Parashat “Chayei Sarah” (Genesis 23:1-25:18)
for the week of October 23rd, 2010/22 Cheshvan, 5771
One explanation for the extended attention is that this purchase marks the first, official Jewish acquisition of the land promised by God to Abraham and his descendants. Another possibility is that through his actions in this episode, Abraham models the great care and reverence with which we are to attend to the mitzvah of providing a worthy burial place for the dead. But this year, at least, it seems to me that this portion may also tell us about the difficult balancing act of mourning—experiencing the powerful and often varied emotions of loss while still having to function in the world and attend to practical tasks.
It seems likely that Abraham is still deeply feeling the loss of his wife when he “gets up from before his dead (Gen. 23:3)” and starts his negotiation with Ephron the Hittite. While we may have the luxury of time devoted purely to mourning, especially during the first days and weeks following a loss, more often than not, we have to do our mourning at the same time we try to continue attending to other tasks. There are arrangements to be completed, responsibilities to fulfill and other relationships that need tending.
Some of us welcome this balancing challenge. The obligation to complete the endless to-do lists gives an excuse to keep busy and, in the midst of all that activity, helps obscure or numb the psychological and spiritual experience of loss. Some of us are so dislocated by our grief that we find ourselves completely incapable of fulfilling any responsibility. Perhaps most fortunate are those who neither need to numb themselves with excessive activity nor allow themselves to become so debilitated by loss that they are virtually paralyzed. Instead, they find activities and commitments that allow them to express their grieving in productive and meaningful ways.
This last possibility brings to mind an analogy with the dual meanings of the Hebrew word, avodah, translated as both ‘work’ and ‘service’ or ‘worship.’ Joining these meanings, our work becomes the act of serving God. In a similar way, perhaps Abraham was able to combine the psycho-spiritual work of grieving for Sarah with serving the cause of honoring her memory by procuring an appropriate burial site.
This kind of multi-tasking is different from the frenetic lifestyle in which we try to do 12 things at once. Instead, spiritual multi-tasking aspires to change the meaning of our actions by transforming the way we think about the tasks we are performing. It’s not that we’re necessarily doing more but that we are discovering additional layers of meaning in whatever it is that we’re doing. In spiritual multi-tasking, our most important ‘work’ becomes ‘serving God’ and our ‘grieving’ becomes the effort to find physical ways of honoring someone’s memory—whether by creating an appropriate memorial, perpetuating our loved one’s values in how we live our lives or connecting with the people, places and causes that they cherished. The trick, of course, is keeping the tasks and their deeper meanings interwoven together, both in our hearts and in our actions.