What the Bat Mitzvah Girl’s Mother Told Her
I once attended a bat mitzvah, and the mother said something I will never forget to her daughter.
She said, “Never forget that the spiritual DNA of all the matriarchs flows through your veins. Sara’s vision. Rivka’s strength. Rachel’s self-sacrifice. Leah’s power of prayer. Miriam’s song. Devora’s wisdom. You hold all of that, and more, within you.”
Yesterday, at our neighborhood mother-daughter Shabbat learning, Rabbanit Dana Slae (who participates in the weekly learning with her own daughter) said something similar, which moved me to tears.
She quoted Isaiah, who said, “Look at the quarry from which you were hewn…
Look at Abraham your father and at Sarah who bore you!”
And Rabbanit Dana asked why Isaiah is instructing us to look at our matriarchs and patriarchs. Avraham, Sara, or Rachel Imenu, whose yahrzeit is drawing crowds of thousands to pray at her tomb today.
By way of an answer, she asked what we know about a quarry, and the rock that is hewn from it?
That hewn rock, she explained, is smaller than the quarry it was taken from, obviously, but it is made up of the same stuff. That little rock contains within it the same qualities as that great quarry.
So too, little me and you, are made up of the same stuff that our great forefathers and mothers were made of. Sara’s vision. Rivka’s strength. Leah’s power of prayer. Miriam’s song. Devora’s wisdom. And Rachel’s self-sacrifice, buried far from Maarat HaMachpela in Bethlehem, so that she could comfort and pray for the Jews weeping and mourning on their way to exile. as well as every Jew who is weeping and mourning to this very day.
All of that, and more, the prophet explains, is the greatness we hold within us.
