A Taste of Torah in honor of Shabbat
from Rabbi Avi Weiss

Parshat Hayei Sarah
November 13-14, 1998 / 25 Heshvan 5759

FOR  MY REBBE RAV SHLOMO CARLEBACH
ON HIS FOURTH YAHRZEIT

As he buys a burial plot for his wife Sarah, Avraham (Abraham) identifies himself as a ger toshav. (Genesis 23:4)   The term is enigmatic.  Ger means alien while toshav means resident.  How could Avraham be both?

On a simple level, Avraham tells the children of Heth that he came to their community as a stranger, but now has settled in.   Alternatively, the Midrash interprets Avraham declaring: I am prepared to conduct myself as a stranger and pay for the burial plot.  If, however, you rebuff me I will take it as a citizen who already owns the land that God had promised to the Jewish people.

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchick sees it differently.  For him, Avraham is defining the status of the Jew living amongst foreigners.  No matter how comfortable a Jew may feel among others, in the end, the Jew is a stranger and is viewed as different by his neighbors.

Another thought comes to mind.  Avraham was a very successful man.  He introduced the revolutionary idea of monotheism-and, indeed is chosen to be the father of the Jewish nation.  Still, as he buries his wife, he emotionally cries out that as accomplished as he may be, in the end he is vulnerable, with glaring weaknesses and frailties-just like everyone else.  Hence, ger toshav encapsulates the human condition.  As much as a person is a toshav, a "resident " in control of life, in the same breath one is a ger, a "stranger" - here one day and gone the next.

Commenting on the verse recited every Friday night which speaks of the rivers clapping hands and the trees dancing, (Psalms 98:5) Rav Shlomo Carlebach whose fourth yahrzeit (anniversary of death) was just celebrated, said:

"You know beautiful friends, the way we are living. One day I'm so good, the next day I'm in the lowest dumps….I want you to know nature is very real. When a tree sees I'm happy, the tree says,'hey, wait till I see you tomorrow.' One day I say I'm so holy, then the rivers will say 'wait till tomorrow.'…One day  the whole world will be good forever.  One day there'll be joy forever.

So every Friday night when we receive Shabbos, I'm crying, I'm begging, Master of the world, [like the rivers and trees] let it be forever, let it be for real….Let us hear the great trumpet [that will announce the eternal Shabbos], let us hear the greatest message, from now on everything good and holy will be forever."

But until that time, in the words of Rav Shlomo, "nothing lasts forever."

All joy, says the Talmud, must be tempered with trembling. (Berakhot 30b)  We are all, in the words of Avraham, a ger toshav.  Such is the way of the world.

SHABBAT SHALOM

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Rabbi Avi Weiss, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale
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