5784/2023

After burying Sarah, Avraham sends off his trusted servant Eliezer to

find a wife for Yitzchak to partner with him to be the matriarch of the

Jewish people. One would think Avraham would have a long list of

criteria for the woman who gets to fill such an important role in

Jewish history. Shockingly, though, Avraham gave one simple request:

לא תקח אשה לבני מבנות הכנעני אשר אנכי יושב בקרבו: כי אל ארצי ואל מולדתי תלך”

ליצחק לבני אשה ולקחת,” “Don’t take a wife for my son from the Canaanite

women which I am living amongst, rather go to my homeland and take

a wife from there.” (BeReishit 24:4).

Asks the Kli Yakar, why was Avraham so adamant that his

daughter-in-law be from Charan rather than from Eretz Canaan? After

all, both are from families who worship Avodah Zarah!

Rav Asher Weiss offers that while both the Canaanite and Charan

women were brought up in idolatrous homes, Avraham understood

that the Canaanite women also inherited many of their parent’s

detestable habits and were lacking in fundamental values. The women

from Charan, however, were mature and principled individuals who

merely worshiped Avodah Zarah because they were taught to from

infancy. Avraham, of all people, understood the difference between a good

person in a bad situation and a purely wicked person. Rashi in

Parashat Lech Lecha says Avraham and Sarah converted several

pagans from their homeland of Charan before entering Eretz Yisrael.

Avraham believed in the potential of someone fully committed to

doing teshuva to the extent he was ready to marry off his son to a

former polytheist woman and entrust her with bearing the future of

his nation.

Rav Rosensweig explains that what we are currently witnessing in

Eretz Yisrael is the diminishment of Tzelem Elokim. The atrocities

committed by Hamas show that they are an organization of

intrinsically evil people who must be destroyed. They don’t value

human life whatsoever, whether it be Israeli civilian lives, or even the

lives of the Palestinian people which they ruin. May Hashem grant the

IDF success in their mission to destroy Hamas and bring back the

hostages quickly and safely.