Parshat Chayei Sarah

2004

For the Patriarch who has 'Everything'

A pasuk from the parsha - Genesis 24:1 "And Abraham was old, advanced in days, and the Lord blessed Abraham BAKOL."

Bakol means "with everything" or "in everything." But the rabbis want to know, what is this blessing of "everything" that Abraham receives? Since it can't literally mean "every thing" - that is, Abraham will not actually possess all of reality - to what does it refer? There are four answers in the Talmud, all of which refer to Abraham's offspring.

Talmud, Baba Batra 16b
There is a teaching that Rabbi Meir says "in everything" means that he did not have a daughter. Rabbi Yehuda says that he did have a daughter, and others say that "BAKOL" was her name. There is a teaching that "in everything" refers to the fact that Esau did not rebel in his lifetime; there is another opinion that "in everything" refers to the fact that Ishmael did teshuvah, repentance, during his lifetime.

How do we understand these four possible meanings? The first two explore the absence or presence of female children in Abraham's life. Rabbi Meir seems to be saying that he was lucky to live out his life without daughters. But this statement could have one of two meanings. From a more misogynist perspective, Rabbi Meir is saying that boys are better than girls. But from a paternal perspective, Rabbi Meir could be saying that boys are less heartache for a father than girls are. It is easier, he could be suggesting, for a man to parent a male than to go through the unique challenges of raising a daughter.

Rabbi Yehuda opines that Abraham must have had a girl to go along with his boys. Without referencing it explicitly, he is assuming that Abraham must be modeling the stricter requirement, according to Hillel, with regard to childbearing: Mishnah Yevamot 6:6 - A man may not refrain from fulfilling the commandment "Be fruitful and multiply" unless he already has children. The School of Shammai ruled that he must have two sons. The School of Hillel ruled: a son and a daughter, for it is written, "Male and female He created them" (Genesis 5:2).

The fact that Rabbi Yehuda's opinion is given second, and that anonymous others come to support, demonstrate that it is the prevailing view. In this version of our sacred family history, Ishmael and Isaac had a little sister, Bakol.

But the other possibility is that "everything" refers to the behavior of Abraham's offspring, his child Ishmael and grandchild Esau. If you play out their ages at the end of this parsha and the next one, Ishmael can be understood to turn back to a righteous path before Abraham's death. (The rabbis deduce his newfound righteousness from his presence at Abraham's funeral.) Likewise, Esau does not rebel against his parents until after Abraham has died. Thus Abraham's blessing takes the form of either seeing a child return to the fold or being spared the sight of seeing one depart.

A Final Word
How are these blessings that so specifically reference a child to be called "everything"? The fact that the rabbis seized on this word to describe parental power, pride, or pathos teaches us about the importance, and vulnerability, of being a parent. For a parent, a child is not merely a human being, sacred as that is. For those of us who have the privilege of being parents, our children are, in many ways, "everything." We feel we have a unique perspective on their thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, as they carry our hopes and dreams forward into the next generation. The rabbis remind us in our human imperfection that, unlike the idealized Abraham, we will have children of unexpected genders and unpredictable temperaments, children and grandchildren who will rebel and abandon, surprise and disappoint. The challenge for us is to deepen our love for our "everythings" as they develop into the next link in the eternal chain that began with Avraham Avinu, Abraham our father.

Prepared by Rabbi Ben Lanckton, rabbinic advisor, M.I.T. Hillel.

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Additional commentaries and text studies on Parshat Chayei Sarah at MyJewishLearning.com.