Chayei Sarah

One of the fun things about reading the earlier parshiot of the Torah is that you can point out all the Biblical firsts as they float by. For instance:

Abraham heeded Ephron, and Abraham weighed out to Ephron the price which he had mentioned in the hearing of the children of Heth, four hundred silver shekels in negotiable currency. And Ephron's field, which was in Machpelah, facing Mamre, the field and the cave within it and all the trees in the field, within all it's surrounding boundaries, was deeded. - Gen 23:16-17

First purchase of a burial site in the Torah. In the struggle between science and religion, Stephen Jay Gould advocates a principle of "non-overlapping magisteria" - the idea that science and religion occupy different, and complementary, fields of study. God isn't a scientific concept, the reasoning goes, nor is the Bible a scientific text; so it's absurd to try to judge religion by scientific standards, or the other way around. This notion is not only wrong, but profoundly dangerous, because it ignores the effect that religious ideas have on the real world.

This transaction in Genesis - the purchase of a cave in which several Biblical matriarchs and patriarchs were to be interred - has real implications in modern Israel. One of the major objections that many Zionists have to the establishing of a Palestinian state is the inevitable concession by the Israelis of several sacred sites, including this very cave. The site is holy to the Muslims as well, and they'd very much like the burial place of their forefather, Ibrahim, to be included in their state. These tensions almost certainly played a role in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre, when rogue Israeli soldier Baruch Goldstein opened fire upon a crowd of Muslims at prayer, killing 29 and injuring 150. Religious beliefs play a very real, very brutal role in the affairs of the modern world.

Rather, to my land and to my kindred shall you go and take a wife for my son, Isaac. - Gen 24:3-4

First "blue blood" policy. We're dealing with the absolute founder of the Monotheisms, and he's already insistent about his son only marrying within the family. The more things change...

And it was, when the camel had finished drinking, the man took a golden nose ring, its weight was a beka, and two bracelets on her arms, ten gold shekels was their weight. - Gen 24:22

First nose ring in the Torah. Idea: get a nose ring. When conservative family members protest, point out that the Bible clearly endorses such things. Let me know how it goes.

And Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother; he married Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her; and thus was Isaac consoled after his mother's death. - Gen 24:67

First use of the word "love" in the Torah. Note, by the way, the couple's ages - according to Rashi, Isaac was 40 at the time of his marriage; his wife, Rebecca, was three. If psychoanalysis floats your boat, you might also like to note the curiously Freudian wording of the verse.

And finally... the first instance in the Torah of a man telling another man to touch his penis. You think I'm kidding?

And Abraham said to his servant, the elder of his household who controlled all that was his: "Place now your hand under my thigh." - Gen 24:2

Shabbath Shalom.