Elevating the Land of Israel and the Entire World - Parashat Chayei Sarah WEBSITE :- https://thetrugmans.com/

The Torah concludes the story of Abraham’s purchase of Sarah’s burial plot by stating that the field with its cave “rose up … unto Abraham for a purchase” (Genesis 23:17-18; 23:20). Rashi explains that the phrase “rose up” literally means “entered the possession of.” However, he also explains the phrase metaphorically, citing the Midrash from Bereishit Rabbah 58:8: the land was elevated because it left a commoner’s possession and entered a king’s. On a sod or mystical level one might say that Sarah’s burial elevated the land as her soul was raised to a higher level of being: although she was now in a different dimension, her soul was still connected to this world and to the land itself; thus, she raised them up.

When Parashat Chayei Sarah bought the cave and field to bury Sarah he began the process of not only acquiring the land but of elevating it as well. While the land certainly possessed great holiness long before Abraham first set eyes upon it, like a “fountain sealed up,” its real spiritual depths had not even begun to be tapped (Song of Songs 4:12). Thus, the Torah states that when Abraham took possession of the Cave of Machpelah, “it rose up, the field of Ephron which is Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field and the cave which was in it, and all the trees that were in the field in the borders around”(Genesis 23:17).

This “rising up” is the key to the spiritual connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. For the Land provides the Jewish people with their own rightful place in which to ascend in holiness and produce physical as well as spiritual fruit, while the Jewish people elevate the Land by providing it with their tender love and the care it needs to bring forth its holy bounty. This relationship is alluded to by the numerical equivalency between the Hebrew letters comprising the phrase “and it rose up” and the word “Zion”: both are 156. This mathematical remez, is a beautiful example of how “the actions of the fathers are a sign to their children” (Sotah 34a).

The symbiotic relationship between humanity and the earth is further emphasized by the following verses (Genesis 2:6-7): “And a mist rose up from the earth and watered the face of the land. And God formed the man of dust from the ground. And He blew into his nostrils the soul of life and man became a living being.” According to Rashi, the aforementioned mist formed clouds that moistened the earth, creating the right mixture for man to be created from, much like a baker adds water to flour in order to knead it into dough. Here again we see the intrinsic connection of humanity to the earth from which it is formed. The symbiotic relationship of humankind and nature is most explicitly revealed in the relationship between the Jewish people and their Holy Land. Hebron, from the Hebrew root meaning “connection,” unites a Jew to not only the earth but to the heavenly dimensions beyond this physical life as well. Abraham, by burying Sarah in the earth below, opened the portal that connects this world with the World to Come.

972 8-926-5247 Website - https://thetrugmans.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OhrChadash Twitter - https://twitter.com/thetrugmans Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/RabbiTrugmanMoshav Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/rabbi-trugman-ohr-chadash