i
The text relays how Abraham's servant brings Rebecca from her
homeland to Abraham's house, to become Isaac's wife; in that story the
text uses the word camel eighteen times.
For instance. The servant sets a sign to know whom of the women he meets should be Isaac's bride. The sign is that the right woman will volunteer to water the servant's camels. It is Rebecca who fulfills that sign.
And for instance. When Rebecca finally does come to the house of Abraham, to be married to Isaac, she is riding on a camel.
And we do not learn that Isaac actually sees Rebecca when she arrives. We only learn that Isaac lifted up his eyes, and behold: camels were coming.
Rebecca is signified by camels.
*
At the time that Rebecca and Isaac meet, Isaac has just gone out to meditate in the field.
*
After they meet, Isaac takes Rebecca in to the tent, in to their marital home.
And he loved her.
ii
A camel in that time and place was a vehicle of journey, like our car or our train.
So Rebecca, drawn to camels, signified by camels, is a woman of journeys. She looks out to the wide expanse of the world.
*
Isaac is a man of meditation, of plumbing the depths of all things in a single field, of things close-at-hand.
*
Isaac and Rebecca's marriage joins two opposite views within a single home of love.
iii
God
gives the Law to the Children of Israel—Rebecca and Isaac's
descendants—at a precise mountain, a specific spot, along the Children
of Israel's journey from Egypt to Canaan, from landlessness to home,
from profane to holy.
And God asks the Children of Israel to make for him a Mishkan, a portable temple, a meeting-house for the people and God, for the people and holiness, in their journeys from place to place.
And even up through now we meditate upon the Law, that is called Halacha, that means Path, inside the room called a Beit Midrash: a House of Study: the journey and the meditation in one home.
*
So that we, who are Rebecca and Isaac's children, come to God as Rebecca and Isaac's children.
Their marriage is eternal.
~~~~~
This thought owes a great deal to both an online shiur from Yaacov Steinman, and insights from Rabbi Laurie Dinnerstein-Kurs.
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