Parashat Hayeh-Sara tells the famous story of Eliezer, Avraham Avinu’s servant, who traveled to Aram Nahariyim to find a suitable match for Avraham’s son, Yitzhak. At the well outside the city, he met Rivka, and brought her back to Israel to marry Yitzhak.
Something mysterious happened when Rivka saw Yitzhak for the first time. Yitzhak had gone out to the fields to pray, and Rivka, who was riding a camel, saw him. She promptly fell off the camel.
Why did Rivka fall off the camel when she saw Yitzhak? Why did the sight of Yitzchak praying have such an impact on her?
One explanation is that Rivka at this moment discovered that Yitzhak was not precisely the person she thought he was.
Rivka was a paragon of hesed, loving kindness. When Eliezer saw her at the well outside her city, he approached her and ask for some water, and she proceeded to draw water for all his ten camels. It was then when Eliezer determined that she should marry Avraham’s son – because Avraham was, of course, the embodiment of hesed. It seemed like the perfect match – a young woman who excelled in the area of hesed, marrying the son of Avraham, the greatest exemplar of hesed that the world has ever known.
Yitzhak, however, differed from his father. He of course performed hesed, but this was not his primary characteristic. He excelled mainly in the area of gevurah (literally, “power”) – self-discipline and self-sacrifice in the devoted service of Hashem. His strength was in prayer and in serving Hashem, not in extending hesed to other people.
This is what Rivka realized when she saw him praying outside in the field. She had expected Yitzhak to be just like her, and she now recognized that he wasn’t. He differed somewhat from her expectations.
ותפול מעל הגמל – Rivka fell from the גמל (camel). The word גמל alludes to גמילות חסדים – extending kindness. The Torah is telling us that Rivka made the decision to adjust, to adapt to what Yitzhak was. Needless to say, both she and Yitzhak were still kind and giving people. But Rivka realized that Yitzhak’s primary area of excellence was something else, and so she needed to adapt accordingly. She needed to “get down” from her focus on גמילות חסדים.
This insight presents a crucial lesson to every young man and young woman in the process of seeking a marriage partner, or who is beginning marriage. A successful marriage requires a degree of flexibility. Almost every husband and wife realize at some point early on in the marriage that their partner is not precisely what they expected. There is always something about the spouse that comes as a surprise. And so marriage partners need to “fall off the camel,” to descend from their lofty expectations, and accept each other for who they are. Many of the problems that arise in marriage result from inflexibility, an unwillingness to “fall off the camel,” to adjust. The more flexible we are, the happier a relationship we will be able to create.
Rivka understood that although Yitzhak was not precisely what she expected, this did not mean there was something wrong with him. It meant simply that he was great in a different way. This is what we need to understand in our relationships, too. Just because somebody is not precisely what we want him to be, this is not a reason to lose respect for that person. We need to train ourselves to “fall off the camel,” to have some flexibility, and appreciate people for who they are even when we expected something a little different.