“And G-d blessed Avraham bakol (in every way).” What does “bakol” mean? Says Rabbi Yehuda: G-d blessed Avraham with a daughter. Says Rabbi Meir: G-d blessed Avraham with the absence of a daughter (Bava Basra 16b).
The second explanation sounds very strange. Are girls that bad that a person is blessed not to have one?
Rav Hirsch doesn’t think so. First, he notes that halacha requires men to have at least one daughter alongside one son. How, then, can it be a blessing not to have a daughter? Second, it would be awfully strange, he writes, for the Torah to belittle females right after a story honoring Sarah and right before a story honoring Rivkah.
So what, then, can Rabbi Meir have meant by stating that G-d blessed Avraham by not giving him a daughter?
Rav Hirsch’s explanation is ingenious:
Even today, but especially in the olden days, a girl who marries becomes part of her husband’s family. But whom would a daughter of Avraham marry? A son could win “a daughter of Canaan or Aram over to himself to the spirit of an Abrahamatic home.” But a daughter “would be lost to the spirit and house of Avraham through a Canaanite or Aramaic husband.” If Avraham had had a daughter, he “would have had to see his grandchildren born to idol worship.” So by not granting him a daughter, G-d saved him “from this grief.”
Rabbi Yehuda, however, disagrees. He argues that G-d gave Avraham a daughter and she, amazingly, did not become absorbed by her husband’s family or adopt its values upon marriage. Rather, her father’s spirit animated her so much that her husband’s family adopted her values. She remained “‘his’ even in her marriage, and thereby formed a bridge between the isolated house of Avraham and the rest of the world.” Through the blessing of a daughter,
Avraham was able “to plant the Abrahamatic spirit in the non-Abrahamatic world.”
What an interesting explanation!
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.