Eliezer and the love test: Chayyei Sarah [5786] GKW Serm 8

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 15 November 2025¹ — Zachary’s bar mitzvah

1. The story of Rebekah offering water to Eliezer’s camels is very often understood as a story about kindness to animals.² The servant, we’re told, was looking for a woman with an innate sensitivity to the beasts’ thirst, because only such a person would be a suitable wife for Isaac.
2. But one commentator – just one – comes up with a totally different explanation, which I find persuasive and also kind of hilarious. The Beit ha-Levi, writing in the 19th century, suggests³ that Eliezer’s test was nothing to do with kindness animals. Instead, he was looking for three qualities: helpfulness, common sense, and tact. He tested her helpfulness by asking for a drink of water. An unhelpful or standoffish woman would simply refuse. Then, he watched to see what she did after he’d taken a sip from her pot. If she took the remaining water back for the other members of her household, אינה בהשכלה, she lacked common sense, because for all she knew Eliezer might have cooties. Yes, really, that’s what the Beit ha-Levi says: “Who knows … whether his mouth is clean from disease!” Then, the final test was whether she had tact. Perhaps she would save her family from his cooties by simply emptying the pot onto the ground. But that would be rude: it would humiliate Eliezer. She passed this test by coming up with a face-saving way out of the dilemma – offering it to the camels, who, we presume, would be fine sharing water with their master.
3. This is a fascinating re-rendering of the text. And, as I said, I find it very persuasive. Kindness to animals is great, but it’s not exactly the be-all and end-all of being a good person. Helpfulness, common sense and tact are, perhaps, a better range of indicators of decency.
4. Of course, identifying someone as decent doesn’t mean that they’ll be a good fit romantically. Dr Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist who has spent her career putting people who are in love under a brain scanner.⁴ That sounds fun. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, she ended up having to concede that “the thoughts, emotions and motivations associated with romantic love may be so varied … that the full set of dynamic, parallel neural systems involved may be impossible to record”.⁵ And the conclusion to her essay drops the science-talk altogether, and ends with the words: “Everywhere people sing for love, pray for love, work for love, live for love, kill for love and die for love … Nothing will extinguish the human drive to love.”⁶
5. Zachary, in the run-up to today, I asked you what becoming bar mitzvah meant to you. And you said: “It means I have more religious responsibilities. I am not sure what they are but I know I am meant to have them.”
6. I think that means you’ve passed another test of being a good person, one that Eliezer never even thought of, and that’s honesty. I’m really pleased that you felt able to tell me you’re a bit uncertain about what comes next… and actually that’s probably the right answer. When it comes to anything connected with Judaism, ‘I don’t know’ is always a good bet!
7. Indeed, when it comes to anything not connected with Judaism, ‘I don’t know’ is also a good bet. That’s where Dr Helen Fisher went with her musings on the neurological basis of love. And, really, that’s where Eliezer should have gone with the ridiculous mission on which he was sent to find a wife for someone who wasn’t him. How was he supposed to manage that?!
8. Technically, Zachary, this morning you came of age according to Jewish law. That means that all of the duties, and privileges, of Jewish adults are now yours. Of course, just as we don’t expect you to know and understand all of them right away, we don’t expect you to do all of them right away: not least the getting married bit.
9. But, when you get round to enjoying all that Jewish adulthood has to offer, the skills, traits and characteristics you’ve shown throughout the process of becoming bar mitzvah will be lifelong assets: your honesty, your hard work and perseverance, and, of course, your willingness to play a sheep at every opportunity that’s been offered to you.
10. You’ve done yourself and your family proud this morning, and we wish you מזל טוב.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Genesis 24:10-20 ↩︎
2. See eg Kli Yakar to Genesis 24:14, who links the root of the Hebrew word ‘camel’, ג־מ־ל, with the word גמילות, ‘lovingkindness’, based on this episode; Eva Landman, A Kindergarten Manual for Jewish Religious Schools (Cincinnati: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1918): 85-89; JPS Torah Commentary to Genesis 24:14; John D Rayner, “Judaism and animal welfare: overview and some questions”, lecture 591 (18 March 2000). ↩︎
3. Beit ha-Levi to Genesis 24:14 ↩︎
4. Helen Fisher, “The drive to love: the neural mechanism for mate selection” in Robert J Sternberg and Karin Weis (eds), The New Psychology of Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 87-115: 91ff. ↩︎
5. Ibid: 99. ↩︎
6. Ibid: 107. ↩︎