Parsha Chayei Sarah: Imparting Toras Chayim to Our Children

In Parshas Chayei Sarah, the Torah devotes a seemingly inordinate amount of space to the story of Eliezer searching for a wife for Yitzchak Avinu. First, the Torah narrates the story as it unfolds, then when Eliezer replays it for Lavan and Besuel, the Torah includes that as well. Very, very lengthy account of the whole story. Rashi says about that יפה שיחתן של עבדי אבות מתורתן של בני בנים, meaning that the conversation of the avdei avos, of Eliezer who was the servant of Avraham, so the Torah devotes so much space to, whereas the Torah, things like Hilchos Shabbos, are encoded very compactly, very tersely in few words. יפה שיחתן של עבדי אבות מתורתן של בני בנים. But what does it mean? I heard once a very beautiful explanation from Rav Nissan Alpert zeicher tzadik livracha. Rav Nissan Alpert was a leading talmid and protege of Rav Moshe Feinstein zeicher tzadik livracha. So Rav Alpert said when we look in the annals of Gedolei Yisrael, we find that different gedolim had different styles. The Vilna Gaon expressed profound Torah and novel ideas in few words, very sparingly. By contrast, בעל שם טוב הקדוש was much more elaborate, much more expansive and told stories. Rav Alpert said the difference in style is to be attributed to the subject matter of their teaching. The Gaon taught halacha, he taught kabbalah. These ideas can be expressed compactly, they can be expressed tersely. בעל שם טוב הקדוש was teaching middos, he was teaching emuna. These need to be presented more elaborately, need to be presented with stories that bring the ideas to life, that give real-life illustrations of the middos, of the emuna. And that Rav Alpert said is the pshat. תורתן של בני בנים lends itself to being presented tersely, compactly. שיחתן של עבדי אבות, the conversation of the servants of the avos, which deals with middos—the defining essential quality that Eliezer was searching for in a wife for Yitzchak was the midda of chesed—that requires a more elaborate presentation. The truth is that the elaborate presentation when talking about middos, when talking about chesed, is the best that one can do in terms of verbal teaching. But the most effective way of teaching is by providing example, by illustrating, by being a role model. One of my most poignant and powerful memories from my childhood is accompanying my father, I was a young child at the time, and my father zeicher tzadik livracha would go visit regularly an old man who in his younger years had been their family physician. And when I saw the sensitivity with which my father treated him, the respect and the dignity he conferred upon him, and I saw the chiyus that the person got, I saw just how meaningful it was to the person, I learned about chesed volumes that I don’t know that I could have ever learned through the spoken word. Whatever understanding I have of kibbud av va'em, what it means to be moseir nefesh for kibbud av va'em, what it means, how to render service, again, I know from having seen the sterling example of my parents engaging in kibbud av va'em vis-a-vis their parents. And the need to teach chesed and middos by example means that even though ordinarily הצנע לכת עם ה׳ אלקיך the middah of tzniyus ordinarily dictates that whenever possible we should do things without anyone knowing about it. Any gratuitous attention, any unnecessary audience compromises what we do. It diminishes, it demeans any mitzvah if there's gratuitous, if there's gratuitous attention. But to involve our children, our grandchildren, at least some of the time, is not gratuitous. It's so necessary because it's in that way that we impart to them the Toras chaim, the living Torah of how to do chesed, what it means to do chesed, and just how meaningful chesed is to their beneficiaries.