When will it be enough? When will the cost of our purchase of the land God promised us be enough?
Avraham Avinu negotiated honestly, fairly, and uncompromisingly for this sacred ground. The Torah is clear in taking note of the protracted negotiations. So we may ask, along with the Malbim, “What contribution does such a story make to the spiritual message and mission of the Torah?” Perhaps it is to express one of Ibn Ezra’s considerations – “to make known the preeminence of the land of Israel over all other lands, both for the living and the dead.” Or “to confirm the word of the Lord to Abraham that it would be his inheritance.”
In the Torah, Avraham is portrayed as a firm negotiator but, it seems, overly generous. He insists on paying for the land, and at a steep amount. Not only that, but we read that after the negotiation “…Avraham rose up and bowed down to the people of the land.”
What could this gesture signify? He was promised the land by God! He was the rightful inheritor! Even so, he purchased the land promised to “to your seed…” And yet he still bows down to this boorish lord? What meaning can we take from this?
Certainly not glory, pride, sovereignty, or majesty. No; the manner in which Avraham Avinu lays “claim” to the land mirrors the ongoing Jewish condition in our land, from Avraham’s time to this very moment when President Obama’s concern about 1,200 new apartments in Jerusalem outweighs his worry about a nuclear Iran; mirrors the “on the one hand but on the other” dilemma of Jewish existence. On the one hand God promises Avraham to “make your name great”; on the other, there is the humiliation of having to bow down to the Ephrons of the world, “the lords of the land.”
Nechama Leibowitz articulates the meaning of such a dilemma in her Studies in Bereshit – “the greater the contrast between the promise and the fulfillment, between the vision and the reality, the greater the challenge.”
“Come and see,” exclaims the Midrash HaGadol, “the humility of Avraham our father! The Holy One blessed be He promised to give him and his seed the land forever. Yet now he could only find a burial ground by paying a high price, and yet he did not question the attributes of the Holy One blessed be He…”
Like Avraham, we continue to pay a high price.
The price perhaps we can continue to pay. But can we maintain his nobility in doing so? His nearly incomprehensible attitude and conduct, exemplified here, are greater and more esteemed than those of Moshe Rabbeinu.
“Alas,” God says to Moshe in Bereshit Rabbah, “for those who are gone, never to be replaced. Many times I revealed Myself to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov as God Almighty, but I did not make known to them that My name is the Lord, as I have told you, and they did not question My ways, and did not ask Me what was My name as you did ask…”
How noble to silently, faithfully, and courageously accept the Jewish fate as Avraham and his children did. Can we?
The mothers of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frankel, and Eyal Yifrah have certainly demonstrated that they can, as they did when they addressed a pre-Yom Kippur gathering in Hebron.
“Our story is one that started in Hebron,” said Mrs. Frankel (the killers were part of a Hamas network in the city and the boys’ bodies, as mentioned, were found nearby). “When I think about those days, I didn’t think they were thrown just anywhere. The tears of Hebron embraced them.”