world until the Far East. Until today, that part of the world has totally lost its connection to avodo zoro while the Far East has not. But there was a nisayon for Klal Yisroel to stay faithful to the truth of the Torah and not be similarly swept up by Greek culture along with the rest of the world.


The gemara says that when Alexander confronted Shimon Hatzaddik, he recognized that the Jews are different. The truth of the Torah produced a higher level human being than Greek culture could ever achieve. But Klal Yisroel themselves had difficulty keeping that recognition. This is the general nisayon of Klal Yisroel being in golus. We are surrounded by a dominant host culture that seems attractive and expedient. A Jew has to understand in a deep enough way the uniqueness of Torah and the specialness of Torah. Once this is internalized and you become a Ben Torah you can’t really have any serious connection or affinity to any other culture that isn’t based on Torah. Torah is our reality and identity and we are overwhelmed by its depth and its grandeur. It separates us from every other worldview. Comparing Torah ideology with any other popular ideology of the West should leave a Jew with the clear awareness that there is no competition here. Torah is so above and beyond any man-made system that there is just nothing there to be swayed by.


Had Klal Yisroel held on to the purity of the Torah while all the avodo zoros of the world collapsed, the message of the Torah would have shined forth to the world in a pure way and brought the ultimate tikkun haolam. But it didn’t work out that way. Klal Yisroel failed the test of Greek culture and began to adapt Greek culture to their Torah world-view. They corrupted the pure message of the Torah and Klal Yisroel failed to transform the world as it was intended to do. The historians calculate that during this period of widespread ideological upheaval 2,000 years ago, perhaps 20% of the non-Jewish world were attracted to Jusaism. They entertained various ideas of the Torah, but they couldn’t quite make the full break. If Klal Yisroel were themselves diluting the Torah message, then you can’t expect the recipient of that message to fare much better.


Noach was not successful in making a single ba’al teshuvoh during all those years he was building the Taivoh. It’s because he was simultaneously a ma’amin and not a full ma’amin that the Mabul was really coming. With that kind of lack of conviction, you aren’t going to win anybody over to your cause. It doesn’t work. Klal Yisroel were similarly projecting an incomplete message. When Christianity came on the scene after the Greek and Roman empire reached their peak and started to fade, it took advantage of the collapse of avodo zoro and the attraction of Torah but didn’t demand the full burden of a life of Torah and mitzvos. The Rambam writes that Christianity and Islam still serve as bridge-religions for the non-Jewish world to cross over from avodo zoro to the Torah which will ultimately pave the way for Moshiach to finally finish the job.


But the nisayon of Golus is always the same in every culture. What it means to be a Ben Torah is to understand that my identity and what I am all about comes from the Torah. Once you connect to the Torah that deeply, you feel cut off from every other source of identity and affiliation.


Hogor was a great tzadekes, but couldn’t bring herself to do what Rus was able to do. Rus came from the highest echelons of Moavi society. She was a princess—a daughter of the king. Hogor also came from the house of Pharaoh. She couldn’t disconnect. Rus was able to disconnect from her previous identity. This is a struggle for even frum Jews who find themselves in a non-Jewish culture.