In this week’s parsha, we read about Avraham sending his trusted servant Eliezer to Charan to find a wife for Yitzchak. The Torah describes the relationship between Avraham and Eliezer by saying that Avraham trusted Eliezer implicitly and elaborates on how Eliezer would draw from his master’s wisdom to teach others.
The question is then asked: why, if Avraham placed absolute confidence in his servant Eliezer with both material possessions and spiritual teachings, did he lack faith in Eliezer’s integrity as is evidenced when he made Eliezer swear that he would not take a wife for Yitzchak from the daughters of Canaan. This answers the million-dollar question of why Avraham did not follow through with the natural assumption that Yitzchak married the daughter of Eliezer. He dismissed the idea and rather sent Eliezer back to the hometown than marry him off to the daughter of Eliezer, who descended from Canaan who came from the children of Noah’s son Cham. This was because Cham had been cursed by his father for debasing him with mockery when he got drunk after the flood ended.
The famous commentators the Kli Yakar and the Avnei Nezer explain that although the people of Charan were idolaters, Avraham saw them as preferable in spiritual gene purity in contrast to the Canaanites who were morally and ethically degenerate. Idolatry displays a flaw in one’s theological-intellectual thinking that views idols as powerful rather than powerless. However, intellectual flaws are not passed down from generation to generation on a spiritual level but moral and ethical flaws are indeed passed down from parents to children and one must therefore take great heed when looking at the character of a potential suitor for one’s children.
Avraham understood how important the assignment of finding Yitzchak a good wife with good character was because he knew that the destiny of the Jewish people would be determined by the spiritual gene pool that would stem from Yitzchak and his prospective wife and it was therefore of great concern to him. He chose to marry his son to the daughter of an idolater rather than to the daughter of a man whose gene pool had inherent ethical and moral flaws. None of this removes a person’s free will, which remains the foundation of all avodat Hashem, but a child absorbs what they live with, and Avraham was not prepared to gamble the future of the Jewish people on how much work it would take to undo.
Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, in his famous work Lev Eliyahu, writes that the task of building a Jewish home is unlike any other. He quotes the brilliantly insightful words of King Solomon, who says, “The wise among women each built her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her hands.” He explains that a Jewish woman has the power to bring the divine presence of Hashem into her home and this task carries enormous responsibility because if she is not a holy person, she can do quite the opposite by demolishing its walls through poor character and a lack of faith.
Finding the perfect wife for Yitzchak was of inestimable importance and beyond natural human ability, so although Avraham normally trusted Eliezer to perform all his household tasks with integrity, in this case he had to make him swear and affirm his commitment with the physical act of taking a vow.
Rabbi Lopian further elaborates with this startling insight. He explains that if a person possesses refined and good character but has not yet attained Yiras Shamayim, fear of Heaven, they will eventually come to attain it since the natural manifestation of good character leads to fear of Heaven, but a person sorely lacking in fine character, a person who is corrupt, will never be able to acquire Yiras Shamayim. Therefore, Rabbi Lopian advises that a man seeking a wife should first and foremost look for a woman with good middot, of refined and gentle nature even if she has not yet attained full Yiras Shamayim, because her good middot will ultimately prevail and she will come to be G-d fearing. He qualifies this statement by saying that the woman needs to obviously show a recognition that real Yiras Shamayim is an important goal to work towards and she should not be dismissive of its gravity, otherwise she will not work towards attaining it.
Shira Druion