Parshat Chayei Sarah
PARSHA OVERVIEW
Sarah, the mother of the Jewish People, passes on at age 127. After mourning and eulogizing her, Avraham seeks to bury her in the Cave of Machpela. As this is the burial place of Adam and Chava, Avraham pays its owner, Ephron the Hittite, an exorbitant sum.
Avraham sends his faithful servant Eliezer to find a suitable wife for his son, Yitzchak, making him swear to choose a wife only from among Avraham's family. Eliezer travels to Aram Naharaim and prays for a sign. Providentially, Rivka appears. Eliezer asks for water. Not only does she give him water, but she draws water for all 10 of his thirsty camels (some 140 gallons)! This extreme kindness marks her as the right wife for Yitzchak and a suitable mother of the Jewish People. Negotiations with Rivka's father and her brother, Lavan, result in her leaving with Eliezer. Yitzchak brings Rivka into his mother Sarah's tent, marries her and loves her. He is then consoled for the loss of his mother.
Avraham remarries Hagar, who is renamed Ketura to indicate her improved ways. Six children are born to them. After giving them gifts, Avraham sends them to the East. Avraham passes away at the age of 175 and is buried next to Sarah in the Cave of Machpela.
PARSHA INSIGHTS
On the Thirteenth Yahrtzeit of HaRav Dov Schwartzman, zatzal
“…to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her” (23:2)
The Jumbotron screens at rock concerts can be more than one hundred feet high. It can make a five-foot-eight rock singer cavorting on the stage in the front of them look 20 feet tall. But the closer you get, the smaller he becomes.
The Gemara (Moed Katan 18a) says that Pharaoh was one amah high. That’s between 18 to 24 inches. To the world, Pharaoh looked like a giant, but really he was a midget.
It also says that Moshe was ten amot tall; that’s almost 20 feet. (Berachot 54b, Shabbat 92a). Moshe looked like a man of mere flesh and blood, but on the spiritual level he was the greatest giant that ever walked this planet.
At the age of thirty eight, I came to Ohr Somayach from the world of Pharaoh, a world of celebrity, where the giants of the entertainment industry looked like gods of enormous stature. But the closer you got, the smaller they became.
After I had been in Ohr Somayach for a couple of weeks, I was sent for by one of the Rabbis. The word had got around that I was unmarried, and well, a thirty-eight-year-old “eligible young yeshiva student" and that it was time to get married!
I came into the room and there was this Rabbi with a sweet gentle expression, a long white beard and twinkling eyes. I didn’t realize that I was sitting in the presence of a giant of twenty amot. But the closer I got to him, the more I got to know him and the bigger he became.
His name: HaRav Dov Schwartzman, one of the greatest Torah scholars and leaders of his generation. So outstanding was he, that Rabbi Aharon Kotler zatzal, the leader of American Jewry and the Rosh HaYeshiva of Lakewood, chose him as his son-in-law. At Reb Dov’s funeral, Rav Moshe Shapiro zatzal saidthat no one was greater than Reb Dov.
We spent a while chatting, and then he came to the point. He had a suggestion for a shidduch. I went out with the young lady he suggested, but it didn’t work out. However, later when I met my wife, Reb Dov was the one who helped me to get to the chupa and beyond. And without him, I’m not sure I would have been able to do it.
One of the advantages of getting married young is that you believe that nothing can go wrong. You charge in with all the enthusiasm of youth. The older you get, the more you realize that things can - and do - go wrong. It’s not easy to get married when you’re forty. The Rosh Yeshiva gave me the much-needed confidence to get to the chupa and through Shana Rishona.
A few years later, I was in the shiur of Rabbi Naftoli Kaplan shlita. We were going so slowly that it was a secret how slow we were actually going. After a few years, Reb Naftoli told me that he was moving me up to the shiur of the Rosh Hayeshiva – Reb Dov.
I didn’t know what hit me! I was lost after the first few sentences. Reb Dov saw I was struggling and came up to me one day after the shiur and said, “Who is your chavrusa? “I said, “I don’t have a chavrusa.” He said, “You don’t have a chavrusa!? I will be your chavrusa!”
And, every day after the shiur, he would sit me down for a half an hour, sometimes 45 minutes, and go over one of the points in the shiur until I understood it. I think by this time, the Rosh Yeshiva was already starting to become ill with the disease that took him from this world. At times, he was tired but he would not give up. He taught me an important lesson about being a Torah teacher. It’s not enough to say brilliant insights into the Gemara. It’s your responsibility that every student is gaining from you. And you can’t just say, “Well, we’ll sort it out…”
The story has an interesting twist. Many years later, one of my sons went to a Yeshiva Katana that was very difficult to get into, very competitive. Every boy’s father was a Rosh Yeshiva or a Rosh Kollel, and I think my son felt a bit less.
One day, Reb Dov’s name came up in a conversation in the class, and my son said, “Dov Schwartzman? My father learned as chevrusa with Reb Dov.” “Your father learned as chevrusa with Reb Dov?! Your father must be a Torah genius!”
My wife once had a problem. She was in a partnership in a project and she had been ousted unfairly. She felt resentment and went to the Rosh HaYeshiva to ask his advice. He listened until she told him the whole story and then he just said one sentence: “At Tehi Tova!” “You will be well!”
The Rosh Yeshiva did not have an easy life, and his advice sometimes came from a place of painful experience. It’s not what you say, it's who you are. As much as Reb Dov was a giant in Torah scholarship – the twenty-foot Moshe of his generation – so he was the Moshe Rabbeinu of his generation in his humility and his compassion.
