In the Torah portion this week, we have the first instance of someone weeping for a person whom they have lost. Abraham weeps at the death of his beloved wife, Sarah. He then purchases a burial cave, Me’orat Hamachpelah, in order to bury Sarah.

As commentators have noted throughout the ages, there is something poignant and paradoxical that the first bit of land the Jewish people acquire in Israel is a burial plot. This practice influenced later Jewish communities. Wherever Jews settled, one of the first acts of each community was to establish a Jewish cemetery. The Jewish people are drawing on an ancient precedent, but there is not only a practical aspect to Abraham’s act but a symbolic one.

The name Me’orat Hamachpelah, in the view of the rabbis, comes from the word kaphul, which means double. One implication is that couples will be buried there – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. But there is also a rabbinic opinion that says it is double because it represents this world and the next – that the entrance to the cave is also the portal to the Garden of Eden. Death presages rebirth.

Abraham learned that you cannot love without loss. Equally, you cannot inherit a land without loss. Sacrifice is bound up with the legacy in the land of Israel. So too is love, which might be the answer to the second question that arises from the burial of Sarah.

If Abraham is promised the land by God, why must Abraham negotiate and purchase the land? One answer is that even God’s promise does not obviate human effort. We must work to realize whatever we achieve in this world.

It may also be, however, that Abraham feels that his love for Sarah means he cannot bury her in something he has not himself earned. She has accompanied him throughout his journey; love mandates that he make an effort to acquire the place where she will rest, and one day, he will rest beside her.

The themes of this parasha are the themes of Israel throughout the ages and today. Those who have fallen in defense of the land are what enable it to survive and flourish. From the days of Abraham, Israel is kaphul, double – a land built with loss and with love.