Parshas Chayei Sarah contains two famously difficult passages that, curiously, receive wildly different treatment in traditional education.
The first is “sim-na yadcha tachas yerechi,” Avraham’s instruction to Eliezer to take a solemn oath.
The second is the midrashic claim that Rivka was three years old when she married Yitzchak.
Both can make an educator pause.
But only one of them — Rivka’s age — has historically been elevated in some circles into a mandatory ontology, a dogma that must be taught literally even when it distorts the narrative and contradicts basic educational responsibility.
Why did that happen?
And why did “tachas yerech,” which is far more awkward on the surface, never receive this ontological treatment?
And what does Rivka herself teach us about how to answer both questions?
1. “Tachas Yerech”: The Symbol Everyone Knows Is Symbolic
When Avraham asks Eliezer to place his hand tachas yerech, the Torah uses a euphemism — the same way it uses euphemisms throughout Chumash for matters of embodied life.
Chazal follow suit.
Rashi explains the act in covenantal terms: an oath taken upon the symbol of the bris — the brit being the only mitzvah-object Avraham possessed.
But no rebbe in cheder ever insisted that this was literal anatomy.
No one framed it as a test of emunah.
No one pressed children to envision it or defend it.
Why?
Because everyone understood instinctively what Chazal understood:
- The Torah is speaking in symbol.
- The location is covenantal, not anatomical.
- The point is brit, not biology.
- And, following Pesachim 3a, euphemism is an ideal educational modality for certain topics.
In other words:
This was never turned into ontology because it never served a sociological purpose.
2. “Rivka Was Three”: When a Midrash Becomes a Boundary Line
By contrast, the midrash claiming Rivka was three — which is not pshat, not unanimous in Chazal, and not demanded by the storyline — was elevated in some educational subcultures into a doctrinal identity marker.
A badge of fidelity.
Rabbi Marc Angel has written sharply about this: how some mechanchim framed it as an issue of emunah rather than as a midrashic calculation that was never meant to override the moral, psychological, and narrative reality the Torah is describing.
The tragedy of that approach is twofold:
(1) It violates Pesachim 3a.
The Gemara tells us to avoid explicit discussion of things that can embarrass or confuse, and to follow the Torah’s path of euphemism.
Yet here, educators did the opposite:
- *They euphemized “tachas yerech,”
- but literalized the midrash that makes the relationship incomprehensible,
- and insisted children accept it as “simple pshat.”
(2) It violates Rivka’s dignity — precisely what the text works to protect.
The Torah goes out of its way to present Rivka as:
- mature,
- morally discerning,
- spiritually independent,
- capable of choosing to leave her home,
- able to pass a rigorous test of chesed,
- and immediately recognizing Yitzchak’s spiritual greatness.
Nothing in the narrative reads like the story of a toddler.
Everything reads like the story of a young woman whose purity, courage, and agency shine in contrast to the broken environment around her.
Turning that story into a tale about a three-year-old is not piety.
It is a form of narrative malpractice that erases the very virtue the Torah is praising.
3. The Paradox: Why One Was Euphemized and the Other Literalized
Here is the critical insight:
The literalization of the Rivka-midrach was never driven by fidelity to the Torah.
It was driven by a cultural impulse:
- To defend midrash at all costs,
- To treat every drasha as ontology,
- To draw boundary lines between “us” and “them,”
- And to cultivate a form of emunah that confuses genre, category, and pedagogic responsibility.
“Tachas yerech” is symbolic.
“Rivka was 3” is also symbolic — a number derived via a midrashic derash for homiletic purposes.
But only one of them was enlisted into a culture war, so only one became a forbidden topic to question.
In truth, neither are literal.
Both are symbols, handled differently because of sociology, not Torah.
4. And Then Rivka Herself Teaches Us the Correct Mehalech
When Rivka first appears, the Torah does something rare.
It slows down.
It describes her deeds with care.
It lets us watch her:
- exercise judgment,
- act with strength,
- display generosity,
- withstand pressure,
- and make a profound choice with full intentionality.
The Torah presents Rivka as a paradigm of moral maturity in a corrupt household.
If mechanchim today want to know how to teach Bereishis responsibly, Rivka offers the model:
See people as the Torah sees them — not as a strained midrashic arithmetic sees them.
Teach covenantal meaning, not biological awkwardness.
Protect dignity, not distort it.
Use euphemism where the Torah uses euphemism.
Use ontology where the Torah uses ontology — not where culture does.
Rivka’s greatness lies in her ability to rise above a family that could not see her clearly.
Our task is not to repeat that failure.
Our task is to teach her story the way the Torah actually tells it: with dignity, nuance, and truth.
The Torah speaks in symbols; educational malpractice happens when we turn symbols into dogma.
Rivka’s story reminds us that our job is to preserve dignity, not sacrifice it to misapplied piety.
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