Nadene Goldfoot
- Sarah's Death and Eulogy: Sarah dies at the age of 127 in Kiriath-arba (Hebron) in the land of Canaan. Abraham comes to mourn, weep, and deliver a eulogy for her.
- Purchase of Machpelah: Abraham negotiates with Ephron the Hittite to purchase the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron for 400 silver shekels to use as a burial site for Sarah. This marks the first legal land purchase by the Israelites in Canaan.
- A Wife for Isaac: Abraham sends his senior servant (traditionally identified as Eliezer) back to his homeland in Aram-naharaim / Charan to find a righteous wife for his son Isaac. The servant meets Rebekah (Rivka) at a well, and she agrees to return with him to marry Isaac.
- Abraham's Later Years and Legacy: After Sarah, Abraham marries Keturah and has more children, sending them eastward. Abraham dies at age 175 and is buried next to Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah by his sons Isaac and Ishmael.
- Isaac is the patriarch of the Jews and Ishmael of the Muslims.
In reading Torah, every Jew scattered on Earth are on the same page, reading together. This happens every year. The beginning of the year has now passed by and we are reading the portion with Abram and Sarai, who has just died. Sarah was also Abram's niece. I have pictured her as being younger than Abram for this very reason. At the end of each page are the opinions of understanding and the names given for it, like RASHI, as one.
Abraham’s reaction to Sarah’s death in this week’s Torah portion
After hearing about her death, “Abraham came to eulogize Sarah and to weep for her” (Bereishit 23:2). Notice that there are two components of his response:
a eulogy (hesped)
and weeping (bechi).
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of England
distinguishes between weeping, which is an emotional response of “spontaneous, overwhelming and uncontrollable grief,” and
the eulogy, which is “rooted in logical judgement” and serves as a clear analysis of the disastrous event and its consequences” (Out of the Whirlwind, p. 31).
This type of scientific reasoning all comes from Antonio Damasio, whose work helped shift the way we view the relationship between intellect and emotion and also serves as a paradigm to help us better understand an important part of Rabbi Sacks’ legacy.
Based on various philosophical traditions, there is a common conception that rationality is a totally divorced process from emotional experience.
Antonio Damasio (Portuguese: António Damásio; born 25 February 1944) is a Portuguese neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He was previously the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa for 20 years
Damasio heads the Brain and Creativity Institute, and has authored several books. One of the most renowned neuroscientists of his generation, Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making
Damasio argues that this dichotomy between thinking and feeling is false. In studying patients who incurred lesions to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex, Damasio noticed that the patients were able to reason perfectly but were unable to feel emotion.
Yet, even though they were able to rationally analyze choices, they were unable to come to conclusive decisions.
Damasio outlines his neuroscientific research in his book Descartes’ Error, where he contends that our brains make decisions by integrating both emotional and rational components. Our thinking requires feeling. Those who voted had made a decision based on both rational thinking and emotional thinking. They had to put that together to have a decision
Resource:
https://aish.com/intellect-and-emotion-in-memory-of-rabbi-jonathan-sacks/
