A.
Avraham, Divinely directed to leave his home in Charan, arrives in the Holy Land only to find it under siege and in a state of famine (cf. XII, 6, Rashi ad loc. and v. 10). He therefore elects to take refuge in Egypt, were there is no famine. However, the Egyptian reputation for unbridled hedonism has already become known; so, as he and his entourage approach the Egyptian border, he turn to his wife and said: הנה נא ידעתי כי אשה יפת מראה את (“Behold, now I know that you are a woman of beautiful appearance”; ibid., v. 11).
Indeed, Sara was a legendary beauty. The Talmud lists her as the first of the four most beautiful women of history (the other three being Rachav, Avigayil, and Esther; מגילה ט"ו: ), and the Midrash Tanchuma asserts: כל הנשים בפני שרה כקוף בפני אדם (“All the [other] women were to Sara as an ape is to a human being”).
So it is with some surprise that we read Rashi’s comment on the above verse: עד עכשיו לא הכיר בה מתוך צניעות שביניהם ועכשיו הכיר בה ע"י מעשה (“Until now, he had recognized [it] in her because of the modesty between them, and now he recognized [it] in her through an action”).
Now, the Talmud brings down the halacha that אסור לאדם שיקדש את נאשנ עד שיראנה (“It is forbidden that man should marry a woman until he sees her”; קידושין מ"א. ומובא להלכה ברמב"ם הל' נישואין פ"ב ה"א ובשו"ע אה"ע סי' ק"כ סעיף א' וסי' ק"מ סעיף א' ). In light of the well-established principle that אברהם קיים את כל התורה כולב אפילו עירובי תבשילין (“Avraham kept the entire Torah, even [such rabbinic enactments as] 'eiruvei tavshilin”; יומא כ"ח: ובמדרשים), how did this particular halacha manage to evade his attention?
B.
Rabbi Yissachar Baer Eilenberg, in his Tzeida la-Derech, asks our question, and answers it by quoting his rebbe, the great Rabbi Mordechai Joffe, Ba‘al ha-Levush: דהא דאסור לישא אשה עד שיראנה שאין בה מום ולא תתבזה עליו וזה עשה אסרהם ודאי ראה אותה קודם שנשאה שלא יהא בה מום אבל לא נתן לב להתבונן ברוב יפי' עד עכשיו (“that the fact is that it is forbidden to marry a woman until he sees that there is no blemish/defect [mum] in her about which she would be ashamed, and this Avraham did; he certainly saw her before he married her, that there would be no mum in her, but he did not pay attention to contemplate here great beauty until now”).
Yet, if Sara were indeed the singular beauty implied by the Talmud and the midrash cited supra, then surely she had a reputation of which he had to have been aware; הדרא קושיא אדוכתה, our question returns: How was it that he was unaware of her beauty until this particular moment?
C.
A possible answer is suggested by the Tzeida la-Derech, who goes on to examine Rashi’s language. He notes that Rashi does not say that Avraham in his great modesty had never looked at his wife (as the Ba‘al ha-Levush had pointed out); rather, he says lo hikkir bah, he did not recognisze her beauty for what it was until now. Only now, as the result of a ma‘aseh, of overt action on Avraham’s part, did he come indeed to recognize it (אבל עיי' רבינו בחיי על הענין שכתב אחרת, ופרש שהמעשה הי' של שרה).
In fact, says the Tzeida la-Derech, the entire question can be made to go away. Avraham, he suggests, had had not need at all to examine Sara in order to determine that she had no mum; as the midrash and Talmudic passage cited above testify, she already had a reputation as a great beauty. He could take it for given on the basis of what others said that she was, indeed beautiful (he finds some support for this in another Talmudic quotation, which asserts that Yiska [cf. Genesis XI, 29] was a nickname for Sara, שהכל סוכין ביפי' [“for everybody was staring at -- sochin -- her beauty”]; סנהדרין ס"ט:).
But with all due respect to the Tzeida la-Derech, it strikes me that, if this was indeed so, then Avraham did know beforehand that Sara was beautiful in appearance, and had not “just now” come to the realization of it. Once again, it appears, we have a difficulty with Rashi.
D.
It seems to me that the implication of what Rashi writes concerning the “great modesty” between them is not that Avraham never looked at his wife. To the contrary, as the Ba‘al ha-Levush said, we can presume that he did so in order to assure himself that she had no mum, had a good idea of what Sara looked like, and had a normal married life with her, as we would expect.
What I think Rashi means, though, is that Avraham did not look at any other women. In other words, Sara was a beauty, to be sure, but he had no basis to assume that she was at all unusual in that respect. Perhaps every other woman was just as beautiful. His exemplary modesty prevented him from verifying the matter.
Until now. Presented with the challenge of the Egyptians’ well deserved reputation for hedonism and licentiousness and the casual brutality which this entailed, and about to enter their country, Avraham for the first time felt compelled to look around him at the Canaanite women (the ma‘aseh, the overt act, to which Rashi alludes; אבל ע"ע רבינו בחיי עה"פ המפרש את הענין אחרת, ושבעים פנים לתורה), in order to see how realistic or probable the threat implied to his safety might be. It was then that he saw, in the words of the midrash, that all the women were to her “as an ape to a human being,” and for the first time, really appreciated how exceptionally beautiful her appearance really was.
This is also implicit in the words Avraham said to Sara.
The alert reader with a living sense of the Hebrew language will note that I have translated the verb yada‘ti in line with Rashi’s comment, as a present tense, even though most people would read the sentence as though it were in the past tense, “I knew,” or “I have known.” This verse is an object lesson as to why the proper designation for this grammatical form is “perfective” rather than “past” (were we to translate it, e.g., “I have known that you are a woman of beautiful appearance,” as suggested, Rashi’s comment would make no sense at all).
So what does the “perfective” form mean? It indicates an action or state which is complete, such that no further development is necessary, or possible (hence, it is most often likely to be translated into a temporally based language such as English as a past tense). What Avraham was telling Sara was, “I now know with perfect certitude that you are a woman of beautiful appearance” (her inner beauty, of course, had been plain to him for a long time), because, only now had he had a reason to make the comparison, and therefore exerted himself, made a ma‘aseh, in order to make it. Such, then, is the lesson for us all to be learnt from the exemplary modesty of our father Avraham.
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