Why Hating Jews Feels So Good
"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." These words of Albert Einstein capture a profound paradox of human nature - one that finds its deepest expression in an often-overlooked story from the Torah. It's a tale of a servant who turned personal rejection into profound purpose, and whose seemingly mundane conversation was deemed by our sages to be "more precious to God than the Torah of their children."
In this week’s Torah portion, we encounter a pivotal moment in Jewish history: Abraham sends his trusted Canaanite servant, Eliezer, under oath, to find a suitable wife for his son Isaac. This match will be crucial; Isaac and his future wife will become the progenitors of the Jewish people. Through Divine providence, Eliezer finds Rebecca, who embodies the ideals of holiness, kindness, and generosity.
As the final step in the matchmaking process, Eliezer asks to meet her family in order to ask them for permission to take Rebecca back to Isaac in Israel. When Eliezer arrives at their home, he refuses to eat until they listen to his recount of Abraham sending him on his mission and his serendipitous encounter with Rebecca that proved that she was indeed the right match for Isaac. Fascinatingly, the Torah, which never wastes a single word, devotes 35 verses to Eliezer’s repetition of the entire story… that we just read a couple verses ago! Why didn't the Torah simply state, “Eliezer recounted what had occurred” and save the extra verses to clarify the extremely complex and easily misunderstood laws elsewhere in the Torah?
Our sages drew out an incredible lesson from this apparent redundancy. The Midrash declares, “The conversation of the servants of the Forefathers is more beautiful to God than even the Torah of their children.” Wow! Our forefathers must’ve been quite special for that to be true… but still, why? Why was this conversation of Eliezer so beautiful to God that it merited 35 seemingly superfluous verses?
The answer to these questions lies in the few subtle but important changes that Eliezer makes while recounting the story to Isaac’s future in-laws.
In Eliezer’s original conversation with Abraham before departing on his mission, he describes his reservations about taking an oath to bring back a wife for Isaac, saying “perhaps she will refuse to accompany me back!” The word for "perhaps" in Hebrew is “Ulai” – אוּלַי. In the original story, the Torah spells the word אוּלַי, but in his recapitulation, the pronunciation “Ulai” stays the same, but the word is spelled without the letter Vav - אלי ("Elai"), making this the only place in the Torah where Ulai is spelled without a Vav. What could this strange spelling be teaching us?
Let's look at the definitions:
Rashi, the preeminent Torah commentator, reveals that this spelling change exposes a poignant backstory. When speaking to Abraham, Eliezer had suggested that Isaac might be a suitable match "for me" - meaning for his own daughter. What seemed like hesitancy due to a lack of surety of his mission reveals itself to be a desire to join Abraham’s family.1
The Midrash records Abraham's harsh response: “You, as a Canaanite, are cursed (See footnote2), and the accursed cannot unite with the blessed [i.e. my son, Isaac]” (Bereishis Rabba 59:9).3
To give context to the magnitude of this rejection, the Midrash describes Eliezer as the second greatest spiritual figure of his time, aside from Abraham himself. He spent his life disseminating Abraham’s wisdom and truth to the world. He fought in war for Abraham. He even looked like Abraham!
All this makes the response he receives all the more shocking. Could you imagine working so hard for someone, adopting his beliefs, going to war for him, and then in the moment where you express your deep desire to unite your families forever, he harshly rejects you and calls you cursed? I don't know about you, but I'd need a few weeks or months to lick my wounds.
Yet what do we see? Eliezer shrugs it off and dives head on into finding the perfect match for Isaac, totally putting aside his own desires in order to do what is best for his master and his master's son. Wow.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a fascinating detail that, up until now, we’ve put aside.
The original narrative does not use the language of “Elai” - for me. Rather, it uses the language of “Ulai” - Perhaps. Only when Eliezer repeats the story do we see the “Elai” - for me. Why does Eliezer emphasize the “Elai” aspect during his recount but not in the original narrative?
The Gur Aryeh, a commentary focused on bringing out further depth in the words of Rashi, gives a stunning explanation:
In the original narrative, when Eliezer expresses his doubt to Abraham using "Ulai" (perhaps), he's genuinely concerned about completing his mission. This makes perfect sense in context - he's about to embark on a challenging journey to find the perfect match for Isaac.
But when Eliezer retells the story to Rebecca's family, something remarkable happens. He deliberately draws attention to the fact that his own daughter was deemed unsuitable for Isaac. "Look," he's essentially saying, "I am considered the second greatest man of our generation, and even my daughter wasn't suitable for Isaac. Can you imagine what an incredible honor it is that your Rebecca has been chosen?"4
Now we can see the extraordinary nature of Eliezer's character. He took what must have been one of the most painful moments of his life - Abraham's rejection of his daughter - and repurposed it to ensure Isaac would get the perfect match. Instead of hiding this rejection or being bitter about it, he used it as a tool to convince Rebecca's family of the magnificent opportunity before them.
We've just witnessed one of the all-time greatest acts of self-abnegation for the good of another. Eliezer took the painful, dream-shattering reply of Abraham, the man he served so loyally and loved so dearly, and turned it into a vehicle to ensure Isaac would get the best match possible.
We can now start to see why the mere conversation of the servants of our forefathers carries such weight in God’s eyes.
Eliezer’s greatness began with a choice. The Midrash explains that Eliezer, despite his fate of being cursed to a lifetime of servitude, realized that he could serve barbarians, or serve the greatest man in the world – Abraham. He chose to not only accept his fate, but to embrace it, even to the point of using his humiliation to ensure the perfect match for Abraham's son, Isaac.
Imagine if we, too, were able to look at the flaws we were born with; the tough childhood, the difficult parent, the heartbreak, the natural tendencies towards anger, and so on, and embrace them with enthusiasm, recognizing them as part of our God-given mission… Think how great we would become and how much more inspired and excited would we be to fulfill our life's purpose.
The grand conclusion of the story of Eliezer, as told by the Midrash, is that through this incredible moment of self-nullification, Eliezer transforms from cursed to blessed. The Midrash goes on to say that if in his great kindness, Eliezer transformed from cursed to blessed, how much more so can we, God’s chosen nation, transform ourselves through selflessness into a blessing and a light unto the world.
As a practical exercise, look at an area of your life where you feel confined to a certain fate that you find hard to accept and embrace. Meditate on the opportunities that this "curse" provides you with:
May we, like Eliezer, find it within ourselves to embrace the "curses" of our lives and use them to enhance the lives of others, thereby becoming a blessing to the entire world!
Inspired by the lecture of Rabbi Yosef Elephant of the Mir Yeshiva, 2021
