Chayei Sarah is all about death and sex; the death of Sarah, and how Isaac's passion for his bride Rebecca restores him after his loss. Yet there is another passion here, the passion the elderly servant Eliezer feels for this beautiful stranger.

Sent to Haram by Abraham to find his son Isaac a wife, Eliezer prays to God, that he will find a daughter of his master's clan by her willingness to give him water (shteh) and to water his camels (shkeh) at the well. But when he sees her, he says, "Hagmini me'at mayim", "Give me a little sip of water".Hagmini is a strange word, so strange that this is its sole appearance in the whole Torah.

What does it mean? How does this word feel, when we say it aloud? How does this word taste in the mouth? Perhaps Eliezer knew the Song of Songs (2:14), where the beloved says, in the same grammatical form, "Hashmini et kolech", "Let me hear your voice". Perhaps, like the lover there, this word conveys a kind of longing. Indeed, Eliezer almost says this himself; he sees her as "very beautiful, a virgin whom no man had known". He doesn't say this to her family, though, because when he meets them later on, and recounts the episode almost word for word, he calls her an almah, an unmarried maiden. A neutral term.

The medieval thinker Rashi understood Eliezer's language very precisely, but unfortunately his commentary is not printable in a family newspaper! What are we to make of Eliezer's use of his sublimated desire? Those who see the Torah as the work of human hands will see here a very human story. Yet we may also learn here how God plants within us the potential for passion, and that we may use this gift for good or ill.