Our Torah portion is called Chayei Sarah – the life of Sarah. Ironically, however, while the first verse says ‘this is the life of Sarah…', the very next verse tells us Sarah dies. The rest of this part of the Torah portion is all about Abraham’s negotiations to purchase the Cave of Machpelah, which will become the family burial ground. Later in the Torah portion, we come to Abraham’s death, and we learn that Isaac and Ishmael come together as brothers to bury and mourn their father together.
The Cave of Machpelah still exists today and is a popular tourist site, located in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The history of Hebron is complex. Our Torah portion describes a situation of harmony among the different peoples that inhabited the area. The Hittites who dominated the area seemed to be welcoming of Abraham and willing to sell him the land he needed to create a permanent burial site. Over the next subsequent centuries, Jewish settlement in Hebron ebbed and flowed, but never entirely ceased.
Tragically, the city has also been the site of ongoing tension, and sometimes violence, between the Israeli and the Palestinian populations who live there. Today the city is divided into two, the larger part (H1) being under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and the smaller part (H2) being under the control of the Israeli military. It has been the site of massacres on both sides, most notably a 1929 attack of the Muslim community against the Jewish population, and the Purim 1994 massacre of Palestinians inside the Cave of Machpelah itself by Israeli radical Baruch Goldstein.
Today, approximately 170,000 Palestinians live in H1, another 30,000 live in H2, and about 800 Jewish families live in H2, under the protection of the IDF. Sadly, violence and unrest between the two groups is an ongoing flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Let us all pray and work for the day when these two peoples, descendants of two brothers, follow the example of Isaac and Ishmael and come together in peace.
-Rabbi Bonnie Margulis
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