Community
A Message for Parashat Hayei Sarah 2017
...And the
servant said to him [Avraham], “Perhaps the woman will not want to come after
me to this land. Shall I indeed bring your son back to the land you left?” And
Avraham said to him, “Watch yourself, lest you bring my son back there…” (Bereshit 24:5-6)
Avraham’s absolute demand that Yisshak remain in Canaan is perplexing.
What did he fear? Raised with the values of Avraham and strengthened by God’s
promise of the Land, it seems likely that Yisshak would succeed even in exile.
Why, then, was Avraham so deeply concerned?
The final verse of this episode may
illumine its preceding motive:
And
Yisshak brought her [Rivkah] into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rivkah
as wife. And he loved her, and Yisshak was consoled after his mother’s death. (67)
The Torah highlighted Rivkah’s entrance into Sarah’s tent as an act of
continuity that concluded the search for Yisshak’s wife. But why did it need to
end in Sarah’s physical tent? Couldn’t Yisshak and Rivkah continue the
family’s moral and theological legacies while starting out in a different land?
* * * *
In the introduction to his best-selling book Outliers: The Story of
Success, Malcolm Gladwell described the fascinating story of the
town of Roseto, Pennsylvania.[1] He
wrote that in the late 19th Century, several thousand residents of
the Italian town Roseto Valfortore set sail for America. The people founded and
settled a small but self-sufficient town on a rocky hillside in Pennsylvania.
They established a centralized church, and built schools, a park, small shops,
bakeries and various other community venues.
In the mid-1950’s, Dr. Stewart Wolf stumbled upon an astonishing
phenomenon in Roseto. Studying the results of an extensive study that he had
conducted, Wolf found that virtually no resident of Roseto under the age of
fifty-five had died of a heart attack or showed any signs of heart disease. He
discovered that the death rate of men over sixty-five was roughly half that of
the United States, and the death rate from all causes in Roseto was 30 to 35
percent lower than expected. Pairing up with sociologist John Bruhn, Stewart
then found that there was no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and very
little crime in Roseto. Bruhn summarized their findings: “These people were
dying of old age. That’s it.” Informed of the facts, their next step was to
determine the secret of this tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania.
Thinking that a unique dietary practice may have contributed to their
health, Wolf investigated but found that it was anything but healthy. He then
checked their exercise habits, soon realizing that they too were deficient.
Many struggled with obesity and others smoked heavily. He studied the lives of
the Rosetan relatives who lived in other areas of America for a potential
genetic link, but found no evidence of remarkable health in them. Finally, he
analyzed the lives of the residents of Roseta’s neighboring communities, but
found nothing special in them either.
Wolf began to realize that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet, nor
exercise, genes or location. It was Roseto itself. Walking around the
town, he and Bruhn figured out why. They watched the Rosetans stop to chat with
one another in the street. They saw them cook food for each other. They
realized that many homes had three generations living under one roof, and
noticed how much respect the grandparents demanded. And in that modest town
with a population below two-thousand, they counted more than twenty separate
civic organizations. They discovered, to their astonishment, that the physical
health of the Rosetans was rooted in the community.
* * * *
Someone recently argued to me that in today’s era we must expand our
conception of community. She argued that technology’s advances in
communication have forced the transition from many local communities to
one large international community. Though I believe that her general
logic is correct, I nonetheless know that the existence of a local community
will forever maintain a vital function. As Wolf and Bruhn learned, our personal
interaction with one another engenders within us capabilities that would
otherwise be impossible. The physical proximity and close spaces that we share
create unfathomable realities.
Insisting that Yisshak and Rivkah continue in Canaan, Avraham understood
that the unique entity which he had tirelessly built could only endure within the
structure of its physical community.
Shabbat
shalom!
Rabbi Avi
Harari