The modern era revolves around the individual. Individual rights, individual expression, individual autonomy.
The individual is of course supremely valuable, but as a famous poet once wrote, “No man is an island.” Nor should he be. Man has ties and obligations to others. To his family, to his community, and to his nation.
Avraham Avinu lived in the Land of Canaan for many years without ever buying property. And then one day he suddenly buys a piece of land. What inspired the purchase? The death of his wife Sarah. And who joins him and Sarah on that very same property years later after their own passing? His son Yitzchak and his grandson Yaakov along with their respective first wives.
In other words, the very “first possession which the Jewish people received” in what ultimately became the Land of Israel symbolizes the “value of family ties that attach the heart of husband to wife, and children to parents,” writes Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch.
Hence the name Chevron (from chibbur, meaning connection) in which Me’arat Hamachpelah is situated, suggests Rav Hirsch. “For Chevron means: the intimate union,” which is “the most appropriate name for the close intimacy which makes Jewish men and women grow together in unison as husband and wife, as father and mother.”
Rav Hirsch adds one more element to the mix: In the Beit Hamikdash, the [twice daily offering] korban tamid couldn’t be brought in the morning until the sky was lit up as far as Chevron, or - as Rav Hirsch puts it - until “the priestly herald at the turret of the Temple could see the rays of morning shining over the graves of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs at Hebron” (see Tamid 3:2). This law teaches us, Rav Hirsch writes, that “kibbud av va’eim [honoring one’s father and mother] is for Jews the preliminary condition for, and the root of, kibbud haMakom [honoring G-d].”
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 author/editor of 10 books, including “The Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch Dictionary.”