Chaye Sara - Welcome the opportunity to explore a new version of you
Genesis 23:1 - 25:18 | Kings 1:1 - 31
Summary: Yitzhak is so unlike Avraham that a lesser man than Avraham might have doubted that his son could effectively carry on his legacy. But Avraham laughed with glee at the opportunity for his legacy to go in a totally new direction.
***
“But I have to laugh when she reveals me.”
- Billy Joel
I am named after my father’s mother’s mother, Gittel. (I believe that once in every lunar cycle a person should bring to mind the person or people after whom they are named.) Baba, as she was known, was one of those people that everyone liked. She was a generous and selfless woman. I can only aspire.
Obviously I was not given her actual name, or even a masculinized translation thereof (which would probably be Tuvia, or the like) but rather, in accordance with American protocol, my name descended from hers like a ‘ 1 down’ does from a ‘1 across’ in a crossword puzzle. Either way, it’s an honor.
I am not sure if I prefer this American protocol or the ancient biblical one, in which a child would be named after something one of the parents was feeling, or something that was happening in the world, or something that hopefully would happen in the world. With that approach, you end up with names like “Shimon - for God has heard that I am hated” (ouch!) or “Yoseph - God should give me another son” (one a time, no?) or “Lo Ruchama (literally, not treated with mercy) - for I will not continue to have mercy on the House of Israel.” I have ideas about what my name might have turned out to be if I’d been named after what was happening when I was born. Maybe I can share those another time.
Of course, the paradigmatic named-after-a-feeling child is Yitzhak. God tells Avraham that his wife Sarah (aged 90) will bear him a child, and Avraham laughs, and God says, “Exactly! That’s his name. Yitzhak. He will laugh. Laughter.”
Here’s something I make up about this moment in the Torah: Avraham isn’t just laughing about the fact that Yitzhak will be born. He is laughing about who Yitzhak is. When he finally lays eyes on the kid, he sees with his super-powered prophetic eyes that Yitzhak is in many ways opposite of him. Avraham is associated with chesed - he is expansive. He takes initiative. He is an entrepreneur. Yitzhak is associated with gevurah - he is restrained, organized, focused, passive. Held back. Somehow the Avraham-chesed-project will be run through the Yitzhak-gevurah-project?? Amazing. That’s the future of the Jewish people? Hysterical!
Imagine Avraham sees all that in an instant. How would you feel if your ostensible successor was just so opposite of you? So different? If you were fully identified with your expansiveness, your sense of initiative, your work as an entrepreneur, you’d likely be terrified to find out that the next boss was so not all those things. Maybe you’d wonder if there’d been some mistake. But Avraham laughs. Brilliant!
**
It actually doesn’t matter what Avraham and Yitzhak represent. What’s important is that, however it is that Avraham goes about things, Yitzhak goes about things in an entirely different way, and Yitzhak is Avraham’s Divinely ordained successor, and that sets up a possible clash - and/or a belly laugh.
At some point you start seeing such moments not as affronts but as opportunities. Invitations. Visions. The doctor telling you you have to get in shape is the bearer of a new vision of who you are and what you are capable of. Me! Gavriel! In good shape?!? Ha! Let’s go!
A supervisor who wants to hear about your plan for the next five steps of the project is not denying your vision - they are giving you a chance to enhance the impact of your vision by being clearer about how it will look. Me! Gavriel! Having an actual plan!? Ha! Let’s do it!
This person for whom I have held dismay and judgment for so long - someone is challenging me to be big enough to also hold friendship with him? What, me? Nice and forgiving? Ha! Why not!?
Some other severe limitation that requires me to let go of some aspect of myself, to redefine yet again, to think differently, and to express myself in a new way? I’m ready to give it a go!
I laugh when I imagine a new version of me, a new iteration that I never before had the courage to imagine. Of course I’m also afraid. Of course I don’t know that I can do it. But I laugh with the faith God has in me to try something new, to be more than I thought I was, to manifest in a different way.
What allows a person to react in that way? Such a person must know that they are rooted in the Infinite. They must know that, regardless of how identified they are with a project, a way of being, an identity, there is always more. Infinitely more. There are always many more ways to be, to show up, to manifest, to create, to relate, to present, to respond, to repent. Can we stay in touch with that infinite point within ourselves?
Avraham, thankfully, doesn’t think he is the epitome of the Jewish people. He doesn’t think that his son or grandson or anyone has to be like him. He is happy to have his children and grandchildren take his thing in all sorts of new directions.