Dear friends,
In this week's parsha - Parshat Chayay Sarah - I am drawn to the image
of Abraham's servant, a nameless fellow, who has something to say about
prayer. The servant has been asked
by Abraham to travel to a distant land to find a bride for Abraham's son Isaac,
after his mother Sarah dies. The
servant is obviously uneasy, even worried about the daunting task that he is
called upon to do, and so he sits down and prays," O Lord, G-d of my
master Abraham: Be with me
today...." His prayer is like
an ordinary conversation, nothing fancy, not poetic words, no siddur, only
simple words coming from his heart.
But they are words that point to the extraordinary in the ordinary. Extraordinary because not only is the
prayer spontaneous in its expression but also this prayer seems rooted in the
journey of life and appears to emerge from a place of deep concern for the
plight of another. Notice that the
servant does not ask to be removed from the journey (of having to go find a
bride for Isaac). What he asks for
is some kind of guidance in how to proceed. The feeling of the prayer seems to be one of longing -
longing to connect and be heard by that which is bigger than life. The Talmud calls prayer a " labour
of the heart" , something which can not be obtained from books and
philosophy but rather from a deep place in ourselves. A place in which access is not so easy for many, thus,
spontaneous prayer, as we see with this servant, is not something that happens
unless one has already travelled to that deeper place. Some of our sages have written that we
are not comfortable with spontaneous prayer, that we shy away from it, finding
it difficult to speak to G-d as if one was REALLY being heard. And yet, if we do not speak as if we
are really being heard, then are we saying anything worth hearing?
The Zohar says that when we concentrate mind and heart on the Source of
Sources, blessings can be drawn from the depths of the "cistern", the
stream of Eden, the "Source of life". It is interesting that the servant in this parsha asks
for a sign from G-d that he's on the right path - the sign is that a girl will
tip over her jug of water and "let me have a drink" in the words of
the servant. Here is an image of
water, not unlike the image of water in the Zohar, an image that infers being
able to tap into ""G-d's Well", the place where physical and
spiritual sustenance become one....and is our question (and the servant's
question) about being on the right path, is it really a deeper longing, a
thirst even , that we may find ourselves somewhere in this life being able to
drink from G-d's Well, from the love and compassion and hope that is readily
there if we dig deep enough? And
is the labour to dig and find this Well, is it ultimately a labour of the
heart, the way of prayer?
"Choose Life!" our Torah says, an inspiration and a response
to all of our journeys. Choose
life, because life is about being challenged, being called to move forward,
because life is changing and moving and full of peaks and valleys, like a
glacier river rushing over ancient stones. We are sent out daily on missions, into vast new lands,
into places where we do not have
the usual bearings. Like the
servant in this parsha, we are challenged and tested in not only our abilities,
but in our compassion, in our hopes, in our willingness to labour from the
heart. In our willingness to argue
and wrestle and find the Divine in and out of ourselves. There's something to be said for the
primacy of prayer in our existence, for if we could not call out to the One,
where would we be, where would the soul in us seek refuge and sustenance?
The servant remains nameless throughout Parshat Chayay Sarah. But our sages say that this anonymous
servant was Eliezer. Why is he not
named here? And why does he say,
later, when he's recounting the story to others, why does he say that " I
had not yet finished speaking to myself when Rebecca suddenly came out,
carrying her jug..." Wasn't
he praying to G-d? Why does he suddenly refer to praying as "speaking to
himself"? One possibility is
this: Until we really labour from
the heart, we are only speaking to ourselves. Many of our experiences in today's jet-paced high speed
information age are experiences that never leave the surface of things. Ours is a culture, unfortunately, committed
to motion, enthralled by commotion, and addicted to fast-paced living. Indeed, we often find ourselves
spinning our wheels on the surface, not hearing, not seeing...but when we
finally crave something deeper, and discover the Well, which has been there all
along, suddenly, we will find ourselves not alone, no longer speaking only to
ourselves. Perhaps the servant is
without name in this parsha because he is really each of us, struggling to find
that place, where a real conversation with the Divine can happen, a
conversation off the paved roads and into the outpouring the heart, a
conversation that Hashem is always ready to hear.
Shabbat Shalom, dear friends,
Alizah
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