Parshat Chayei Sarah summary in plain English

What is Parshat Chayei Sarah?

A Torah portion called "the life of Sarah" that opens with Sarah's death. That's Chayei Sarah, and the name comes straight from its first words.

Every week, synagogues read the next section of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), so the whole thing gets read in a year. This is the fifth section, from Genesis chapter 23 to the middle of chapter 25. It's really about what Sarah's family does after she's gone.

Sarah dies and Abraham buys a grave

Sarah dies at 127 in Hebron, in the land of Canaan (roughly today's Israel). Abraham, her husband and the founding father of the Jewish people, mourns and cries for her. Then he gets up and has to do something very practical: find a place to bury her.

He's lived in Canaan for years, but he doesn't own a single piece of it. So he goes to the locals, the Hittites, and introduces himself in a way that's almost painful to read: "I'm a foreigner living here among you." They respect him and offer him any grave he wants.

Abraham wants one spot, the cave of Machpelah, owned by a man named Ephron. Ephron says he'll just give it to him. Abraham insists on paying, so Ephron names a price while acting like it's nothing: "Land worth 400 silver shekels, what's that between you and me?"

Abraham pays the full 400 in front of everyone and buries Sarah there. The first land his family ever owns in the promised land is a grave.

Who will Isaac marry? A servant goes looking

Abraham is old now, and he doesn't want his son Isaac (the son Sarah had in her old age) marrying a local Canaanite woman. So he sends his most senior servant, the man who runs his whole household, back to the land Abraham came from.

One condition: Isaac doesn't go back there. If the woman won't come, the servant is off the hook.

The servant loads ten camels with gifts and heads to the town where Abraham's brother Nahor lived. He stops at the well in the evening, when the women come out for water, and prays. His plan: he'll ask a young woman for a drink. If she says yes and also offers to water his camels, she's the one.

Before he even finishes praying, Rebecca walks up. She's Nahor's granddaughter, so she's family. She does exactly what he prayed for (more on that below).

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Rebecca says yes, Isaac finds comfort, Abraham dies

The servant gives Rebecca gold jewelry and asks whose daughter she is. She runs home, and her brother Laban (a big character later in Genesis) rushes out to invite him in, right after he spots the gold on his sister's arms.

Before he'll eat a bite, the servant tells the whole story again, start to finish. Her father Bethuel and Laban agree it's clearly from God. The next morning the family wants her to stay ten days or so first. They ask Rebecca, and she answers in one Hebrew word, "Elech," which means "I'll go."

Meanwhile Isaac is out walking in a field at dusk. He looks up and sees camels. Rebecca looks up and sees him, gets down from her camel, and covers herself with her veil. Isaac brings her into his mother Sarah's tent, marries her, and loves her.

Then the focus goes back to Abraham. He marries again, a woman named Keturah, has more children, and leaves everything to Isaac. He dies at 175, "old and satisfied." Isaac and Ishmael (his son with Hagar, Sarah's servant) bury him together in the same cave as Sarah. The portion closes with a list of Ishmael's twelve sons.

The moment worth slowing down for: the camels

The servant's test was his own idea. Almost anyone will hand a tired stranger some water. He was looking for the woman who'd think of the camels too.

The sign he picked wasn't about looks or money. It was about whether she'd do more than a stranger asked.

Look at what the text actually says she did. He asks for "a little water." She lets him drink, then offers, without being asked, to keep drawing for his camels until they've had enough. She hurries, empties her jar into the trough, and runs back to the well again and again until all his camels have had enough.

Ten camels after a long trip is a lot of water. She's doing hard physical work for a stranger who just walked up.

The servant says nothing the whole time. He just stands there watching her, waiting to find out whether God had really made his trip work out.

A question to think about this Shabbat

Rebecca's family wanted to slow things down. Ten more days at home, then go. She said "I'll go" and left that day with a man she'd just met, to marry someone she'd never seen.

What's something you keep putting off by "ten more days," and what would it take to just say "I'll go"?