In this week's parasha, we come across one of the most well-known literary motifs in the Torah: meeting a future bride at the communal water well. At the beginning of the parasha, we learn that Sarah has died and Abraham arranges to purchase ma'arat ha'makh'peila as a burial place for her. This piece of land later becomes the family's inherited burial place. Some time later, Abraham decides that it is time to arrange Isaac's marriage and it is in this section of the narrative that we find our motif. He charges his servant with the task of journeying back to Abraham's native land to find a kinswoman to become Isaac's bride, it being forbidden to marry a woman from among the surrounding Canaanite people. After swearing an oath to his master, the servant - who we later come to know as Eliezer - travels to Aram-Naharayim, the home of Abraham's brother Nahor. There, Eliezer finds the village's communal water well and waits there for the "water girls" to come fetching water for their herds. It is there that Eliezer first meets Rebecca, Abraham's grand-niece, who later becomes, as we know, Isaac's wife. As an event on its own, there is seemingly nothing special or unique about this meeting. However, this motif has echoes in later stories, a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. As we will read in two weeks in parashat VaYeitzei, Jacob arrives at his uncle Lavan's village and stops at the communal water well to rest and drink. There, he encounters his first cousin Rachel and falls instantly in love. As the story goes, Rachel and Jacob eventually become husband and wife. Even further on, after Moses has fled from Egypt and arrived in Midian toward the beginning of the Book of Exodus, he too meets his future bride Tzipporah at the communal water well. The commonalities between these events are not a mere coincidence, for tradition teaches that nothing in the Torah can be seen as such. They form a literary unit that cries out to be interpreted for deeper meanings. If this were not the case, then why would they mirror each other so closely? Individual characteristics of this motif have the potential to be quite revealing.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Matthew Bellas

Vice Principal of Judaic Studies/School Rabbi