Sermons

Perfectly imperfect humans (Shabbat Chayyei Sarah)

You can watch Rabbi Eleanor's sermon here or read it below.

If you want to know how urgently a singer means the lyrics of their song, the official title being listed in block capitals may be a good clue: amid the retro feel of the horn section and the old-school hip-hop beats, Raye fits in a lot of rapid-fire lyrics to ask repeated variations on the title, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND? Sure, she sings about the big shiny diamond, but there’s a deeper fear at work than simply wanting a ring: at just 28, Raye is feeling too old to be single and increasingly desperate to find a husband. She sings, “Tell him I’m kind, tell him I’m 5’ 5” / tell him I got brown eyes and a growing fear / That if he doesn't find me now, I'm gonna die alone, so can he / Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, hurry up here, sir?”

In some ways, the voice of her grandma is the highlight of the whole song, but I still don’t quite know whether “Your husband is coming” is reassuring, or just adds another level of pressure. I can imagine a young woman hearing “Your husband is coming” and throwing herself into trying to behave in the kinds of ways that will make a man see her as the perfect wife: making sure her face is perfectly gorgeous, her body and her clothes immaculately put together, speaking sweetly to anyone she meets, offering visitors a drink – and perhaps even offering to water their camels too…

Rebekah’s behaviour when we first encounter her, in the middle of Parashat Chayyei Sarah, makes her look like truly ideal bride material. When she meets Abraham’s servant at the well, at first she speaks politely to him, and gives him and his camels water to restore themselves after their travels; then she offers lodging in her family’s home. She’s clearly kind, hospitable, and not afraid to work hard; oh, and she is – of course – very beautiful. In the eyes of the ancient Rabbis, however, she becomes a true paragon. She is utterly pure and more beautiful than anyone but Sarah; she’s capable (aged three!) of drawing hundred of gallons of water, but she’s also so holy that the water springs up to meet her (Genesis Rabbah 60.5); she follows exactly in her mother-in-law Sarah’s footsteps, opening their home in hospitality, making dough in purity, and kindling Shabbat lamps (Genesis Rabbah 60:16). It’s as if the Rabbis need to push their image of her to extremes in order to make her worthy of her position as a matriarch - but there’s a problem: if you read on in Torah, you discover that Rebekah is not always a paragon.

Rebekah consults God when she has a difficult pregnancy and she helps to ensure that God’s promises are fulfilled; but she has a favourite child, and she leads that child into deceiving Isaac – his father and her husband – the same man who prayed for her when she was struggling to conceive. Like many characters in Torah, Rebekah is interesting precisely because she is complicated: she has flaws and she has amazing strengths; she is an example to emulate, and her life includes elements to avoid repeating. Yet the Rebekah we meet this week through the eyes of the Rabbis is like a matriarch put through some strong Instagram filters: sure, she looks fantastic, even perfect, but depth has been lost and she has been squeezed into a mould which is both complimentary and constraining.

Too much exposure to this kind of perfection – even when we know it has been artificially achieved – can feel less like something to aspire to and more simply make us feel bad about our own imperfections. We are being conditioned to expect lives that live up to glossy pictures of happiness, work that is done as quickly and as accurately as any machine could, and to see

anything less as not worthy of recognition or even love. Many mistakes are regrettable: even in the past week, I’ve been kicking myself over things from birthdays I nearly missed to errors I should have corrected in the Daf; and you may have your own list. This isn’t about delighting in getting it wrong; it’s simply that making mistakes should not be a reason to write us off as people, as human being as worthy of love and respect.

There’s a concept popular in the world of youth movements, which is part of an image of concentric circles of work that we need to do. If Tikkun Olam is the outermost circle of repair that we need to do of the wider world, Tikkun Atzmi is the innermost circle, describing the work of repairing ourselves. Some derive this from the verse in Pirkei Avot (1:14) where Hillel’s statement beginning “אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי” suggests that while we need to work for the good of others, we need to begin with ourselves. Yet the root of tikkun as meaning repair, or straighten, starts with an assumption that imperfection is normal and it allows for improvement of varying degrees.

Tikkun Atzmi is an important part of the Mussar movement, a Jewish practice of spiritual development and personal transformation, but the Israeli trauma-informed psychotherapist Esther Nava explains that Mussar is not about perfection. It is “not a quest to be flawless, but a practice of deepening. It’s not about becoming ideal. It’s about becoming whole.” Mussar is not about extremes of virtue or sin, but working towards a better balance and creating a fuller human experience. Working on Tikkun Atzmi (self-repair) means following Leonard Cohen’s advice: “Ring the bells that can still ring / forget your perfect offering / There’s a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.”

The ancient Rabbis of the midrash seem to need to make Rebekah into a kind of saint, a woman so perfect that she is worthy of being one of the key ancestors of the Jewish people, but we see often today that putting people on pedestals makes it easy for any flaw we later detect to become a reason to tear them down or discredit them. A Mussar approach would suggest a greater richness to be found in forgetting perfection and seeing flaws as opportunities to work on whatever improvement may be possible, even if it doesn’t reach perfection, and finding value in ringing the bells that can still ring.

The complex characters revealed in the stories that Torah tells, provide a counterbalance to the Insta-glossy world we’re often sold. They remind us that perfection is not required, because real humans always need work; yet in all our complications and imperfections, we are all worthy of love, dignity and respect. Matriarch, patriarchs, and everyone in between: we need only be work in progress. And to all the Rebekahs and the Rayes: please know that your husband may be coming, but you don’t have to be perfect to deserve him.