Parsha Insights: Sarah and the women; Cemeteries

It's all very well to accuse Judaism of being patriarchal, but the fact is that tradition has a matriarchal theme that comes to the fore when parents bless their daughters on Erev Shabbat, saying, "May God make you like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah".

Sarah heads the list. Her name literally means "princess", so that she shares equal status with Abraham, whom the Bible calls a prince. The sages call her a prophet and say that her gift of prophecy was greater than Abraham, able to see right into the spirit of a person or situation.

When Abraham sought a wife for Isaac, he looked for a woman with Sarah’s qualities. She was beautiful all her life, in character as well as appearance; she was sinless, determined to live in harmony with God, her husband and the world.


THREE OR FOUR COUPLES?

The death of Sarah recalls the tradition that three couples – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah, were buried in the Cave of Machpelah. This name is from k-f-l, "double".

Why Abraham chose this as a burial place is explained in "Pir'kei d'Rabbi Eliezer", which says that when Abraham bought the site from the local inhabitants he was visited by three angels. He wanted to give them a feast but the calf he chose ran into the cave of Machpelah and he went after it. In the cave he found the grave of Adam and Eve, and decided that the family would have their last resting place there.

Hence there are two traditions about Machpelah – one that says that three couples were buried there, and another that says there were four.

The site was holy both to the monotheistic faiths who all revere the Biblical patriarchs, and (in theory at least) to all mankind, who, whatever their nation or creed, descend from the first man and woman.


PROTECTING OUR CEMETERIES

The Machpelah theme illustrates our age-old concern that our dead should be properly buried.

One of the first things we did when we settled anywhere was to establish a cemetery. The silent graves there speak volumes. Historical researchers, who do not necessarily have a personal connection with the people buried there and sometimes no personal affiliation with Judaism, find cemeteries an indispensable historical resource – for example, the Jewish cemetery in Prague despite its higgledy-piggledy look.

Tragically, our cemeteries were treated without the slightest respect wherever antisemites had the chance, and this still goes on. What to do about such attacks is a major problem, but from the internal Jewish point of view we need to make sure that we do not compound this savagery by our own neglect of our cemeteries.

It would be the final indignity if we left old graves to fall apart and disintegrate because of our neglect.