Shabbat 6 November 2015 25 Cheshvan 5776

Shabbat Shalom,
As you have already heard my parasha is called
Chayei Sarah, which translates as the life of
Sarah. You can probably imagine my surprise
when in the very first paragraph of the portion I read
about her death.
If truth be told, the portion is not
actually about either Sarahs life or her death but
rather her family and what those who came after her
did to both honour and dishonour her memory.
As soon as Sarah dies, Abraham purchases the cave of Machpelah in Hebron as a
place to bury her. Then after the burial, Abraham sends his most reliable slave to
find Isaac a wife - not much time for morning but Abraham probably felt that his
growing family (now almost a tribe) needed a women to run the place.
When the messengers returned to Abraham they told him that they have found the
perfect wife for Isaac - his cousin Rebekah. kind of weird if you ask me, but let's
not go there.
Isaac then agreed to marry Rebekah and the parsha finally finishes when Abraham
dies and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael have come together after years of feuding
to bury their father with Sarah in the cave of Machpelah.
All in all, it is a pretty interesting Torah portion that would probably make a pretty
good TV show with all the fighting, drama and weird love stories. This would be the
biblical times version of keeping up with the Kardashians.
There really is a lot that I could have chosen to speak about today but ultimately the
part that interested me most was the final few verses when Isaac and Ishmael got
over their differences to do the right thing for their father. You see, I have never
buried a parent in a cave or had to marry my cousin but I do know a lot about
brothers fighting. Im kind of an expert in this area of Torah!
But before I tell you what I think about the brotherly conflict, lets take a moment to
put all our facts in order as it can get pretty confusing. It is also important to note that
this is neither the first or the last battle that takes place between brothers, so dont
get too excited Anda and Ollie.
Isaac and Ishmael fought for twenty years and their relationship faded away, their
families lived in a different city, they didnt talk and Isaac started all of that because
Abraham chose Isaac as his favourite son and treated him as the star of the family.

This is relatable to me as the middle child of the family. You

think your younger brother gets the most attention or when
your older brother gets the most respect and I stay in the
middle and get whatever is left. I can only imagine how
Ismael felt because he did not ever get the leftovers - he got
nothing. I imagine 20 years of nothing is enough to make
even a nice guy angry!
What really surprised me however is that unlike other
brotherly conflicts in the Torah, Ishmael never seemed to get
angry, he never seemed to really do anything to hurt Isaac or Abraham or even
Sarah who organised his banishment in the first place. It was as if he totally
accepted Abraham's decision and recognised that his role as a son and brother was
to get what he got and not get upset. I tried to connect this to my life but it was
really hard and if Im honest - and I probably should be as this is my Bar Mitzvah - I
think I need to admit that Ishmael seems to have been a better brother and son then
me because Ive gotten more than a little upset in the past when I have not gotten
my way.
In the end Abrahams dying wish was to have his two sons Isaac and Ishmael to
bury him. Isaac and Ishmael met at the cave of Machpelah to bury their father
Abraham together. Ishmael saw Isaac and they stopped and looked at each other
and kissed each other on the cheek and started to cry. We can learn from this that
Ishmael had the choice to kill Isaac but he chose not to. Instead Ishmael chose to
hug Isaac and forget about what had happened to him twenty years ago. Ishmael
showed that there is always room for forgiveness. Even though your family can have
a fight you still care for each other. Its never too late to say sorry.
As I worked through this story and looked for ways to connect it to me, my life, and
my Bar Mitzvah I quickly realised that even though Ishmael is not Jewish, he and his
actions provide me with an outstanding example of what it means to be a
responsible Jewish adult.
Ishmael chose to be the better person than Isaac. This relates to me mainly because
there have been many times in my life when I have had the choice of what Ishmael
had.
Now that I am becoming a Bar Mitzvah - I am able to better understand that we all
have choices that we can make but I also appreciate that some of these choices
matter more than others.
I also came to realise that my family is a lot like our ancestors in the bible as we also
fights a lot with each other. But in the end, like Ishmael we realise that it is more
important to choose family over another fight.
Dont get me wrong - I have no intention of suddenly stopping to fight with my
brothers - neither I, nor they are perfect but I do promise that I will always be there to
support them just like Isaac and Ishmael were there to support each other after their
father died.