Yehudis Fishman
Jewish Community Educator
Many sages address how elaborate and even repetitious is the first recorded match made in Torah. In our verse, the matchmaker Eliezer witnesses the gesture that clinches the couplehood of Isaac and Rebecca. She agrees to provide water not just for Eliezer and company, but also for his camels. This action demonstrates more than simple compassion.

The Kabbalists say Isaac represents the quality of intense gevurah, variously translated as strength, upward propulsion or contraction. To balance such a force, his soul mate needs to be his polar opposite. Therefore, just being kind is insufficient. To bring harmony to the universe, and to manifest the presence of HaShem who “rules heaven and earth,” there needs to be a unification of the strongest upward flight, represented by Isaac, with the most grounded act of relating to and caring for all creatures, no matter how lowly.

It is interesting that what first catches Eliezer’s attention at the well is the water rising up to meet Rebecca. When she draws water for him and the animals, however, she receives no miraculous assistance and has to use her own strength. These two phenomena, the heavenly gift and the physical effort, both express the principle that uniting heaven and earth requires masculine and feminine energies working together.

Ilana Wilner
Judaic Studies Teacher and Director of Student Activities at Shalhevet High School
Why does Rivka wait until after Eliezer is done drinking to offer water for the camels? The sages offer varying explanations. I believe that Rivka waited because she knew there was not enough water in the jug for Eliezer to drink and also to give to the camels. This simple explanation has a deeper meaning that reveals Rivka’s character. From a place of humility and commitment, she wanted only to promise what she knew she could deliver.

There is a bigger life lesson here. Rabbi Akiva Tatz, in his book “The Thinking Jewish Teenagers’ Guide to Life,” discusses how to find your role in life. He tells us to draw three circles; in the first list the things you are good at, in the second the things you are passionate about, and in the last what the world needs. He says your role in life should encompass those things at the intersection of these circles. Rather than trying to do everything, he stresses, find the one thing you are truly capable of delivering and focus on that.

Rivka had the ability to know herself, to see the need of the people around her, and then to act accordingly. Having completed the task, she immediately moved on to the next, offering water for the camels. In a world where we try to have it all and do it all, Rivka teaches us the value of emptying your jug first before filling it up again.

Shaindy Jacobson
Director of the Rosh Chodesh Society of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute
The camel, gamal in Hebrew, and gemilut chassadim, helping others and perpetuating kindness, are etymologically related.

With these words of great kindness, our matriarch Rebecca gifts us the ultimate safety instruction card for the itinerary of life:

Stay well hydrated. Camels can drink 20 gallons of water in one shot. They are notorious not only for their drinking abilities, but also for their incredible stamina in trekking through arid deserts with waterlogged bellies. We too must drink — the living waters of our holy Torah. The Torah is our hydration. It is what allows us to traverse the terrain of a life well-watered, always drinking, copiously filling our minds, hearts and souls with its elixir of life.

Join the caravan. The safest, most efficient way to travel through the desert is to travel together. While one camel may successfully cross the desert sands, a caravan of camels exponentially increases the odds of reaching its destination safely. Gemilut chassadim is the essence of building caravans: shouldering the load together, strengthening the less fortunate, helping one another on the journey of life.

Transform the desert. Camels travel through deserts, the quintessential no man’s land and antithesis to civilization. The Jewish nation sojourned in the desert for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land. In life, we often find ourselves traveling through wasteland before finding civilization and creating a home for God. The redeeming factor in this desert trek is the gamal: through gemilut chassadim — goodness, kindness, helping others — we transform the desert itself into the Promised Land.

Rabbi Chaim Singer-Frankes
Interfaith Hospice Chaplain
We might dismiss water as an incidental feature in this story, but the Torah doesn’t squander words. We must understand water as a vital ingredient wherever it flows in Torah, even swelling to become a character in its own right!

Whereas in Parashat Noah, water is God’s element of annihilation, in Vayeira it is Ishmael’s elixir of life. In the Book of Exodus, walls of water will frame a sort of holy womb, from which the nascent people of Israel are born. Is it then any surprise that water frequently accompanies a critically important woman in the narrative? Indeed, water arises in the Torah as a dominant and elastic instrument: easing alliances, sealing pledges, signifying partnerships, and often heralding God’s involvement on a sacred stage.

Whether or not she knows it, Rivka’s appearance at the well of Nahor is a test of her character. It may be her physical beauty that grabs the attention of Avraham’s appointed matchmaker, but he asks her to sate his thirst. Then it is Rivka’s thoughtful patience and uncommon generosity, administering water both for him and for Avraham’s camels (dear ships of the desert), that presages her sacred future as a matriarch.

Moreover, Rivka’s big-heartedness stands in contrast to the occasional hard-heartedness we see in the tents of Avraham and Sarah. Rivka is a standout personality in the Book of Genesis — provoking trust, sustaining man and beast, and in the fullness of time, altering the flow of our Israelite fate.

Rabbi Michael Berenbaum
Writer, Lecturer, Professor, American Jewish University
Character counts. Eliezer is a stranger in a strange land, sent by his aging master to find a wife for his beloved son. How is Eliezer to know who is right?

He comes up with a test. The maiden who offers both him and his camel a drink of water will be the one. Rebecca’s response exceeds his expectation. She not only waters his camels, she draws until they have finished drinking.

Such sensitivity and generosity: Eliezer is smitten not by her beauty but her values.

Rebecca is the most impressive of our biblical matriarchs. We see Sarah’s anguish at being childless, her willingness to accommodate Abraham’s hospitality, her laughter at the prophecy, her anger at Hagar and her fierce, sometimes cruel, determination to ensure that Isaac is his father’s sole heir.

We learn of Leah’s poor eyesight, suffering as the fertile yet unloved wife; and we witness Rachel’s beauty, childlessness and unwillingness to enter the Promised Land without her father’s idols.

But it is young Rebecca who duplicates Abraham’s going forth to an unknown land. She is the Torah heroine who encounters God regarding her turbulent pregnancy. She urges her reluctant son to deceive her husband. She creates the space within which Isaac can make the right choice between his sons, thus transmitting the family legacy to the chosen one. She sends her beloved Jacob into exile to protect him from Esau’s ire. Wise and daring, cunning and unrelenting, she is the one.

And Eliezer grasps all of this in one gesture.

https://jewishjournal.com/culture/religion/torah_portion/table-for-five/241126/weekly-parsha/